Army Building, ca. 1902. A picket line in front of the U.S. Army Building in Lower Manhattan on September 19, 1964, was later identified as the first public demonstration for gay rights in the United States by Barbara Gittings, co-founder of the Daughters of Bilitis, New York Chapter, in 1958. Organized by Randy Wicker of the Homosexual League of New York (HLNY), and the New York City League for Sexual Freedom (LSF), it protested the military’s treatment of gay people – including rejection, less-than-honorable discharges, and violation of privacy through a policy of sending gay men’s records to current and potential employers. Historian David Carter has called Wicker “the first militant activist on the East Coast.”

New York City is full of interesting eateries that have been around for decades, centuries, even! In this collection, we'll give you the inside scoop on where to grab a bite. Here's our guide to New York's historical restaurants.

A brief history of the Whitehall and St. George Ferry Terminals.

Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House ca. 1910 Cass Gilbert’s design for the Rotunda of the U.S. Custom House at Bowling Green called for an elliptical, skylit dome spanning 85 by 130 feet. The size and shape of such a structure posed substantial engineering challenges. Guastavino Sr. devised a solution consisting of a pair of thin tile domes—one inside the other—supported by two elliptical steel rings: one at the top of the supporting walls and another at the skylight’s perimeter. Ornamental plaster covers the inner dome, obscuring the tiles from view.

By Alexander Wood The reign of Beaux-Arts architecture reshaped the landscape of the city at the turn of the century with grand public buildings that projected a new found sense of national power. The architects who embraced this style emphasized classicism, monumentality, and embellishment in their work, and were skilled at adapting historical precedents for modern building types. This article can be read in its original format here on the Gotham Center for New York History's Blog.

Much of the Lower West Side was once underwater, with the Hudson River shoreline running approximately where Greenwich Street is now located. During the colonial period, the settlement at Manhattan’s southern tip was guarded by Fort Amsterdam (renamed Fort George by the British), and later reinforced by the Whitehall Battery. Partially destroyed during the American Revolution, the fort was demolished and the Battery rebuilt as an elegant promenade. The adjacent blocks remained the city’s most elegant residential neighborhood, as evidenced by several surviving Federal-style row houses in the neighborhood. In the lead-up to the War of 1812, the U.S. Government built a new fortification—the West Battery, later renamed Castle Clinton—on an artificial island 300 feet offshore. By the mid-19th century, fashionable New Yorkers had moved northward and lower Manhattan was given over to commercial activity and tenement housing. Landfill extended the island’s western shoreline, enveloping Castle Clinton, by then repurposed as an immigration station. Horsecar tracks plowed through the neighborhood’s northsouth thoroughfares and in 1867 the first elevated train in the country began operating along Greenwich Street. Single-family row houses were split up into multiple units, and purpose-built tenements were erected to cater to the neighborhood’s increasingly diverse immigrant population. One of the Lower West Side’s most notable immigrant communities was “Little Syria”, which existed along lower Washington Street and the surrounding blocks from the 1880s through the 1920s. The “Great Migration” of Syrians to the U.S. was sparked, in part, by the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the subsequent devastation of the local silk industry. Though government officials often referred to them as “Turks” due to their citizenship within the Ottoman Empire, the community generally identified as Syrian. The majority came from the Mount Lebanon area, and many embraced their Lebanese heritage in the 1920s with the rise of that country’s national independence movement. Most of Little Syria was Christian; approximately half were Syrian Melkite and Lebanese Maronite Catholics. Manhattan’s Syrian Quarter was central to the lives of other Syrian communities throughout the U.S., both economically and culturally. Its merchants imported—and its factories produced—wares including Oriental rugs, cigarettes and mirrors. Printers modified their machinery to reproduce Arabic characters, and more than 50 Arabic newspapers and periodicals were produced at its height. The Lower West Side’s Syrian community began to decline in numbers and visibility during the 1920s, the same period in which the neighborhood was experiencing profound changes to its built environment. The Immigration Act of 1924 halted new arrivals to sustain the neighborhood, and residents either moved or Syrian quarters or assimilated into the general population. Rising property values also played a part as the commercial development of the Financial District increased during the Roaring Twenties. By the 1930s much of the neighborhood’s low-scale row houses and tenements had been replaced by Art Deco skyscrapers. Today the neighborhood has largely vanished, although several significant sites remain nestled among the office towers of Lower Manhattan.

Though immigration is a currently contested topic in the United States and around the world, it also has a long, established, and detailed history – people have been moving from one country to another practically since countries have existed. It may be a complicated topic, but these complications have not prevented immigration from being one of the enduring touchstones of the modern world. This story can be read in its original format here.

New York City was the seat of government for only the brief period between March 1789 and July 1790. Still, there is a long history of presidential interactions in the city: from presidents growing up here, to dying and being buried here, and visiting the city for social, financial, and political activities.

This enormous building, covering an entire block, stands on the site occupied successively by Fort Amsterdam, the old Government House, and finally a row of Federal town houses which were later used for the offices of shipping companies and became known as "Steamship Row." This building is richly adorned with sculpture by Daniel Chester French and boasts handsome interiors with several fine murals.

Castle Clinton National Monument ca. 1930 Originally built as one of the harbor forts that defended the entrance to the North River, it was first named Castle Clinton. It later became a roofed-in public amusement hall known as Castle Garden. After this it served as an immigrant depot, preceding Ellis Island. Then it was remodeled by McKim Mead & White to serve as an aquarium. It now has been restored as a fort, exhibiting this handsome doorway influenced by French military architecture of the sixteenth century.

This Jacobean building was once the headquarters of the Bush Terminal Co., the manufacturing and shipping hub which now houses Industry City. Industry City might seem today a thriving business park, home to artists, cultural institutions’ archives and storages, restaurants, public spaces, and more, but it practically took over the Brooklyn industrial waterfront, over the first 5 decades of the 20th century, creating a self-serving city for its employees, and managing its business across two boroughs is an impressive feat.

American Bank Note Company ARCHITECT: Kirby, Petit & Green DATE: 1907-08 STYLE: Neo-Classical This small building was designed as a freestanding structure amid increasing numbers of skyscrapers to symbolize the company’s importance in its field. This building was built to keep the American Bank Note Company’s administrative and sales offices near New York’s main financial institutions during a company restructuring. The building’s neo-Classical style, with oversized columns and continuous window bays, continue to give it a distinctive appearance and presence in this area of Lower Manhattan.

Over the centuries, the coast of Lower Manhattan has been reshaped by tides, fires, demolition, development, and various colors of gentrification. Walk with us as we unveil details of Lower Manhattan's unique architecture, piers, and urban transformations.

The James Watson House, now the Rectory of the Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, at 7 State Street, between Pearl and Whitehall Streets, March 30, 1937. The eastern portion of the James Watson House (at right), was built as a Federal Style townhouse in 1793, at a time when prominent merchants maintained residences in close proximity to their business interests in the Harbor. In 1806, Moses Rogers, a relative of Archibald Gracie, purchased the house and elected to combine it with an adjacent house, via a curved colonnaded portico designed by John McComb, Jr. In 1885, the Watson house was incorporated into the Mission of Our Lady of the Rosary, an aid organization addressing the needs of immigrant women arriving at the Castle Garden intake facility in Battery Park, and later Ellis Island.

Won't you join us for a walk in the steps of early immigrants exploring their new American lives in the city? Start way downtown in Manhattan, so you're facing the East River, with Ellis Island in view. We invite you to wonder about those who arrived here willingly and even desperately, and passed through immigration hall at the notorious arrival port of Ellis Island depicted in the Forward's archival image below. In traditional Jewish lore, to look eastward, with devotional intent, is to open the heart to Jerusalem and the source of all illumination.

Since the Public Buildings Inventory was published in 1977, the Conservancy has worked to preserve and highlight the buildings in it in numerous ways. Here are some examples. You can view the Public Buildings Inventory Index here.

United States Barge Office, ca. 1910. This building served as the first federal immigration processing center from April 1890 to December 1891 for the period after the federal government fully assumed the immigration process, but before Ellis Island was opened. Immigration processing would return to this building in 1897 for three years after the wood-frame facility on Ellis Island burned down. The United States Barge Building was constructed in 1882 on the east edge of Battery Park. The turreted building was the location of various municipal bureaus, including the customs administration. The pictured building was demolished and replaced with a new Barge Office in 1913. In turn, that building was demolished for the Battery Park Underpass in the late 1940s. When it was torn down, it marked the first time since the Civil War that the city did not have a building bearing that name.

New York Produce Exchange, July 23, 1936. Described in the late 1880s by the New York Times as "the most impressive exchange structure ever seen in Manhattan," the 1884 New York Produce Exchange Building, on a massive 150- by 300-foot site, housed the 1861-founded Exchange. The organization served a network of produce and commodities dealers and by the 1880s had the largest membership of any stock exchange in the world. The Exchange building, designed by George Browne Post, was a red brick structure with inventive construction engineering. The metal framing of the building supported the floors but not the exterior walls, in a method later more common in skyscrapers. It was first building in the world to combine wrought iron and masonry in its structural construction. Post decorated the building's facade with somewhat delicate ornamentation, ships’ prows at the corners and medallions of corn, cows, and pigs. According to most reports though, the decoration was largely lost in the colossal scale of the building. Extremely successful in its first few decades (in 1900 it saw $15 million a day in business), by the 1950s its membership and influence had decreased significantly. The Exchange decided they wanted a new, smaller building. The original building was demolished in 1957. Despite original plans for a William Lescaze-designed building, the replacement structure (referred to as 2 Broadway) was constructed between 1958 and 1959 to the designs of Emery Roth.

The Ninth and Sixth Avenue Elevated trains, constructed in the second half of the 19th century, were built as an answer to the city's growing congestion problem. By the 1940s the Els were outdated and inefficient in comparison to the newly constructed modern subways. Between 1939 and 1958 (largely though in 1939 and 1940) the massive steel structures were dismantled piece by piece.

The largest in the world when it opened in 1896, the New York Aquarium, in the refurbished Castle Clinton, quickly became one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions. Housed in this facility were thousands of fish, some of which were brought back by local sea captains, hundreds of invertebrates, reptiles and amphibians and several types of sea mammals. The aquarium also maintained a fish hatchery used to stock upstate rivers and supply schools with research specimens. It closed in 1941 under pressure to build the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and, after a brief stint at the Bronx Zoo, it moved to Coney Island in 1957.

Internation Mercantile Marine Company Building ARCHITECT: Walter B. Chambers DATE: 1919-21 STYLE: Neo-Classical Walter Chambers, an architect trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts who was an associate of Ernest Flagg, became known for designs that reflect an interest in severity and simplicity of composition and details. The building has neo-Classical style, Indiana limestone, granite, and marble. It is ornamented with restrained neo-Classical details that include nautical and marine motifs.

The Dutch origins of New York City are still visible in any number of places: neighborhood names, the city's flag, and its architecture. If you were to mention Dutch Colonial architecture to most New Yorkers, they might tell you about the centuries-old farmhouses that still dot the outer boroughs. But the Dutch-influenced architecture of the city did not end with gambrel-roofed, wood-frame homes, and it did not end at the colonial period. This list highlights some of the "other" type of Dutch Colonial architecture. The buildings noted here date from the actual colonial period in only a few cases but were largely constructed in the later as a Dutch Colonial Revival recalling New York's 17th century past.

Fire boat display for a crowd in Battery Park, undated photo. Castle Clinton is visible at left, with the Whitehall Building in the background.

Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, 1975. The U.S. Customs Service is the oldest of the federal agency, established in 1789. The first Customs House was on the site of Bowling Green, where the current building sits. That first building burned down in 1814 and the agency moved to a series of other locations throughout the 19th century. In 1892 the government bought the land at Bowling Green for a massive new building. Designed by Cass Gilbert, ornate Beaux-Arts style building was constructed between 1900 and 1907. Interestingly, the building was designed to face the historically significant Bowling Green and not the harbor (whereas most other customs buildings faced the water). Spectacular in and out, the most notable exterior decorative features are the four female figures representing America, Asia, Europe, and Africa, created by famed sculptor Daniel Chester French. Inside the massive rotunda features a domed ceiling created by Raphael Guastavino and murals by Reginald Marsh that depict the New York Harbor. Today the building is occupied by the National Archives and the Museum of the American Indian.

Over the centuries, the coast of Lower Manhattan has been reshaped by tides, fires, demolition, development, and various colors of gentrification, from Castle Clinton to the Seaport. This glass plate negative shows a Manhattan side of a small trapezoidal square once a berth for sailing vessels, named old Coenties Slip. The slip was filled with land in 1835 to become a street. Coenties Slip was named for Conraet Ten Eyck and his wife, Antje, a moneyed Dutch couple who lived in the area in the 1600s.

Coenties Slip, Shack of the caretaker for Pier 5, May 3, 1938. Coenties Slip, in the18th century was an artificial inlet in the East River. The inlet was filled in in 1835 and became a short street (only two blocks). Pier 5 was one of the city piers at the end of the Slip on the waterfront. In 2006 the section of Coenties Slip closed to the waterfront, previously a traffic island, was converted into a small park with a bluestone sitting area with benches, plantings, and a formal central plaza.

“Manhattan terminus of the Municipal Ferry to Brooklyn. August 30, 1934.” The Battery Maritime Building was constructed between 1906-09 as the Municipal Ferry Terminal, providing service between the foot of Manhattan’s Whitehall Street and 39th Street in Brooklyn. The Brooklyn ferry was discontinued in 1938, but the terminal has since provided service to Governors Island: first to Army and Coast Guard installations, and later to recreational passengers.

Fire boat just off the Battery, undated photo. Castle Clinton is visible at left.

Bowling Green, ca. 1975. Bowling Green is the oldest public park in New York City. The land, which originally served as council grounds to Native American tribes, was the site of the historic sale of Manhattan to Peter Minuit in 1626. He purchased the entire island in exchange for traded goods, 60 gilders, an amount worth around $1,050 in 2015 dollars. The Dutch who later came to occupy the southern tip of Manhattan referred to this spot as “the Plain.” Farmers and businessmen used its grounds for parading, as well as a place to sell cattle. The site also marked the start of Heere Staat, now Broadway, which was a trade route that extended from this point and into the Bronx. In 1658, the city dug its first public well here. It was the only public well in Manhattan until 1677, long after the Dutch were replaced by the British. Not until 1733, when the land was rented to John Chambers, Peter Bayard, and Peter Jay at the cost of one peppercorn per year, was Bowling Green designated as a park. The lessees were responsible for enhancing the park with grass, trees, and a wood fence. A gilded lead statue of King George III was erected here in 1770, and one year after, in 1771, an iron fence. The fence, which still stands today, fared better than the statue. On July 9, 1776, after the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence in New York State, the statue was taken down by angry citizens and recast as ammunition. In the early 20th century, the construction of the IRT subway disrupted Bowling Green. The park was rebuilt, but only as part of a larger, citywide effort to prepare for visitors to the 1939 World Fair. A Charging Bull statue was erected at the north end of the park in 1989. According to the sculptor, Arturo DiModica, the three-and-a-half-ton bronze figure represents “the strength, power and hope of the American people for the future.”

Fraunces Tavern, ca. 1905. The Fraunces Tavern, built in 1719 as a mansion for the family of Stephen De Lancey, was opened as the Queen’s Head Tavern in 1762. A meeting place for Loyalists during the British occupation of New York, it was the site of Governor DeWitt Clinton’s Evacuation Day celebrations in 1783, when remaining British troops departed New York. Shortly thereafter, the Fraunces Tavern — named for its owner and proprietor, Samuel Fraunces, who may have been a spy for the Continental Army during the British occupation — hosted General George Washington’s farewell meeting with his officers. During the 19th century, Fraunces Tavern suffered a series of fires, with subsequent reconstructions, including the addition of two upper stories, substantially altering the building’s appearance. In 1900, the tavern was under the threat of demolition before being temporarily designated a “park” by the State of New York, an ad hoc ruling in an era with scant historic preservation protections. The designation was lifted in 1904 when the Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York purchased the building and undertook a conjectural reconstruction project that shaped the Fraunces Tavern you see today (there is no definitive record of the tavern’s original appearance; the 1904-07 reconstruction took cues from the surviving structure and extant period buildings). In 1975, it was the site of the Fraunces Tavern bombing, when an extremist Puerto Rican separatist group set off an explosive device, killing four and injuring 50.

The iron fence around Bowling Green was put up in 1771 to protect the park and its new statue of King George III. While the statue was torn down when the Declaration of Independence reached New York, the fence itself is still there, a few changes notwithstanding. Originally, the posts are said to have been decorated with royal crowns or iron balls that didn’t survive the Revolution, and in the 1868 painting above, you can see one elegant lamp remaining, which no longer exists. In 1914 the fence was actually removed and left in Central Park while a subway line was constructed, but in 1919 it was thankfully brought back to Bowling Green. Having achieved landmark status in 1970, the fence will, like the park it surrounds, remain a relative constant in an ever-changing downtown.

Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton (left), ca. 1976. Seton, born in 1774 in Lower Manhattan, was the first native-born American citizen to achieve Sainthood. The shrine is built on the site of the former Seton home, while the James Watson House (right), now serves as its rectory.

Battery Firehouse, May 12, 1936. This Victorian two-story house was constructed in 1895 as a permanent shoreside headquarters for Engine 57 and the other fireboats that served the harbor and waterfront from the Battery. This waterfront structure was demolished in the early 1940s prior to the construction of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and Battery Park underpass. The boats previously quartered here are moved first to North River Pier 1, then to Pier A. In 1959 the former Engine 57 is designated Marine Co. 1.

James Watson House (now Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton) ARCHITECT: John McComb, Jr. DATE: 1793 STYLE: Federal Part of the James Watson House is one of the few fine 18th century Federal townhouses remaining in Manhattan. The colonnade of the 19th-century portion is unique both in its adaptation to the curve of State Street and in its monumental scale. At the first floor level, the portico has square wooden columns, and the part above has circular Ionic columns, believed to have been made from ships masts.

Old Steam Ship Row, 1898. Steam Ship Row was the center of ocean-going travel companies, steamships, and booking offices. Firms with locations here included the Cunard, Line (at no. 4 Bowling Green in the middle of the block), Anchor Line, Red Star Line and French and German lines. These buildings were razed in 1898 in preparation for the construction of the Custom House (built 1902-1907). The headquarters of these shipping firms moved into nearby and new skyscrapers over the next few decades, including the 1898 Bowling Green Building (11 Broadway), the 1891 Columbia Building (29 Broadway), and later the 1925 Cunard Building (25 Broadway).

New York City’s architecture is central to what makes it so iconic. From towering skyscrapers to well-loved taverns, New York City is filled with buildings of all shapes and sizes. One building that has served many roles throughout New York’s storied history is Castle Clinton. Join us to learn how a single location at the tip of Lower Manhattan has been renovated and reimagined over the years to fulfill the needs in an ever-changing city.

For many of us quarantined in the city, it's been months since we've taken the train anywhere. Since then, we found ourselves becoming oddly nostalgic about our old daily commutes. Here are some photographs that capture New Yorkers on the subway: a quintessential piece of the city that we love to hate yet hold near and dear to our hearts.

New York was inhabited by Native Americans long before Dutch settled the region. Much of southern New York, New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania, and Western Connecticut was inhabited by an Algonquin-speaking group of Native Americans, called the Lenape. This land was called Lenapehoking. The Lenape interacted with and lived adjacent to the European settlers for many years. The relationship between the Lenape and the colonists (first Dutch and then English) was fractured and complicated. They engaged in war from time to time. However, most of their interactions were centered on trade. In particular, the Europeans traded manufactured goods for beaver pelts and other animal furs. Due to several reasons, including disease, migration, and land treaties, the Lenape population of New York shrank as more and more Europeans settled the lands. Additionally, settlers used formal documents to lay claim to the land and slowly push the Lenape out of New York City. While Lenape structures and settlements have been mostly erased from the built environment, evidence exists to show the important contributions of the original New Yorkers. NYS Social Studies Scope and Sequence Standards: 4.2, 7.1 & 11.1 For Teachers: Native Americans In New York Lesson Plan

Battery Park Fire House, July 1, 1931.

Immigration Building, May 31, 1938. Ellis Island served as an immigration station from 1892 until 1954. Following the Immigration Act of 1891, which created the Office of Immigration (later the Bureau of Immigration), the federal government took control of regulating immigration from the individual states. The first immigration building on Ellis Island opened on January 1, 1892. In 1897 the original wooden building was destroyed by fire. The replacement building, designed by the firm of Boring and Tilton, is a French Renaissance Revival style structure of red brick with limestone trim. It opened in December of 1900 and was soon followed by a number of related buildings, including kitchen, laundry, power, and hospital facilities. When the station opened in 1892, fewer than 20,000 people passed through the island a year, the result of an economic depression. By 1905 nearly a million people a year were immigrating to the United States. During its peak years (1905-1914) more than 5000 immigrants were seen every day, and it is estimated that more than 12 million people were processed through the immigration station at Ellis Island during its tenure. By 1924 the number of immigrants passing through the island had dramatically decreased due to restrictive legislation. In November 1954, the Immigration and Naturalization Service shut down their offices on Ellis Island and moved to a new location in Manhattan.

Ellis Island, ca. 1907. Ellis Island served as an immigration station from 1892 until 1954. Following the Immigration Act of 1891, which created the Office of Immigration (later the Bureau of Immigration), the federal government took control of regulating immigration from the individual states. The first immigration building on Ellis Island opened on January 1, 1892. In 1897 the original wooden building was destroyed by fire. The replacement building, designed by the firm of Boring and Tilton, is a French Renaissance Revival style structure of red brick with limestone trim. It opened in December of 1900 and was soon followed by a number of related buildings, including kitchen, laundry, power, and hospital facilities. When the station opened in 1892, fewer than 20,000 people passed through the island a year, the result of an economic depression. By 1905 nearly a million people a year were immigrating to the United States. During its peak years (1905-1914) more than 5000 immigrants were seen every day, and it is estimated that more than 12 million people were processed through the immigration station at Ellis Island during its tenure. By 1924 the number of immigrants passing through the island had dramatically decreased due to restrictive legislation. In November 1954, the Immigration and Naturalization Service shut down their offices on Ellis Island and moved to a new location in Manhattan.

New York City Aquarium, 1900. “West Battery,” a sandstone fort built on an artificial island, was completed in 1811 as part of the re-fortification of New York Harbor ahead of the War of 1812. It was renamed Castle Clinton in 1815, for DeWitt Clinton, then the Mayor of New York City. Since then, the structure has served a variety of diverse purposes: first, as an entertainment venue (1815-1854); second, as the nation’s first immigrant processing center (1855-1892), before the federal government, fearing contagion, moved its immigration facilities to Ellis Island; and finally, as the New York City Aquarium (1896-1941).

A collection that maps and celebrates NYC LGBT history for the month of October!

Dedicated in 1926 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Dutch settlement of New York, the Netherland Monument flagpole was designed by H.A.van den Eijnde, a Dutch artist.

This series is the complete line of the Ninth Avenue El as it existed between the 1870s and 1940.

The restored Fraunces Tavern design required the removal to two upper stories added during the 19th century and the controversial addition of a hipped roof, based in part on the Philipse Manor House in Yonkers. At right is the Bush Terminal Buildings Company headquarters, a five-story Dutch and English Gothic structure built in 1905. This was the business management office for the Bush Terminal, an intermodal shipping, manufacturing, and storage complex on Brooklyn’s waterfront in Sunset Park, today known as Industry City.

This is part of Urban Archive's "Arms and Armories: Fort Week," a series that features a week of stories about the military installations that once defended the city. If you’ve ever had a picnic in Battery Park or taken a trip to the Statue of Liberty you’ve probably walked through Castle Clinton, a medieval-looking fortress by the water's edge that dates back to 1808. This structure, now used as a ticket office and information center for tourists heading to Liberty Island, has endured almost as many changes as New York City itself. It was nearly demolished on six different occasions, only to be finally rescued and restored by the National Park Service in 1946. A remnant of the City’s colonial roots, the building has been involved in military, artistic, and immigration-oriented initiatives since it’s construction, serving an impressively diverse variety of roles during its 207 years of existence. Like the Museum at Eldridge Street, the now restored building is symbolic of the massive waves of immigration that forever changed our country and the site pays homage to the stories of the people who passed through its doors during each stage of its evolution. It's a story that is integral to our past as well as our future.

Daily life in New York City continues to be upended from COVID-19. Businesses, bars, restaurants, schools and museums have been forced to close their doors. Although these feel like entirely unprecedented times, the city has experienced public health crises before. One hundred years ago, conditions were ripe for the spread of infections. And not unlike today, marginalized communities, like new immigrant populations, often bore the brunt of the bad conditions and consequences. Many immigrant neighborhoods offered substandard housing, packing large families in tiny, dingy apartments. Globalization was increasing and people and goods were traveling more and farther. So was disease. All these factors contribute to New York City’s long and dirty history of disease and illness, especially on the Lower East Side.

32 and 32 1/2 Stone Street, 1938. According to the metadata attached to this 1938 photograph (i.e. the photographer's notes), the Dutch-style building midframe dates to the early 19th century (and perhaps earlier). Here the building is occupied by the American Banker, a banking magazine. The photographer notes that the building managed to survive the Great Fire of 1835, which covered 17 city blocks and destroyed about 700 buildings. While it is certainly possible that this building dates to the colonial period, given that Stone Street was one of the oldest streets in the city, it is also possible that the photographer or the sources he consulted were incorrect and the building dated to post 1835. A mention of the structure next door in a 1954 New York Times article dates that extra narrow building's origins to the early 19th century, which strengthens the argument for this pair's colonial roots. The building just left of no. 32 was no. 32 1/2, which is reported in the same article as being only six feet, five inches wide. This section of Stone Street was demapped in the 1980s with the construction of the large office building at 85 Broad Street. (The original path of the street—the first paved road in the city— is marked by special paving through 85 Broad Street's lobby).

Immigrant Building A 1916 explosion at a nearby munitions depot destroyed the original wood-lath-and-plaster ceiling of Ellis Island’s Registry Hall. The Guastavino Company was hired to rebuild the structure using thin tile vaults. Engineers overseeing its renovation in the 1980s deemed the building structurally sound, despite its abandonment for three decades following the 1954 closure of the immigration facility. Remarkably, only 17 of the hall’s nearly 30,000 tiles needed to be replaced.

This is part of Urban Archive's "Arms and Armories: Fort Week," a series that features a week of stories about the military installations that once defended the city. When we look at the remains of forts and armories around the city today, it might now seem strange to imagine ships arriving in New York Harbor and seizing the city. Well, that's exactly what the British did in August of 1664 and July of 1776. This set of military installations were built during the last three hundred years to gird New York with defenses that ensured the protection of America's financial hub.

A walking tours through Lower Manhattan's skyscraper canyons and more than a century of high-rise construction. This walk focuses on the buildings around Broadway. This story is adapted from an exhibition at the Skycraper Museum. The original version can be seen here.

“Coenties Slip, east from but not including Pearl, to and including South Streets, showing the South Ferry division of the Second and Third Aves. Elevated Line winding its course from Pearl (left foreground) down Front Street (right center) to the Battery. Also seen is Jeanette Park, a quadrilaterally shaped area which divides Coenties Slip in two parts. Coenties Slip is shaped in the form of an isosceles triangle, with Pearl Street as its vertex and South Street as its base. In the background appears the East River and the Brooklyn shore, across it. Pier 7 is visible on the left. About 1885.” South Ferry Station was the southern terminus of the combined Second and Third Avenue Elevated lines between 1878 and 1950. The station was reached by a winding section of track from Hanover Square along Pearl Street, turning left at Coenties Slip, then right at Front Street, onward to Whitehall Street and the South Ferry.

Aftermath of the Blizzard of 1888. In the background, a train is visible on the tracks of the combined Sixth and Ninth Avenue lines, approaching South Ferry station. Battery Park, whose name is derived from the gun batteries once housed in the vicinity, is built on landfill. Beginning in the 18th century, the shoreline was repeatedly extended. Fort Amsterdam, built by the Dutch and renamed Fort George after the English takeover, was demolished in 1788 and its remnants added to the landfill. Castle Clinton, a circular naval fort made of red sandstone, was approximately 100 yards offshore when it was built in 1811 and accessible only via a pier. Never used for military purposes, Castle Clinton was turned over to the city in 1823 and, as Castle Garden, became New York's leading entertainment venue for more than 30 years. As landfill continued, eventually Castle Garden became incorporated into the western edge of the park

Look at any view of New York’s waterfront before the mid-20th century and you’re likely to see a barge. Barges linked Manhattan and Long Island with the rest of the country’s rail network, which had no direct freight link across the lower Hudson or the harbor. Even today, freight trains must take a 300-mile detour across a bridge at Selkirk, near Albany, to get from Brooklyn to New Jersey. Instead, 2-3 times every weekday, freight cars roll-aboard barges called car floats (built for the Pennsylvania Railroad) to cross the harbor between Owls Head, Brooklyn, and Greenville, Jersey City, just as they have for more than 150 years. In addition to barges carrying entire train cars, this lighterage system had a whole set of barge cognates for rail cars. Every railroad that served New York had its own fleet. Written by Stefan D-W, Associate Archivist, the Seamen’s Church Institute & Museum Assistant, the Waterfront Museum.

Climbing great heights to construct the newest buildings or digging deep underground to maintain the tunnels that carry our subway, water, and drainage systems, the city's workers make sure that New York runs like a well-oiled machine.

2 Broadway Architect: Emery Roth & Sons, 1959; redesign of curtain wall, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, 1999 2 Broadway replaced a landmark of the nineteenth-century city, George B. Post's New York Produce Exchange. The Exchange, a 10- story building topped by a Renaissance-style campanile, was a technological marvel at the time of its construction because of its partial steel-cage construction. Post articulated the façade with a series of arched colonnades separated by projecting cornices, which offset its height. The design was executed in a red brick and enriched with very fine brick and terra-cotta ornament

Fraunces Tavern, between 1890 and the restoration project that began in 1904.

Brooklyn has long been a gateway and refuge for immigrants. In the 19th century, Irish and Scandinavian families lived and worked on Brooklyn’s waterfront near present-day Brooklyn Bridge Park. By the following century, communities of Arab, Hispanic, Italian, and Puerto Rican newcomers put down roots along the western end of Atlantic Avenue near Pier 6 at Brooklyn Bridge Park. The Brooklyn waterfront and New York harbor have served as sites of arrival, departure, and employment for many of these immigrants.

My Archive Spring 2019

Seamen's Church Institute, 1925. The Seamen's Church Institute was founded in 1834 by group of Episcopal men. Their original "building," constructed in 1844, was the Floating Church of Our Savior, a boat docked at Pike Street. This facility served to community of sailors that entered the city for some temporary amount of time from the seafaring life. The institute went through at least one other floating church and one other onshore structure before constructing their own 12-story building at 25 South Street in 1913. The building could house nearly 600 people and became a popular dormitory space for sailors and seamen. In the wake of the Titanic disaster, survivor, socialite, and philanthropist Molly Brown insisted on a memorial for the victims. Installed at the top of the new Seamen's Church Institute building in 1913, the 60-foot-tall (including the large spire) lighthouse was a memorial for the victims. For decades a ball was lowered at noon as a commemoration and for ships anchored in the harbor to set their clock by. In 1968 the Institute moved to a new building and 25 South Street was razed. The lighthouse was moved and reinstalled as part of the campus of the South Street Seaport Museum in 1976.

By Alexander Wood While the other Gateway To The Nation describes the Custom House, this story focuses on the work of the Custom House. Read this in its original format here.

Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, ca. 1977.

By Lawrence Stelter Since the beginning of European colonization, the trade of goods and ideas created prosperity throughout the area around New York Bay. Industrialization further fueled growth and expansion, sometimes at exponential levels. As the population spread out, people worked, worshipped and took their recreation in places far from where they lived. Thus public transportation developed and inexorably grew. In 1832 the horse-drawn coach appeared, and soon thereafter came the horse car, which ran on rails. After the Civil War the horse-car network became inadequate to serve a population that was approaching one million. City leaders sought a means of transportation that would be separate from and unimpeded by the congested streets. Read this in its original format here.

View west along South Street across Broad Street, October 18, 1914.

Construction on the IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue line near South Ferry, July 24, 1904.

Harry Houdini on the edge of the pier, 1912. The New York Times headline on July 8, 1912, read: "Thrown Overboard Manacled in a Box." The day before the "Handcuff King" (who unsurprisingly had a theatre performance that week uptown) staged a stunt off of Pier 6 at Coenties Slip. Well announced, newspapermen, photographers, newsies, and film operators crowded the pier to the point of near suffocation. Houdini, his box, locking equipment, and assistants (and a group of reporters and photographers) were ferried out to the middle of the bay on a tug boat. There he was put into leg irons and handcuffs and stuffed into the pine box the size of an office desk. He was submerged and in no more than a minute reappeared at the surface. The crowds on the pier and from the Staten Island Ferry cheered and nearby tugs tooted in appreciation. The box, which had been nailed and bound by ropes and steel bands also resurfaced looking just as it had when it entered the water, still sealed tight.

From its earliest days, New York has been a city in a hurry. But luckily, from hot dog carts to taco trucks, there have always been places to grab a bite on the go. This week we combed our archives for photos and history of street food in New York.

2 Broadway, as seen from the stairs of the Customs House, ca. 1970-1990. 2 Broadway is an International style skyscraper that replaced the 1884 red brick New York Produce Exchange Building in 1959. Designed by Emery Roth, the 32-story building originally had a checkerboard modernist facade. The design of the building was generally panned by critics when it was complete. Ada Louise Huxtable said of the facade, it looked “as if it could be demolished with a can opener." Author of Lost New York, Nate Silver said “The produce exchange, one of the best buildings in New York, was replaced after 1957 by one of the worst.” The building, which struggled to find tenants in the last couple decades of the 20th century, underwent a $100 million renovation starting in 1997 by the firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. A new curtainwall of blue-green tinted glass was installed. Since the renovation the building has been the headquarters for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The Custom House was a fundamental element of the economic and architectural landscape of Lower Manhattan. Today it is the National Museum of the American Indian, fittingly located on the site where the Dutch purchased the island of Manhattan in 1626. Customs revenues composed nearly the entire income of the federal government in the nineteenth century, and more than half were collected from the port of New York. The increase of trade at the end of the nineteenth century forced the Customs office to abandon its 1842 building at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in favor of this new, much larger, facility. The Customs Office remained here until it moved to the World Trade Center in 1975. After a long dormancy--during which it was repeatedly threatened with unsympathetic development--this prominent landmark became the home of the National Museum of the American Indian, which occupies the grand public spaces on the main floor, as well as the Federal Bankruptcy Court. The building's architect was the prolific Cass Gilbert, who designed many downtown landmarks, including the Woolworth Building, the Federal Courthouse at Foley Square, the Broadway-Chambers Building, and the West Street Building. Born a Midwesterner, Gilbert studied architecture at M.I.T., a school influenced by the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the doctrinaire traditions of French academic classicism. This background is evidenced in the dynamic and richly sculpted classical exterior, as well as the noble sequence of public rooms on the principal floor. The main entrance takes the form of a triumphal arch, befitting not only the building's public stature but also its site at the beginning of Broadway. Significantly the main façade addresses Bowling Green and Broadway and the growing commercial city rather than the harbor. The monumental limestone sculptures on the main façade are the work of Daniel Chester French. Four seated figures on pedestals are allegories of Asia, America, Europe, and Africa. The twelve figures lining the parapet represent the great sea-faring empires of the past.