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.”

20 Exchange Place, 1931. Built as the Wall Street headquarters of one of the country's largest financial institutions, the City Bank Farmers Trust Building (more commonly today known at 20 Exchange Place) was a striking addition to the lower Manhattan skyline when completed in 1931. The Cross & Cross-designed, 59-story structure was styled in the restrained modern style once known as “Modern Classic." The massing of the lower portion is broad and highly vertical in design, an overwhelming presence on the narrow streets it fronts. The ornamentation is minimal and rendered in a combination classical and subtle Art Deco styles. The original financial institution became a part of Citibank in 1976 and sold the building three years later. Today the building is a commercial office space with residential tenants occupying floors 16 through 57.

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.

Firemen on the third-floor fire escape at No. 82 Front Street, October 1923.

National City Bank Building Interior ARCHITECT: Isaiah Rogers DATE: 1836-41 STYLE: Roman The National City Bank’s president, James Stillman wanted an impressive banking hall as the symbol for his bank which was, at the time, the most important financial institution in the country. The bank interior was designed to suggest a classical Roman hall on a grand scale. The monumental Corinthian columns support an elegant entablature, the huge barrel vaults, and the tall, arched windows with the delicate balconies which traverse them. The elegant materials and fine details show the mastery that the architects achieved. Fine proportions and elegant details are combined here to form one of New York’s grandest interior spaces.

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.

1 Hanover Square, 1913. This Italianate Brownstone was thought to be built by Robert F. Carman in 1851-54 for the Hanover Bank. Carman, a developer and builder made his fortune rebuilding the "burnt district" that had witnessed a fire that ravaged the area in 1835. The exterior of the building has largely remained unchanged since its construction. The three-story masonry structure is decorated with windows that diminish in size and ornament at each successive level. At the top floor, windows are almost square in proportion, while on the ground floor they are large and tall, flanked by pilasters and topped by an arch. The entry to the building is in the center, though the building once had two stoops because it hosted multiple businesses. The Cotton Exchange assumed ownership in 1871 and, serving as its sole tenant, unified the building. In doing so, the Exchange added the clock above the entrance with the words "Cotton Exchange" on a scroll around it. The Cotton Exchange was the country's first bank dealing in commodity futures and the second in the world that operated this way. Following the departure of the Cotton Exchange, 1 Hanover Square had a series of tenants, including Tobacco Importers Maitland and Company, the Grace shipping company, and the Haitian Embassy. In 1914, "the India House" came to take over the building. Diplomat Willard Straight and industrialist James A. Farley conceived of it as a place where merchants and bankers could converge and discuss American commerce and trade. The name India House was chosen to evoke the exoticism of the faraway indies. They hired the architects Delano and Aldrich to convert the building to a club. Delano and Aldrich stripped the interior of much of its ornament, adding maritime accents to take its place. The India Club is still operational today, though its restaurant can be enjoyed by any member of the public, so long as they respect the dress code.

The powerfully sculpted form of this 57-story Art Deco tower is a result of the polygonal shape of the site, as well as the need to accommodate the headquarters of two different banks. The verticality of the tower’s shaft is accentuated by metal spandrel panels and the gray brick vertical piers. The colossal heads which survey the street from the parapet of the nineteenth-floor setback represent the giants of finance (seven scowling, seven smiling). The figures actually hide the exhaust pipes of the air circulation system. Elaborate street-level bronze grilles cover the lower parts of the windows of the banking halls. Each grille presents an allegory of a field of science or the arts. The entrance to the banking hall at the corner of Exchange Place and William Street is especially handsome. Inset panels of the doors and the cylindrical cover for the revolving-door depict modes of transport throughout history. Inside, the reception and the banking halls have the air of a 1930s movie set, employing vivid rich-hued marbles and elaborate mosaic to brilliant effect. The impressive domed rotunda and grand staircase once lead to the main banking hall and senior officers room.

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.

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.

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.

View of Broad Street, July 16, 1936. Berenice Abbott's view includes 41 Broad Street, U.S. Sub-Treasury (truncated, center right), Schwartz's Restaurant (left), New York Stock Exchange (with scaffolding, center left) Lee-Higginson Bank (right, curved) and in the back, the pyramid top of the Bankers Trust Building and the twin towers of the Equitable Building.

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.

J. &. W. Seligman & Company Building ARCHITECT: Francis H. Kimball; Julian C. Levi DATE: 1906-07 STYLE: Neo-Renaissance, Baroque Revival, Skyscraper Seligman & Company Building is a steel-framed and rusticated limestone-clad skyscraper, and a is a richly sculptural, neo-Renaissance style building. The design, treated in a manner similar to that of the contemporary commercial and public architecture in Great Britain referred to as “Baroque Revival,” skillfully adapts the difficult quadrilateral shape of the lot and acute angle of the primary corner by providing a dramatic vertical focus, with a round tempietto-form tower, as the building is approached from Wall Street.

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 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.

Firemen on the third-floor fire escape at No. 82 Front Street, October 1923.

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.

Downtown Skyport, August 12, 1936. The Downtown Skyport was a water landing airport on the East River between Piers 11 and 12. The municipal facility was largely used by wealthy businessmen who lived on Long Island and commuted to their jobs on Wall Street via private seaplanes. The facility also was used for docking private speedboats for the same Long Island to Manhattan commute. In 1937 there were 1,068 plane landings at this skyport. Other skyports, used for similar functions, were opened at 31st Street and the East River and at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn during the 1930s.

“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.

120 Wall Street embodies a more utilitarian approach to high- rise architecture than the Art Deco extravaganzas of the central financial district with its simple pyramid-like massing. The marble, limestone and white brick of 120 Wall Street is left unadorned, with the gold metallic grille directly above the main entrance as the one dramatic exception to this simple decorative program. This architectural restraint can in part be ascribed to 120 Wall Street’s location at the eastern fringe of the financial district. Wall Street east of Pearl Street was heavily populated with coffee, tea, and sugar importers, which were situated between the ships and docks to the east and the financiers to the west. 120 Wall Street’s original anchor tenant was the American Sugar Refining Company.

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.

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.

20 Exchange Place, entrance with transportation motif, ca. 1994.

In 1711, New York's first slave market opened in downtown Manhattan. Introduced by the Dutch, Slavery had become an active part of New York's life. Brooklyn and Long Island numbered among the Northern regions with the largest captive populations. An estimated 40% of New York households contained an enslaved person. From farming to carpentry to blacksmithing, blacks worked a number of trades and were a vital source of labor. Situated next to the piers on the East River where the ships were moored, captives would be unloaded from the hellish conditions on the ships and sold. Previously, enslaved people had been sold informally, but a city 1711 ordinance established that they should be sold through this market. Though many of the people sold at the New York Slave Market were black, the market also sold Native Americans into slavery. In 1726, the market was renamed the Meal market due to the fact that grain, corn, and meal were also sold exclusively at the market. By the mid-18th Century, one in five New Yorkers was enslaved. Meanwhile, New York began to grow into the financial and trade center of the colonies. Blocks away from where men, women, and children were sold, their labor, bodies, and futures were financed and insured. The meal market itself would be closed in 1762, but that didn't mark the end of the slave trade throughout the city. Men, women, and children would continue to be sold. The abolition of slavery in New York in 1827 didn't even mark the end as non-resident Slave owners could maintain enslaved people until 1841. The city would continue to be interlinked with the South. Mayor Fernando would even suggest succeeding in 1861 in order to maintain the profitable cotton trade with the Confederacy.

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 Cotton Exchange Building, 1923. Completed in 1923, the Cotton Exchange Building was a new kind of commodities facility. Architect Donn Barber placed the trading floor at the top of the building, instead of on the ground floor, as was most common. The trading floor sat under a large skylight, surrounded on all sides by three-story windows. This building was the first major building in the Financial District to undergo residential conversion. It has been a co-op since 1985.

“Hanover Street, south from Wall Street to Exchange Place, showing (right), a portion of the National City Bank building and (left), a portion of the new Wall and Hanover building. Also shown (under demolition) is the Canadian Bank of Commerce building, at the N.W. corner of Exchange Place and Hanover Street. At the top foreground of the view, is visible part of a foot bridge, connecting the National City Bank with the Wall and Hanover buildings. September 12, 1929.” - P.L. Sperr The National City Bank building at 55 Wall Street had been the Merchants’ Exchange and a U.S. Customs House during the 19th century. Between 1899-1908, architect Charles McKim led the building’s redevelopment as the headquarters of the National City Bank (known as Citibank since 1976). During renovations, workers discovered a cannonball, gunpowder and various makeshift munitions, likely a stockpile leftover from the Draft Riots of 1863. Sperr’s series of Wall Street photographs were taken in September 1929, just one month before the calamitous stock market crash that sent financial markets into crisis.

The Enduring Issues Practice set is designed to help students analyze documents for Enduring Issues to help prepare them for the NYS Regents Exam. Use the attached handout to answer the questions following each document. At the end, determine what the one Enduring Issue is and create a topic sentence that is supported by evidence from at least 3 images. Enduring Issues Practice Set 1 Handout

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

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

Cotton Exchange Building, ca. 1890. The Cotton Exchange is the oldest commodities exchange in the city, dating to 1870 when it was founded by 100 cotton brokers and merchants. Chartered in 1871 by the State of New York, the Cotton Exchange was first located at 1 Hanover Square (which later became India House). In 1885 they moved into this George B. Post-designed building at the corner of Beaver and William Streets (60 Beaver or 3 Hanover Square). This 19th century structure with a broad rounded corner and cone-shaped roof was replaced in 1923 by new Cotton Exchange Building designed by Donn Barber.

Firemen on the third-floor fire escape at No. 82 Front Street, October 1923.

National City Bank Building, 1931.

The private bank, Brown Brothers, Harriman & Company was the anchor tenant in the office tower developed and built by Starrett Brothers - who were also the contractors for 40 Wall Street and the Empire State Building. Brown Brothers have a distinctive private entrance at the corner of Wall and Hanover. Like the nearby Bank of New York building at 48 Wall Street, this entrance rotunda has a delicacy and domestic scale more typical of eighteenth-century Wall Street than of the 1920s. The form steps back from its squarish base into an irregular octagonal tower ornamented with gargoyles and ocular windows.

1 Hanover Square, sometimes called India House, can be called one of the survivors of downtown Manhattan. Throughout its long history, many institutions have called it home from bankers to lunch clubs.

Delmonico's ARCHITECT: James Brown Lord DATE: 1890-91 STYLE: Renaissance Revival This striking Renaissance Revival building is one of the finest surviving late-nineteenth-century buildings in Manhattan’s financial district. It is the only surviving building associated with the world-famous Delmonico’s Restaurant. Delmonico’s, founded in 1827 by brothers John and Peter Delmonico, was one of the first restaurants in the United States to specialize in fine Continental cuisine.

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.

City Bank-Farmers Trust Building ARCHITECT: Corss & Cross DATE: 1930-31 STYLE: Skyscraper, Modern Classic The City Bank-Farmers Trust Company Building, fifty-nine stories high, is one of New York City’s tallest skyscrapers. It was built to house what was at the time New York’s largest financial institution, formed by the merger of the National City Bank of New York and the Farmers Loan and Trust Company. Its steel-framed structure sheathed in granite at the entrances and in limestone above became, on completion, the tallest stone-clad building in the world. It was designed in a conservative “Modern Classic” style.

Delmonico's, 1929. What became the premiere restaurant in the nation by 1890, began in a very humble manner. When brothers John and Peter Delmonico opened their first eatery in New York City in 1827, the wealthy of New York society dined at home, while public restaurants catered to the working classes. When the first Delmonico's opened at 23 William Street, the cafe menu included fine wines, cakes, and European style delicacies. This fancy menu was only expanded when the full service, fine dining restaurant was opened next door a few years later. And despite the classist perceptions of dining out, the elite of the city began to patronize the venue. The first Delmonico's at 56 Beaver Street (or 2 South Williams Street) was constructed for the eatery in 1837 following the destruction of its original home in the Great Fire of 1835. It was informally given the name "The Citadel." A great success, by 1890 the restaurant was world renown (with multiple NYC locations) and the proprietors, descendants of the founders, wanted a larger space. They demolished the four-story triangular building and commissioned James Brown Lord to construct an eight-story Renaissance Revival edifice. It was here that lavish dinner parties were thrown by wealthy New Yorkers for birthdays, weddings, and other celebrations. Family discord and issues over finances caused the final two Delmonico's to be closed (this location in 1917) and sold (Fifth Avenue and 44th Street, sold away from the family in 1919 and closed 1923). The restaurant has been revived a number of times in this location under different management, including its current incarnation, open since 1998.

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).

Willa Cather and others at the party for Mark Twain's 70th birthday. Cather is the second woman from the left, seated at the back of the table.

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.

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.

India House ca. 1975 This magnificent building was one of the first to be erected on Hanover Square after the disastrous fire of 1835. It was probably built by Richard F. Carman, who was listed in city directories as a carpenter and who reputedly amassed a fortune rebuilding the "burnt district" in 1836. He later had a country seat at Fort Washington and developed Carmanville. India House seems to have been built as an office block, being occupied subsequently by the Hanover Bank and the New York Cotton Exchange. It later became a private club that housed a maritime 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.

The New York City Unit of the WPA Federal Writers’ Project provided meaningful employment for more than 300 writers, journalists, editors and photographers during the Great Depression. Although the collection includes research materials and draft manuscripts for 64 books, only a handful were published, notably the New York City Guide, and New York Panorama. This week we are posting an article about the Fulton Fish Market from one of the unpublished manuscripts – Feeding the City. As is typical of many FWP manuscripts, the name of the author is not clear (it may have been “McLellan”), but it is dated: October 1940. The original format of this story can be found with other excellent blogs: here.

"Looking across South Street and down the narrow DePeyster Street. At the left, 70 South Street is the Marine, Firemen, Oilers and Watertenders Union headquarters and at 71-72 South Street (right) is a tobacco warehouse. 60 Wall Tower and the Bank of Manhattan Building rise in the distance, November 26, 1935."

82-78 Beaver Street, adjoining and east of the S. E. corner of Hanover Street. At the left is an excavation that extends to Pearl Street, tho the latter is not shown. July 6, 1903.

View from Pier 11, March 26, 1936. "View of the contrast of 19th century dockside buildings and 20th century skyscrapers taken from Pier 11 on the East River, between Old Slip and Wall Street. The four tallest buildings are (from left to right): The Farmers Trust Building, the Bank of Manhattan, 60 Wall Tower, and 120 Wall Street."

First National City Bank. When the great fire of 1835 ravaged a larger part of lower Manhattan, Town and Davis' beautiful Merchants' Exchange on Wall Street was completely gutted. The merchants resolved to rebuild it on a grander scale in fireproof construction. The great Ionic colonnade above the granite base is original. After several years it was occupied by the United States Government Customs House. It was remodeled as we see it today, with its upper floor added, by McKim, Mead & White for the National City Bank.

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.

A stately survivor from the mid-nineteenth century, 55 Wall Street was the second Merchant’s Exchange on this site. Architect Isaiah Rogers designed a three-story structure that made a monumental statement on Wall Street with a colonnade of colossal ionic columns. The building served as an exchange for buying and selling commodities, and for the offices of many prominent shippers, merchants, auctioneers, and brokers. The interior was originally divided into a warren of offices and large meeting rooms. It also served as the meeting place of the precursor to the New York Stock Exchange. In 1907, McKim Mead & White adapted the Exchange for use as a headquarters for the National City Bank, then the nation’s largest. To meet the needs of a modern bank, an additional four stories were added, masked by a second colonnade executed in the same granite as Roger’s original. The interior of Roger’s Merchant’s Exchange was opened up to form an impressive three-story banking hall. McKim’s addition was a sympathetic reconfiguring of this structure of great historical and architectural significance. In the late 1990’s the Merchants Exchange was again adapted to suit the needs of a new use when it was converted into a hotel, dining, and events complex. McKim’s imperial-scaled banking hall is now the backdrop for some of the city’s most exclusive parties and fundraisers.

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.