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.”

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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."

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.”

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

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

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

38 Greenwich, back view, August 12, 1936.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.