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.

Reformers and philanthropists in New York generated many projects aimed at helping the poor by underwriting the cost of food. One of the most famous was inspired by the widespread unemployment in the city during the Great Depression. In the fall of 1930 Joseph Sicker, chairman of the International Apple Shippers’ Association, had the idea of putting unemployed New Yorkers to work selling apples on the street. A fund supported in part by produce suppliers helped the plan get started, and a surplus of Washington State apples made it possible to sell boxes of the fruit cheaply. The apple vendor on the streets of New York became a lasting image of the Depression. The image, however, lasted longer than the apple selling. Although an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 of the unemployed sold apples, they were out of business in less than a year. Overcrowding at busy street corners led to police intervention, sales were banned in many high-traffic locations, and apple cores littered the streets. Finally, even the supply of cheap apples ran out. When the price per box went from $1.75 to $2.25, the vendors saw their profits shrink, and the plan collapsed.

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.

The Cunard Building, also known as the Standard & Poors Building, was designed by Benjamin Wistar Morris with the firm of Carrère & Hastings in a consulting role and constructed in 1920-1921. The 22-story neo-Renaissance style office tower was originally occupied by a number of steamship companies including Anchor Line and the Cunard Line. The exterior sculpture on the building, which features nautical iconography related to its principle tenant, was designed by Rochette and Parzini, a New York-based modeling, sculpting, and stone carving company. Cunard and the White Star Line company (of Titanic infamy) merged in 1934 and assisted in the Allied movements during the Second World War. The line sold the building in the 1960s when they moved from passenger service to cargo service, as airplanes replaced ocean travel. Later tenants of the building included USPS who leased space in the massive Grand Hall (the former Cunard ticketing lobby) and Standard and Poor's Corporation, a financial services firm. Today the building is still home to the S\&P and the Grand Hall is operated as an event space by Cipriani's.

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.

Whitehall Building (at right), May 12, 1936. Named for the 17th century home of Peter Stuyvesant, which was located nearby, the Whitehall building is a 20-story office building constructed between 1902 and 1904. Henry J. Hardenbergh designed this speculative building with bold brick colors. A major real estate success for its developers, they quickly planned the construction of an annex. The 31-story annex with tower (seen behind the earlier building here) is called the Greater Whitehall, and was designed by the firm of Clinton & Russell in the same neo-Renasiance style. Completed in 1910 the combined building complex was the largest office structure in the city at the time. Because of this size and the landfill on which they were constructed, the buildings necessitated innovative foundation design and installation. To make the foundations strong and watertight the engineers created a system of timber-lined pneumatic caissons inside steel-lined pneumatic caissons sunk into the rock and a reinforced concrete coffer dam with a 2-foot-thick floor and 7-foot-thick walls. One of the best known 20th century tenants was the Moran Towing Company, a tugboat firm. Supposedly prior to the use of work radios, a worker located on one of the upper floors would watch with a telescope for incoming ships, and when he spotted one, he would use a six-foot megaphone to shout instructions to the Moran tugboats docked at the Battery.

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

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.

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.

DePeyster Statue at the northern end of Bowling Green, July 23, 1936. Abraham De Peyster was mayor of New York City from 1691 to 1694, governor of New York State between 1700 and 1701 and a city comptroller, alderman and judge, as well. Born in New Amsterdam to a wealthy Dutch family, he was a successful politician, public figure, and land owner. In 1699 he donated a plot of land which a city hall, later the original Federal Hall, would be constructed. In the late 19th century, a descendant of New York's 20th mayor, commissioned a bronze statue. Created by sculptor George Edwin Bissell, the statue of De Peyster, in an uncommon pose (seated not on a horse, but a chair), was intended for a place in Battery Park. In 1895, the New York Times, among others, suggested that Battery Park was not the appropriate location, being already too full of "park statuary." Despite other objections, the statue was finally realized in Bowling Green the next year (as seen in this photograph). Supposedly the De Peyster descendant who commissioned the statue had issues with city officials (or the newspapers, depending on the story) and, in his annoyance, offered the statue to a school in Pennsylvania. He did end up donating a statue to Franklin & Marshall College, a place with no tangible connection to either the original nor the late 19th century De Peyster. The historical record is not entirely clear as to if the original New York statue was sent to the school and replaced or if the Pennsylvania cast is the copy. The two version have different footwear. The Pennsylvania statue has also had issues with maintaining a permanent location. The New York statue stood (or sat, really) in Bowling Green until 1972 when it was removed during a major renovation. Next he sat on a new pedestal in Hanover Square until 2004, when he was removed for the creation of the British Memorial Garden, honoring the British victims of September 11th. After being stuck in storage for a decade the statue was installed in Thomas Paine Park at Foley Square in 2014. The rededication ceremony was attended by descendants, ten generations removed.

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.

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.

Standard Oil Building, 1926. The Standard Oil Trust, founded in 1870 by John D. Rockefeller and others, quickly came to dominate the American oil market. In 1883, the trust began acquiring land on lower Broadway for a new headquarters. The massive nine-story neoclassical granite building took two years to construct at a cost of one million dollars. Twenty-six Broadway was soon the world's most famous business address, and John D. Rockefeller the first billionaire. Six stories were added to the building in 1895, as shown here. Another floor, added in 1911, was barely complete when the U.S. Supreme Court disbanded the Standard Oil Company for violating anti-trust laws. Following the First World War, the surrounding buildings were bought in order to expand the structure. Thomas Hastings of Carrère and Hastings reworked and essentially rebuilt the entire building, incorporating the first set backs in Manhattan and a pyramidal structure. Eventually reaching 31 floors, the Standard Oil Building was designated a New York City landmark in 1995.

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.

This elegant limestone monument was the headquarters of Standard Oil of New Jersey, the successor of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust, which was broken up into smaller components under anti-trust legislation in 1911. Through Standard Oil of New Jersey, the largest and most influential of these successor companies, Rockefeller and his board maintained control of the US oil industry. The Standard Oil Trust had operated out of buildings on this site since 1885. Their original ten-story building stood on Broadway at the northern end of the property. The new building was erected in phases, allowing the company to remain on site during construction. The last piece of construction, the center of the Beaver Street front and the light court was not completed until 1928 as tenants on that portion refused to vacate until their leases expired. The building's west front bows gently, following the curve of Broadway. Graceful terraces with balustrades, urns, and obelisks mark its setbacks. The tower is crowned with a symbolic oil-burning beacon set atop a stepped pyramid. In the classically inspired lobby, the names of the founders of Standard Oil are inscribed, like Roman emperors, in marble just above the cornice line. One of the most prolific and prominent firms of the early twentieth century, Carrère and Hastings was also the architect of the New York Public Library at 42nd Street. The Museum of American Financial History occupies part of the building's ground floor.

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.

In the booming prosperity of the mid-1920s, the Downtown Athletic Club abandoned its quarters in the Singer Building to establish its own, purpose-built skyscraper. This 35-story club building stacked up all of the amenities of a suburban country club including squash courts, a swimming pool, a miniature golf course, as well as a restaurant and guestrooms for overnight stays. The exterior is fittingly Spartan; only the heroically scaled entrance distinguishes the club's architecture from that of a utilitarian loft building. Dark metal decorative spandrels under the windows form vertical stripes that emphasize the height and slenderness of the tower. Large windowless areas of the façade indicate the presence of facilities such as squash courts and changing rooms. The many closely packed windows of the upper stories light the club's guestrooms. Like its neighbor, 21 West Street, the club is converting its guest facilities into condominiums.

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.

29 Broadway Architect: Sloan & Robertson Completed: 1931 In 1930, the slender Art Deco tower of 29 Broadway replaced one of New York's early skeleton-framed office buildings, the 12-story Columbia Building of 1890. Sloan & Robertson, architects of the Chanin and Graybar buildings near Grand Central Terminal, created a dramatic Art Deco skyscraper. The bold horizontal black and white banding on the tower, the elaborately sculpted entrance, and marble-clad vestibule give the building a distinctive presence on Broadway. Also striking is the lobby with its gray marble walls and silver metal ornament. The narrow and oddly-shaped site has only 29-foot frontage on Broadway, although it extends back 184 feet, and has a 90-foot frontage on Trinity Place.

The Tower Building, 50 Broadway, 1927. Sometimes cited as the city's first skyscraper, due to its innovative steel-frame design, architect Bradford Gilbert's Tower Building was completed in 1889. Gilbert had to design the set structure to meet the need for a building to rise higher than the usual five or six stories and to take advantage of a small 25-foot wide plot. The first seven stories were supported by cast-iron columns encased within brick walls and linked across the width of the building by wrought-iron girders. Above this structure were solid masonry-bearing walls resting atop the seven story iron framework. The building lasted just 25 years, and was demolished in 1913 after a foreclosure and difficulty attracting tenants.

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.

Cunard Building ARCHITECT: Benjamin Wistar Morris; Carrere & Hastings (consulting) DATE: 1917-21 STYLE: Neo-Renaissance The Cunard Building has a pivotal location within the fabric of the city, its street walls maintaining the masonry “canyons” of lower Manhattan and its limestone facade commanding a significant presence at the juncture of Bowling Green and Broadway. Morris’s design received much critical acclaim for its arrangement of subtle setbacks and ample, well-located open courts, which addressed the natural light and ventilation demands made by the zoning resolution. This interior consists of a five-bay entrance lobby, and a narrow passageway. It is modeled on ancient Roman and Renaissance Italian prototypes. The decoration, made of polychrome stucco, painted murals, and metalwork, expresses the adventure of travel over the open sea through the depiction of mythical and historical figures associated with the sea, as well as imaginary and real sea creatures. This interior and the exterior of the building have a neo-Renaissance character.

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.

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

Standard Oil Building, 1926. The original Standard Oil Building (1885) was only ten stories tall, but in 1895 Kimball \&Thompson added six new skeleton frame floors and a north extension to the building, making it 280 feet tall. (The Standard Oil Building is the tallest structure, three buildings in from the corner at right.) The building was later drastically altered and expanded (the southern section of the building now occupies the two lots to the south, seen here).

Yacht "Oneida", 1895. On July 1, 1893, under the headline "President Seeks Rest," the New York Times reported on President Cleveland leaving Pier A in lower Manhattan on his friend's yacht, the "Oneida," for a fishing trip to his summer home on Cape Cod. In fact, the relaxing trip was a ruse to cover for oral surgery the President would secretly undergo while at sea. The small cancerous tumor (with a couple teeth and a piece of the jaw) was removed through the mouth itself while on the open water by a team of six surgeons. Remarkably, the whole procedure was completed in only 90 minutes. Without a visible scar, and with the president's substantial mustache still in place, the incision was easy to hide. Cleveland worried that publicizing this health issues would lead to political and financial instability at a time when the country had just entered into a depression. A few weeks after the trip a Philadelphia Press reporter named E.J. Edwards published a story about the surgery, which was flatly denied by the President; his staff went so far as launching a smear campaign to discredit the reporter. In 1917, long after the president's death, one of the doctors present published an article with the truth. Today the tumor can be seen at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia.

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.

In 1900, the consolidated Greater New York City was only two years old and it was growing, not just outward but skyward. These are the ten tallest buildings in New York City in 1900. They were constructed in the decade before the turn of the century. Today half of these structures remain standing, though now dwarfed by their neighbors. This story is adapted from the Skyscraper Museum's "Ten & Taller."

25 Broad Street - Broad-Exchange Building Architect: Clinton & Russell Completed: 1902 This 20-story speculative office tower was the largest building in the world at the time of its completion. With 326,500 square feet of revenue- producing space, it was nearly one and a half times larger than its closest rivals. Its proximity to the New York Stock Exchange made it a sought after address for brokers and bankers, and the New York Curb Exchange, which met in the street in front of the building. The 1987 Stock Market Crash and subsequent depression of the Downtown real estate market preempted plans for the Broad Exchange Building’s demolition and redevelopment. From 1988 until 1995, the building was entirely vacant. It was converted into condominiums under the auspices of the 1995 Downtown Revitalization Plan - a state program that provided a fifteen-year abatement of property taxes for owners who converted older office buildings to residential use. The conversion was remarkably sympathetic to the building’s original character, as one can see in the beautifully restored entrance hall. The project, successful both architecturally and economically, is a model for the adaptive re-use of outmoded office buildings in downtown New York.

Built as a speculative office building, this 17-story steel skeleton structure was the largest in Manhattan before the turn of the century. It housed the offices of many shipping companies, being near the start of lower Broadway's "Steamship Row" and convenient to the Custom House. It was here that the friends and family of those aboard the Titanic came in April 1912 to get what news they could from the White Star Line Offices. The Audsley brothers were a surprising choice for such a large and prominent commission. They had no prior experience in New York, having recently immigrated to America from Glasgow. They had, however, completed many projects in England and were known on both sides of the Atlantic for their pattern books on Greek ornament. They designed the building in a style they dubbed "Hellenic Renaissance" a mannerist mode of the Greek Revival. They created a rich layering of Greek ornament and forms that are enlarged to suit the massive scale of the building. The base of the tower is clad in a light granite and the upper portion in terra cotta.

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.

20 Broad Street, New York Stock Market Annex, 1957. In 1956 the Commerical Cable Building and Blair Building were replaced by a new 27-story annex building for the Stock Exchange next door. Designed by the firm of Kahn & Jacobs, the Modern structure was rendered with prominent setbacks. Purchased by a developer in 2015, the building will soon undergo a residential conversion (to luxury rentals), with added stories and more than 500 units planned.

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.

The Columbia tavern on Trinity Place, in the shadow of the Sixth Avenue El, February 23, 1913. This photo was taken ahead of construction of the IRT Broadway Line (1/2/3), though the stretch of Trinity Place pictured is today directly above the Rector Place station of the BMT Broadway Line (N/Q/R/W).

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.

38 Greenwich, back view, August 12, 1936.

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

21 West Street ARCHITECT: Starrett & Van Vleck DATE: 1929-31 STYLE: Art Deco The 21 West Street Building, constructed in 1929-30, is a particularly fine example of the numerous Art Deco skyscrapers built during this period in New York City. The architects were trying to create a new stylistic expression which they felt would best represent the Jazz Age. The use of brick cladding on this building in different colors and textures was influenced by North German Expressionist architects, while the numerous and varied setbacks near the top of the building were the architects’ response to New York’s 1916 Zoning Resolution.

Commercial Cable Building, 1927.

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).

Bowling Green Building (at right), 1898. Architectural partners and brothers William and George Ardsley constructed the (now) 17-story Bowling Green Building in 1898 in a "Hellenic Renaissance" style, which they described as "a free but pure treatment of ancient Greek architecture.” Built in a U-shape, the central court provided ventilation and light to the offices. The facade was gleaming white, rendered in brick and terra cotta. Early tenants of the building included the Erie Railroad Company and the White Star Line. It was here that relatives and friends of Titanic passengers flocked for information in the days after the ship's sinking. The elevators, which were a major selling point for the building when it opened, caused a number of issues for the building. In 1915 seven elevators simultaneously fell, and only a few months later, a similar incident with four elevators occurred. The passengers were mostly only shaken up with one broken leg. The building had an additional story and four-story tower added between 1919 and 1920, which was seamlessly designed to reflect the building's style. Today the building is largely occupied by technology companies including a number of internet start ups.

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.

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.

Adams Express Building, July 16, 1936. The 32-story Adams Express Building was designed by Francis Kimball (architect of Brooklyn's Montauk Club) and constructed between 1912 and 1914. When complete the building featured over a million square feet of terracotta. The style of the structure is called palazzo by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, but it described often as simple and utilitarian, almost devoid of a style. Mirroring arguments that are still occurring today, many developers and architects complained that the Adams Express Building cast an 875-foot shadow, devaluing the real estate that fell in its shadow. Tall building that went straight up from the street level to the roof, including this one and the 40-story Equitable Building, were partial the reason for the 1916 zoning law changes that required setbacks above a certain height, determined by the width at the street. In 1916 the building had more than 300 of its windows damaged by an explosion on the Jersey City waterfront. The Black Tom explosion was a German sabotage attempt to stop the United States from arming the Allies during the First World War. The explosion damaged the Statue of Liberty and awoke people as far away as Maryland, thinking they were experiencing an earthquake. In the 1990s the building saw a $20 million renovation by new owners, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. They also discovered goldfish living in a pool of warm water created by a high water table under the building's boilers. Today it is owned by a huge real estate firm and is occupied by law firms and financial institutions, among others.

Manhattan Life Insurance Building, 1945. Designed by Kimball & Thompson for the Manhattan Life Insurance Company, the Manhattan Life Building became New York City's tallest skyscraper in 1893. It was also the first office building to use pneumatic caissons (watertight retaining structures) its foundation. The building was 348 feet tall. The building was demolished in 1963-1964 for the construction of a 36-story annex to the Irving Trust Company Building at One Wall Street.

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.

38 Greenwich, front view, October 11, 1914. 38 Greenwich was a six-story tenement building, seen here from above the elevated train line that ran down Greenwich Street (the Sixth and Ninth Avenue El lines). The windows here are filled with residents leaning out on pillows and chatting with their neighbors. The building was demolished in the early 1940s, in preparation of the Brooklyn-Battery (now High L. Carey) Tunnel.

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

Hamburg American Building (originally known as Aldrich Court), ca. 1905. The Aldrich Court was designed by the firm of Youngs & Cable in 1886. The building, funded by the estate of deceased American businessman and philanthropist Herman Aldrich, was ten stories tall and designed in the Richardsonian Romanesque style. The large building ran through the block fully to Trinity Place, and had a light court in the middle of the building. The tall gable that topped the two northern most bays gave the impression of a tower (seen at right). The building became the headquarters of the Hamburg America Line, a German-based transatlantic shipping company in 1906. During the First World War, the building was seized from the German business, and became the Shipping Board Building. By 1935 the building was the central location for all federal bureaus concerned with the local supervision or regulation of merchant shipping. The building was demolished in 1982 and replaced by a 32-story office building.

Battery Park Fire House, July 1, 1931.

Broad Exchange Building ARCHITECT: Clinton & Russell DATE: 1900-02 STYLE: Italian Renaissance Revival The twenty-story Broad Exchange Building was designed in the Italian Renaissance Revival style by the well-known and prolific firm of Clinton & Russell. At the time of its construction in 1900-02, it was considered the largest office building with the highest estimated real estate value in Manhattan. It is representative of the commercial building boom in lower Manhattan in the early twentieth century. It was characteristic of turn-of the century New York City skyscrapers in its tripartite division into the base, shaft, and capital.

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!

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.

Take a drive up the West Side! This story guides us along the path of the West Side Highway. Following the western shoreline of Manhattan is the West Side Highway. In history, it has passed the World Trade Center, various warehouses and slaughterhouses for livestock received on piers in the Hudson, and Moses' famous failure, the West Side Elevated Highway. Since the 19th century, the West Side Highway has been a vital part of the city's system of roadways.

“View of the New York Stock Exchange building on Broad Street at Wall Street. The J.P. Morgan & Co. building is to the left and a crowd of people stand in front of it. Ca. 1900.” Robert L. Bracklow’s photograph captures two notable buildings at the epicenter of the turn-of-the-century Financial District: the New York Stock Exchange and the Drexel Building. 10 Broad Street (at right) was home to the New York Stock Exchange between 1865 and 1901, when it was razed for the construction of the current building, after years of sustained growth in trading volume. Across the street at 23 Wall Street was the Drexel Building, the predecessor to the “corner building” headquarters of J.P. Morgan Chase. In 1869, Anthony Drexel and J.P. Morgan became partners in the new Drexel, Morgan & Company bank, and soon afterwards commissioned a grand, marble-clad French Second Empire building at Broad and Wall Streets for its headquarters. After Drexel’s death in 1893, Morgan renamed the bank and its New York headquarters J.P. Morgan & Co., and set in motion plans for a new building. Morgan died in 1913, months before the Drexel building was demolished. Anticipating its demise, the New York Times observed: “In a few days the most valuable piece of real estate in the United States will be nothing but a vacant lot, surrounded by a board fence.”

Waterfront from Roof of Irving Trust Company Building, May 4, 1938. "Broad Street and the East River from the roof of One Wall Street. The two copper domes are 20-22 Broad Street. The building on the left is the Equitable Building and on the right is the Continental Bank & Trust Co." The Commercial Cable Building (the domed building at the bottom), completed in 1897 and designed by Harding and Gooch, employed concrete-filled cast iron pipes for an innovative approach to foundation engineering used to stabilize the slender tower. The building was 304 feet tall. Demolished for a 27-story office building in the mid 1950s, today 20 Broad Street is being converted into high residences with a plan to add an additional six stories.

"Taken from the roof of a 55 story building on Broadway looking southwest toward New York Harbor. The Adams Building is in the foreground and rising to the west is the Whitehall Building on West Street. Also visible is Battery Park with Castle Clinton, and in the harbor the Statue of Liberty and the ocean liner "Ile de France, May 4, 1938."

A horse-drawn searchlight engine passes in front of the Whitehall Building, 1910.

Johnston Building, 1915. The 15-story Johnston Building was designed by James B. Baker and constructed in 1895-1896. It replaced a small brick building that dated to the early decades of the 19th century. The limstone clad, streel-frame office building was advertised as being "absolutely fireproof." Tenants of the building included Flint, Eddy & American Trading Co., an import and export firm, as well as the New York office of the Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company. The building was replaced by the 48-story Continental Bank Building, completed in 1932 by the firm of Cross and Cross.

Once one of the largest office buildings in the city, the Whitehall Building was constructed in two phases. Planning for the larger second structure began immediately after the original 20-story building opened to great success in 1904. The 31-story addition quintupled the building's size. Cass Gilbert's newly completed U.S. Custom House had generated a new demand for office space in the district to the east of Broadway which had formerly been dominated by the port and its warehouses and small-scale industrial facilities. In the original building, the frontage on Battery Park guaranteed offices light and expansive views. Henry J. Hardenbergh (also the architect of the Dakota Apartment Building and the Plaza Hotel) created a boldly scaled design equal to its prominent riverfront site. The larger addition, by Clinton and Russell, has stylistic affinities with Hardenbergh's earlier work. The building has recently been converted into a mixed-use commercial and residential complex.

21 West Street Architect: Starrett and Van Vleck Completed: 1931 Starrett & Van Vleck designed 21 West Street in concert with its neighbor, the Downtown Athletic Club. The two designs contrast strongly in their use of color and textured brick, but set back at the same points and utilize similar materials. Built for the speculative office market, 21 West Street was converted into apartments under the incentive of the 1995 Downtown Revitalization Plan. Vertical piers in a mottled golden brick contrast with spandrels in textured red brick, creating a woven effect. Cantilevers at the building corners create wrap-around windows. The bright red aluminum window frames – which have recently been replaced – add to the liveliness of the composition. The open arcade on the street is supported by massive columns with gilded stepped capitals reminiscent of Inca and Aztec architecture. The marble lobby retains most of its original fittings, as well as a beautiful wall map rendered in marble.

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

Central Hanover Bank and Trust Company, ca. 1931.

J. P. Morgan & Co. Building ARCHITECT: Trowbridge & Livingston DATE: 1913 J. P. Morgan & Co. Building is a fine marble structure. Due to the great impression of solid dignity and massive strength created by this building on its corner site, the Morgan Building forms a conspicuous part of the city scene at this important location. The illusion of openness is further enhanced here by the manner in which the corner of the building is cut off diagonally.

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.

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.

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.

The address 50 Broadway is famous in skyscraper history as the site of the Tower Building, the first building in New York, and arguably in the world, to be constructed with iron framing. The skeleton frame was able to fully support the extraordinarily narrow building's walls and floors through the use of wind bracing diagonal beams. Unlike in Chicago, where engineers and builders embraced metal skeleton construction, in New York, the new technology was met with conservative reaction. Some protested that the tower would be unsafe, even after the Department of Buildings had granted its permit for construction. At one point during the building's construction, after the walls had been raised to the height of 158 feet, but before the structure had been roofed in, a great windstorm struck. A crowd was said to have gathered, awaiting the structure's imminent collapse. Gilbert, who had climbed the scaffolding to the building's 11th floor to measure vibrations with a plumb line at the height of the storm, reported to the New York Times in a heroic, if perhaps self-serving narrative printed the following day, that the building "stood as steady as a rock in the sea." The Tower Building's façade was in a heavy, Romanesque style with an exaggerated, arched entranceway. It was demolished in 1914. A 37 story office building replaced it in 1927. In order to attract brokerage and investment firms, a special entrance was built at 41 New Street so that brokers and clearinghouse runners could "make quick contacts in emergencies."

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.

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.

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.

59 Washington Street (center left, with the large windows), August 12, 1936. The railcar diner, seen at left, is located on the east side of West Street in the vacant lots that were once 41-45 West Street. Formerly occupied by small brick tenement buildings, the structures were razed between 1927 and 1931. Photographs from 1931 have a gas station in its location. The three-story white building with cross (at right) at the top (no. 57) is St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church. The church served the local community of Maronites, Christian from present day Lebanon. Next door, 59 Washington was once the headquarters of the Lebanon National Bank. The entire surrounding area was an ethnic enclave of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants, referred to as 'Little Syria.' In 1946 the City acquired the titles for all of the properties on this block and razed the buildings for infrastructure related to the Brooklyn-Battery (now Hugh L. Carey) Tunnel.

Trust Company of America Building Architect was erected in 1907 by architect Francis Hatch Kimball. Festooned with stone cupids and cartouches around the entrance and topped with a richly sculpted cornice, this Beaux-Arts style high-rise was built to house The Trust Company of America. At 17 stories it was one of the first truly tall buildings and is the oldest remaining high rise on Wall Street.

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).

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.

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.

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.

Subway construction for the IRT Lexington Avenue line on Broadway, at Exchange Place, June 7, 1905.

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.

Known simply as 23 Wall, the buildings on the corner of Wall and Broad Street have represented the epicenter of American capitalism for over a century. The headquarters of J.P. Morgan and Co., originally Drexel, Morgan & Co., have been located here since its founding in 1873. The original building, obsolete by 1912, was replaced by this three-story structure, which could be termed the anti-skyscraper. It was an expression of the extraordinary wealth of the so-called “House of Morgan” that it could erect such a discreetly scaled banking hall on one of the most valuable and prominent plots of land in the city. The bank’s Wall Street façade still bears the scars of a 1920 anarchist’s bomb attack that killed 33 people. J.P. Morgan’s immense wealth and his near monopoly of banking, shipping, and many other industries made him a lightning rod for the discontent of many.

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.

Produce Exchange Bank Building, 1920. Constructed directly across the street from the large New York Produce Exchange Building, the Produce Exchange Bank at 10 Broadway, had a relatively short lifespan. The neo-classical building was constructed between 1904 and 1905. In 1923 the building was demolished to make way for the complicated expansion of the nearby Standard Oil Building at 26 Broadway.

Bowling Green Building ARCHITECT: W. & G. Audsley DATE: 1895-98 The Bowling Green Offices Building, an enormous and beautifully crafted presence at the base of Broadway, facing Bowling Green and extending through the block to Greenwich Street, was designed and built in 1895-98 to be at the forefront of New York commercial towers in terms of its size, architectural style, and amenities.

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.

Pier A, May 5, 1936. Pier A Harbor House is the last surviving historic pier in New York City. Constructed between 1884 and 1886, the building was created for the New York City Department of Docks and Harbor Police. Many of New York's distinguished political and cultural visitors who arrived by ship were officially greeted here. The pier was expanded in 1900 and in 1919 a clock was installed in the tower as a memorial to those soldiers killed in World War I. In the second half of the 20th century (1960-1992), the building was used as a fire boat station by the FDNY. The Fire Department ceased using the pier in 1992 and for the next two decades the property fell into serious disrepair. In 2009 a redevelopment project began and the newly restored pier and building opened to the public in 2014. The new Pier A Harbor House includes a bar and restaurant and large event spaces.

61 Broadway - Adams Express Building Architect: Francis H. Kimball Completed: 1916 Rising 33-stories without setbacks, the Adams Express Building once dominated the view from ships entering New York Bay by virtue of its height and white glazed southern façade. For its construction, architect Francis H. Kimball took advantage of new developments in steel frame construction, foundation engineering and wind bracing. The building originally served as the headquarters of the Adams Express Company, founded in 1840 by Alvin Adams, who began his business delivering packages using a wheelbarrow. The company grew rapidly to become a major competitor in the express delivery business before being consolidated in 1918 with the other major express companies to form the behemoth American Railway Express Company, later the Railway Express Agency.

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

Standard Oil Building ARCHITECT: Carrere & Hastings; Shreve Lamb & Blake DATE: 1920-28 STYLE: Renaissance The irregular pentagonal site, one of the largest parcels assembled in lower Manhattan at that time, dictated the building’s distinctive shape. The powerful sculptural massing of the Standard Oil Building represents the new setback skyscraper forms that emerged during the early 1920s and suggests how tall buildings could be designed with vigorous massing and arresting silhouettes. The veneer-like limestone curtain walls are enriched with large-scale Renaissance ornamentation and reinforce the building’s picturesque quality, particularly at the upper stories.

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.