A. A. Low Building 167-71 John Street Architect unknown 1850 Owned by the South Street Seaport Museum, this structure was built by traders who parked their China clipper ships across South Street. It was commissioned by the famous export firm of Abiel Abbot Low and Brother, illustrious merchants who amassed a fortune in trade between New York and China (A. A. Low was the father of Seth Low, whose career included serving as Mayor of Brooklyn, Mayor of New York City and President of Columbia University, among other things). This building, which was the firm’s home until well after the 19th century, is five stories high and eight bays wide. Many layers of stucco and paint were removed to uncover and restore the brownstone underneath. The cast-iron double storefront is notable because it was produced by Daniel D. Badger of the renowned Architectural Iron Works firm. As a whole, the building represents the success and importance of the company. The A. A. Low Building is located in the New York City and State and National Register of Historic Places South Street Seaport historic districts.

Cellar doors at 165 John Street, ca. 1975. The five-story building at no. 165 dates to 1811. It was constructed for George Codwise Jr., and was one of a row of six countinghouses. The buildings original tenants were flour merchants. Likely built in a Federal style, the building underwent a reconstruction in 1835. That alteration gave it a Greek Revival facade to match its newly built neighbors, both the new building (at 181 Front Street) and the redo of 165 John were undertaken by a commission merchant firm. Once only four stories it had a fifth story added at some point in the late 19th century. It still remains shorter than its larger neighbor at no. 181, which had a sixth story added in 1917. It it unclear if the cellar door that remains extant dates to the building's earliest years or its reconstruction.

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.

Bogardus Building 15-19 Fulton Street Designed by Beyer Blinder Belle 1983 This reinvented, four-story, white-gray building honors James Bogardus, who was instrumental in the introduction of cast-iron construction in the United States. The Laing Stores (1848-49), also known as the Bogardus Building, was initially located at the northwest corner of Washington and Murray Streets, an intersection that no longer exists due to urban renewal projects in the 1960s. In 1967, the area was surveyed by the LPC to determine potential landmarks before the demolition of blocks in what is now Tribeca. The LPC recommended that the façade of the Bogardus Building, the city’s oldest cast-iron structure, be dismantled and salvaged for use on a new building at Manhattan Borough Community College (which would occupy part of the urban renewal site). In 1971, the parts were catalogued and stored, but in 1974, some of them were famously stolen and sold to a Bronx junkyard. The LPC then moved the remaining parts to a secret location in a city-owned building, but when architects went to retrieve them in 1977, they had again been stolen. This shocking sequence of events is an often-told story in New York City architecture and preservation lore. Despite the lack of a connection to the South Street Seaport, an homage to the Bogardus Building was designed by Beyer Blinder Belle as part of the historic reinterpretation and revitalization of the Seaport in the 1980s. The new Bogardus Building reinterprets the original façade with its curved corner, ground-level canopy, columns and cornice, but the ensemble was executed with a modern twist: its outer walls are made of aluminum rather than cast iron. The Bogardus Building is located in the New York City and State and National Register of Historic Places South Street Seaport historic districts.

Headquarters of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, the mighty AT & T, and erected on the site of the early highrise headquarters of the Western Union Building (1874), 195 Broadway is an important address in the history of business communication. The monumental scale of the current landmark dates from a second building campaign in 1924 that completed the imposing mass. The building was constructed in two phases. In the first, it had narrow frontages on both Broadway and Fulton Street, as AT\&T did not have title to the corner. The tower was expanded out to the corner when the company was able to acquire that property. The western end of the Fulton Street façade is capped by a small stepped pyramid, formerly the plinth for Evelyn Beatrice Longman's figure in bronze, the Spirit of Communications. The sculpture was spirited away by AT\&T when it moved from 195 Broadway in the early 1980's first to midtown and subsequently to a new corporate campus in New Jersey. The building's lobby has an air of temple-like solemnity to it. Five rows of monumental Doric columns dwarf visitors. Distinctive chandeliers in a Greco-Roman style illuminate the space. At the center of the lobby is a poignant bronze monument to the soldiers of the First World War sculpted by Chester Beach.

Corbin Building ARCHITECT: Francis H. Kimball DATE: 1889 STYLE: Skyscraper The Corbin Building was constructed in 1888-89 as a speculative office building by Austin Corbin. Corbin was a successful banker and businessman who had developed Coney Island as a resort area. The Corbin Building was the tallest structure on the block when it was first built. It was constructed using the cage technique, with cast-iron columns and wrought-iron beams and non-load bearing masonry walls, before true steel skeleton structures had been developed. The flamboyant exterior, composed of a variety of materials, window shapes and decorative ornament belongs to the category of early, artistic skyscrapers that were built in New York City in the 1870s and 80s.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James has led a political life deeply rooted in New York City. A few points of interest around town highlight the career of "Tish." Resources used include the New York Times; designation reports published by the Landmarks Preservation Commission; the City Council legislation database; the Office of the Attorney General; New York Amsterdam News; The Chiseler; the NYC Green Book; and HPD. By Andy McCarthy, Reference Librarian, NYPL Milstein Division of U.S. History, Local History, and Genealogy.

Keuffel & Esser Company Building ARCHITECT: De Lemos & Cordes DATE: 1982-93 STYLE: Renaissance Revival The 8-story Keuffel & Esser Co. Building was constructed in 1892-93 to the design of De Lemos & Cordes as the general offices and salerooms for the firm that imported and manufactured drawing materials, drafting tools, and mathematical and surveying equipment. The richly-detailed Renaissance Revival style primary façade of this building on Fulton Street has a tripartite division, with a 2-story, arched cast-iron storefront that bears the firm’s name and representations of its products, and buff brick- and terra-cotta-clad upper stories, with the midsection having a recessed monumental round-arched window capped by a foliated sculptural relief of a knight’s helmet, shield, and winged orb, and the upper section featuring a 2-story angled metal window bay and culminating in a decorative cornice and balustrade.

“Aftermath of the Equitable Fire,” January, 1912. A fire broke out before dawn on January 9, 1912, spreading to an eighth floor kitchen via a dumbwaiter and eventually engulfing the entire structure. The ten-story skyscraper had been the headquarters of the Equitable Life Assurance Society since 1870, and was purportedly fire-proof. However, weather conditions rendered firefighting efforts ineffective: freezing temperatures and gusts measured at 68 miles per hour reduced spray from fire hoses to droplets, eventually encasing the building’s facade in ice formations while the interior structure continued to burn. The ice made the fire-damaged building something of a local attraction. As the New York Times reported: “\[the ice] settled over the building in a gleaming sheath of white that made the fire a wonderful thing to see. Ice converted the ruined building into a fantastic palace, with the rainbows arching at every turn as the sunlight filtered through the spray and smoke.” The building was unsalvageable and what remained of its facade was eventually razed. The new, 40-story Equitable Life building was built on its site in 1915, becoming a National Historic Landmark in 1978.

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

Bankers Trust Company ARCHITECT: Trowbridge & Livingstone DATE: 1910-12 STYLE: Classical Revival The 14 Wall Street Building, with its distinctive pyramidal roof, is one of the great towers that define the lower Manhattan skyline. This 539-foot-high tower, utilizing the latest in building technology, including one of the first cofferdam foundation systems in the city, was the tallest bank building in the world when it was completed. The building’s design was inspired by the campanile of San Marco in Venice and features an austere Classical Revival decorative scheme incorporating specific Greek architectural motifs, notably the stepped pyramid top.

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

Sol Libsohn was a New York-born early documentary photographer whose large body of work chronicles, amongst others, the American oil industry, the life of the Ringling Brothers' and Barnum and Bailey circuses, and New York's working class. In addition to his work under the WPA, Libsohn co-founded the New York Photo League with Sid Grossman. This story showcases Libsohn's work in New York City.

New York Tribune Building, ca. 1960. Constructed in 1875 to the designs of Richard Morris Hunt, the New York Tribune Building was the tallest office building in the city when completed and the second tallest structure in the entire city. (The spire at nearby Trinity Church was just slightly taller than the Tribune Building's 260 feet.) The building was 10 stories tall and rendered in striking red and black brick and light-colored stone in the neo-Grec style. It was not particularly well received by critics, being derided for what one writer noted as expressing "the weariness, the fever and fret of modern life." The first tall building on Park Row, it would be joined by a number of other newspaper neighbors by the turn of the century (including the 1889 New York Times seen at right here). The New York Tribune moved out of the building by 1920 and the last of the newspaper vacated the street by the mid century. Despite surviving into the era of the Landmarks Law (enacted in 1965), the building was demolished with little to no notice in 1966 for the expansion of the Pace University campus.

"When Joseph Pulitzer purchased the New York World in May, 1883, a typical front page consisted of a half-dozen columns of densely packed type, unrelieved by illustrations or eye-catching headlines... All that changed the moment Joseph Pulitzer got hold of it. An immigrant himself, Pulitzer saw himself as a champion of the weak and oppressed. The World, as he conceived it, would be a paper 'dedicated to the cause of the people rather than to that of the purse potentates.' …His method of achieving these lofty aims was to appeal to his reader’s lowest instincts. After all, he reasoned, the best a publisher could do was to 'go for a million circulation, and when you have got it, turn the minds and the votes of your readers one way or the other at critical moments.' And the most effective way to reach that million circulation was by printing the kind of wildly sensationalistic stories that ordinary people have always gobbled up... By March, 1885, the World had a daily circulation of more than 150,000 copies – an astonishing tenfold increase in less than two years. That figure would double again before the end of the decade. The age of 'yellow journalism' had arrived." For more on the World building and Joseph Pulitzer, check out this excerpt from Harold Schechter's The Devil's Gentleman in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.

New York Stock Exchange, 1908. Though the history of a stock exchange in New York dates to the late 18th century, the building at 11 Wall Street, that houses the current New York Stock Exchange, was constructed between 1901 and 1903. Designed by George B. Post, the Roman-inspired neo-classical building replaced the 1865 Second Empire structure on Broad Street which was increasingly too small for the Stock Exchange functions. The main facade of the new building, with its large portico, imposing columns, and crowning pediment, gives the building the look of a temple. This temple of finance was designed to symbolize the power, strength, and security of the country's financial infrastructure.

Chamber of Commerce ca. 1902 The New York Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1768 to promote the development of business in the City. The organization held meetings at various locations until 1900, when it decided to build its prestigious marble headquarters on Liberty Street. Its Great Hall, with a stained glass ceiling, mahogany paneling, and gilded ornament, was acclaimed as one of the most impressive interiors in the City. Designated a landmark in 1966, the building was sold to the International Commercial Bank of China in 1979, and its restoration was completed in 1991.

Statue of Benjamin Franklin at Printing House Square, ca. 1975. Ernst Plassman's monument to Franklin, himself a prolific publisher, marks the epicenter of New York's bygone newspaper industry.

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.

Assay Office, pre-1916. In 1822 the Verplanck family sold the land on which their mid-18th century mansion sat for $40,000 (quite a sum for the time) to the Bank of the United States. On the site the institution constructed the Branch Bank of the United States, a two-story classical structure rendered in white marble. Designed by Martin E. Thompson, the bank building, completed in 1823, looked less like a bank and more like an English country estate. The bank lost its charter in 1836, got a new one, but closed the following year in the midst of a financial crash. Later used by the equally descriptively named Bank of the State of New York, the building was sold to the government in 1853 for use as an Assay Office. Here gold and other precious metals (including those coming out of the California Gold Rush) would be tested for purity before being sold. The building was also the location where the metals were melted down into bars and stamped with their weight and quality. The building operated as the United States Assay Office for more than 50 years, but the deterioration of the nearly 100 years old edifice was transparent at the start of the 20th century and the building was largely abandoned by 1911. Proposals to save the building included moving it elsewhere or attaching the new Assay Office to the old facade, while what actually occurred was a curious mix of both these ideas. In 1915, the government presented the facade to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After being deconstructed and catalogued, it was re-installed (seven years later) stone by stone in the new American Wing.

As we roam the modern streets of New York City, we can see the skyline and neighborhoods change each year. Given how complicated our city’s systems have become, it is difficult to imagine a time without the founding principles of zoning, planning, and preservation. The man who created many of those frameworks for modern-day New York is George McAneny. During his extensive civic career, he served in several official positions, including New York City comptroller, executive manager of The New York Times, first president of the Regional Plan Association, and Manhattan Borough President. The snippets of history that can be seen on Urban Archive are just a small part of McAneny’s legacy, making him one of the most remarkable New York City visionaries of the first half of the 20th century.

100 Gold Street, ca. 1921. When completed in 1920, the Hide and Leather building had the distinction of being the tallest concrete building in the world. Constructed by the Hide and Leather Realty Company, an association of merchants in that trade, the 17-story building was designed by the firm of Starrett & Van Vleck. The firm was best known for designing a series of department stores, including the flagship stores of Lord & Taylor, Bloomingdales, Saks Fifth Avenue, Abraham & Straus, and Alexander's. A mix of offices, showrooms, and lofts the building was demolished in the mid 1960s as part of the Civic Center urban renewal project. It was replaced in 1969 with the nine-story Tishman Downtown Center Building. Though the new building could hardly be called a skyscraper, as its predecessor was when completed in 1920, it is none the less considerable in size, with each floor covering more than an acre and a half.

Financial District Rooftops, June 9, 1938. Looking from 60 Wall Tower (at 70 Pine Street) northwest towards Broadway. On Cedar Street below are Chase National Bank and the Equitable Building; on Liberty Street is the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, filling an entire trapezoid-shaped block; at 149 Broadway is the Singer Tower, with its famous domed top; and at 140 West Street is the York Telephone Building, upper right.

Railroad sheds at Pier 21 on the East River, March 30, 1937. Berenice Abbott's photo captures the pier shed of the Pennsylvania and Baltimore & Ohio Railroads at Pier 21 with the Brooklyn Bridge immediately above and Manhattan Bridge in the background. The pier was removed in the late 1960s.

57 Maiden Lane, ca. 1921. The origins of this now-long-gone building are a bit murky. What we do know is this: In 1790 while New York City was the capital of the United States, Thomas Jefferson moved to the city. Despite wishing for a residence on Broadway (where Washington had just taken a home), he instead ended up lodging briefly at a tavern before renting a small home here at 57 Maiden Lane. Jefferson's tenure in New York was brief; following the adjourning of Congress, he left the city on September 1, 1790. The capital then moved to Philadephia and Jefferson did not renew his lease at no. 57. The Dutch-influenced brick building seen here circa 1921 was likely a recent building on the site. The flourishes of the building, the stepped gables and lateral striping of bricks, along with its crisp lines and clean masonry, suggest construction in the Dutch Colonial Revival period in the early 20th century. Today a plaque on the 1965 building at 59 Maiden Lane recalls the location's illustrious (if brief) tenant.

Titanic Memorial Lighthouse Titanic Memorial Park, Plaza bounded by Pearl, Beekman, and Water Streets Designed by Charles Evans Hughes III 1913 This 60-foot lighthouse located within Titanic Memorial Park was originally installed in 1913 atop the Seamen’s Church Institute, then located at the corner of South Street and Coenties Slip. The lighthouse overlooked the East River and signaled noon to ships in the harbor with the falling of a black ball. In 1968, upon the Institute’s demolition, it was taken down and stored on a pier by the South Street Seaport Museum, and was then reinstalled in its current location in 1976. The lighthouse serves as a tribute to the passengers, officers, and crew who perished when the Titanic sank in 1912. Today, it sits at the main entrance to the Seaport. The Titanic Memorial Lighthouse is located in the New York City and State and National Register of Historic Places South Street Seaport historic districts.

A forerunner of presidential candidate, and democratic socialist Vermont US senator, Bernie Sanders, Charles Solomon seen here in 1932, addresses a large crowd of office workers on Wall and Broad Streets telling them about the relationship between "high finance" and the low economic status of workers. The image was titled “Explains meaning of Wall Street” and appeared in the Yiddish language newspaper the Forverts on September 7, 1932.” A Socialist, New York Jewish politician, Born in 1889 on Manhattan’s East Side to Russian-born, Yiddish-speaking parents, Solomon was a resident of Brooklyn for most of his life. For the better part of two decades Solomon ran for numerous government offices including governor (1934), lieutenant governor (1924), mayor (1933), NY Supreme Court justice (1928, 1938), NY State Senate (1930) and US Senate (1932). He served as Assemblyman of Kings County’s 23rd District from 1919 to 1920 and as a New York State magistrate from 1935 to 1959. He was well respected for his idealism and for refusing to compromise his principles even while on the bench. Known as a sharp logical debater Solomon made frequent appearances at public symposiums on a variety of important topics, Sundays at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Described as a passionate speaker, in September 1920, with the Jewish High Holidays in the offing, Solomon headed over to Pitkin and Broadway in Brownsville, Brooklyn in advance of the socialist special election. Young women outfitted with honey, a traditional Jewish seasonal food, sold tickets to synagogue holiday services near the local cinema. New Year's greeting cards and watermelons were equally sought after items for sale. Solomon was tasked with speaking to the crowds there about the constitution and socialism. Later that year their candidate for president Eugene V. Debs finished with a little over seven percent of the vote, considered a strong showing. August 1921 found Assemblyman Solomon working as the "Publicity Manager" for the socialist party. Open-air meetings and lectures around town offered workers opportunities to learn about the candidates and issues before September's primaries. A former newsboy, a journalist and socialist since his youth, Solomon wrote for the socialist party's “The Call,” and was frequently heard speaking on street corners and local clubs about socialism. Till late in life, he continued his public speaking, even while working as magistrate. A Brooklyn local, in May 1948, Solomon spoke at the Coney Island Liberal Party Club at 2812 Mermaid Avenue, Brooklyn. The topic of his speech was "Questions and Problems of The Day." The Forverts, now generally known as the Forward, at 123 years old, is still in operation just a few blocks away on Maiden Lane. Once a Yiddish daily, it’s currently a digital publication in both Yiddish and English. Solomon was one of five socialist New York assemblymen who were expelled from office in 1920, during the Palmer Raids/ anti-Communist Red Scare. They were tossed out for agitating for social security, public housing and against child labor and other social reforms that are, by now, law. In response to his expulsion, Solomon and a colleague issued a statement accusing the Assembly itself of treason claiming “the Constitution has been lynched.” He was later re-elected and allowed to remain. Charles Solomon died in 1963 and is buried in the Workmen's Circle section of the Mount Lebanon Cemetery in Glendale, Queens. His epitaph is said to read: “He gave the people of his best.”

Streetcars on Broadway, outside the Equitable Life Assurance Building, July 7, 1905. The photo was possibly taken from scaffolding for the construction of the new Trinity Building, at the southwest corner of Thames Street (visible at far right).

Schermerhorn Row Bounded by Fulton, Front, John and South Streets Designed by William W. Berwick 1811 This row is named for Peter Schermerhorn, a prominent New York merchant and ship owner who commissioned the Georgian-Federal style buildings to serve as ware- and counting-houses. Originally, the façades were made of soft, hand-molded brick in Flemish bond, though parts of the row have been altered and expanded. While the show windows at ground level were added later, originally there were arched brownstone entries with side quoins. The upper stories feature Federal style double-hung windows with splayed stone lintels. Dormer windows on the Fulton Street side were later additions to the steeply pitched roofs, and chimneys and party walls were built tall in order to inhibit fire from spreading across rooftops. Schermerhorn Row was restored by Jan Hird Pokorny Associates in 1983 and again in 2001 by Beyer Blinder Belle, when its interior along Fulton Street was renovated extensively to internally link the buildings for the South Street Seaport Museum. Schermerhorn Row is has the great distinction of being a New York City Individual Landmark, listed on the State and National Register of Historic Places as well as being located in the South Street Seaport Historic District, and the State and National Register of Historic Places South Street Seaport Historic District.

41 Park Row (building on the right), ca. 1975. The third building to house the operations of the New York Times, 41 Park Row is the oldest of the surviving buildings of "Newspaper Row." Designed by George B. Post in 1889 to replace a smaller 1851 building, the 16-story, Romanesque Revival style structure was constructed around the core of the earlier building. The printing presses did not even need to be moved during the construction. In 1896 when the newspaper was bought by Adolf Ochs (whose family still runs it), he had an architect remove the mansard roof and add three more stories. The New York Times moved uptown to their eponymous square in 1903. In 1951 the building was purchased by Pace University, who used the former cavernous area where the printing presses were located as a gym.

Wall Street looking west, 1887. This early photograph taken by Norman Wurts (who, with his brother Lionel, started an architectural photography firm in 1894) depicts the intersection of Wall and William Streets. The building at right with the two large columns is the Bank of America Building. Trinity Church can been seen in the distance at center.

“Newspaper Row” across from City Hall Park. Photographed by Berenice Abbott for the Federal Art Project, July 23, 1936. From left to right, the buildings are: New York World Building; New York Tribune Building, New York Times Building, Potter Building.

The New York Sun Building, formerly Tammany Hall. Undated, prior to 1916.

Located in lower Manhattan along the East River waterfront, the South Street Seaport provides a pivotal connection to New York City’s early days as a center of maritime industry. Indeed, the city’s settlement and growth were inextricably linked to its success, and this history remains embodied in the area’s low-scale, early 19th century commercial buildings, as well as its historic piers and streets, complete with historic Belgian blocks. The area around Peck Slip was for centuries a Native American trading destination; its proximity to Long Island and the presence of a cove made this a natural landing point for canoes, linking footpaths on either side of the East River. Settlers of New Amsterdam took advantage of this geography by establishing the colony’s first official ferry service in 1642, linking Brooklyn to what became Peck Slip. The marshy shoreline was once peppered with inlets that became docks and wharves for the shipping industry, and the ferry service allowed for the transportation of agricultural goods from Long Island, spurring the creation of one of the city’s first farmers’ markets. In 1647, the Englishman Isaac Allerton constructed a warehouse here, apparently to store Virginia tobacco being shipped to Europe. The banks of the cove were filled in and extended to ease loading and unloading from the ships’ sides. This marked the beginning of the landfilling process, which extended from Pearl Street to South Street, forming the foundation of the low-rise “Seaport” district. The locations of the slips are discernible today as extra wide streets right at the edge of Manhattan, like Peck Slip. Despite lagging behind Boston, Philadelphia and Charleston for much of the 18th century, by 1797, South Street Seaport was the nation’s leading port. Several factors contributed to its success, including the opening of a trade route between New York and Guangzhou, when the Empress of China embarked on its maiden voyage in 1784. Soon after the Revolutionary War, the British re-established trade with the United States, and determined New York to be the most ideal export location. These international voyages aided the city tremendously in becoming a global force in maritime commerce. The 1825 completion of the Erie Canal opened shipping routes between the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes, further cementing the city’s importance as a maritime trading center. The Seaport experienced a building boom at this time, and many of these structures still exist, providing today’s visitors with a clear reading of the area’s past as an early 19th century maritime neighborhood. Its range of buildings was largely designed in simplified forms of the Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, Italianate and Romanesque Revival styles. Only a minority of early stores and warehouses were the work of professional architects, but by the late 19th century, architects including Stephen D. Hatch, Richard Morris Hunt and George B. Post, had designed buildings here. The second half of the 20th century brought much change to the Seaport, with efforts at urban renewal and its transformation into a tourist-friendly “festival marketplace”. In 1972, the South Street Seaport Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (expanded in 1977). The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designated the South Street Seaport Historic District in 1977, followed in 1989 with the designation of the South Street Seaport Historic District Extension. The buildings in these historic districts date from a period of roughly 200 years, and serve to tell a rich and complex story about New York City’s roots.

New York World Building ca. 1933 Completed in December 1890, the World Building, officially called the Pulitzer Building, was an expression of the ambitions and business genius of its publisher Joseph Pulitzer. At a height of 309 feet to the top of the dome, the World's new home became the highest building in the city and the tallest office building in the world. Pulitzer, a Hungarian immigrant who had first arrived in New York in 1864 and fought in the Civil War, had his initial success the newspaper business in St. Louis. He purchased the New York World from financier Jay Gould in 1883 when the ailing paper had a daily circulation of only 22,000. A year later, Pulitzer had quadrupled the circulation, and by 1898 was selling a half million copies a day. In 1889, as the Times was completing its imposing headquarters on Printing House Square, Pulitzer planned a new home for the World that would outshine and overtop all his competitors. The site he acquired was on the northeast corner of Park Row and Frankfort Street overlooking City Hall Park. Pulitzer envisioned a dome that would symbolize both the ascendance of his paper and, as he professed, the highest ideals of journalism: liberty, justice, democracy and "true Americanism." Indeed, the World's 5-floor gilded dome, which housed the writers, editors, and Pulitzer's private office, lifted the publisher high above the city. In its booklet printed for the building's debut, the paper effused: "From Jersey's shores, from Brooklyn Heights, from the beach of Staten Island, from points far remote, it is first discerned as one approaches New York looming above the busy metropolis, above Trinity's lofty spire, above the tall towers and high roofs of its neighbors-a giant among the giants." In an architectural competition, Pulitzer selected George B. Post, architect of the Times Building, to design his tower. Some stories claim that Post won the commission by wagering $20,000 with Pulitzer that he could complete the project for its $1,000,000 budget. He got the job, but lost the bet, since the costs reached $2,000,000. No expense was spared on the elaborate façade of red sandstone, Renaissance ornament, and figurative sculpture that gave the tower an Old World character and made it look to be made of masonry rather than the advanced metal-cage construction that Post used within the walls. The language with which the World celebrated its new head-quarters was as richly laden with rhetoric as the building itself: "There is a sermon in these stones: a significant moral in this architectural glory. Fidelity to the Public Welfare, fearless opposition to the Wrong and vigorous defence (sic) of the Right, a persistent aspiring to loftier Ideals are the lessons it teaches."

Park Row Building, 1912. R.H Robertson's Park Row Building (1899) was the tallest in the world until 1908. Financed by August Belmont, a pioneer of New York's first subway, the building had 30 stories, nearly 1000 offices, and cost $2,750,000 to build. The Park Row Building is 391 feet tall.

My Archive Spring 2019 "Old family photo circa the early 1920s. Elizabeth Stasa and Frances Stasa, my mother, probably on a Sunday before or after going to St. Peter's Church on Barclay Street (at that time the family was living in the South Street Seaport area either Dover St. or Peck Slip). Formerly, they lived at 109 Washington Street and 66 Greenwich Street when they first came as children with their family from Moravia in Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic ) in 1912. By 1927 they were living in Brooklyn. My aunt and mother were seamstresses working in sweatshops near Union Square." —Joseph Svehlak

Robert L. Bracklow Stationary Store, 1916. This stationary and printing shop, specializing in legal wares, was owned by Robert L. Bracklow, a photographer. He sold prints of his photographs entitled "Glimpses through the Camera."

Bridge Cafe 279 Water Street Architect unknown 1794 Adjacent to the Brooklyn Bridge, the Bridge Café is the district’s only extant wood-frame building. The building originally housed a grocery and a wine and porter bottler, and was initially only two-and-a-half stories high with a peaked roof. In 1888, the exterior was altered: its peaked roof was removed and the façade was covered with novelty Victorian-era siding. At present, the façade is painted brick red with black trim. The building has retained its commercial use for over 200 years. In fact, the Bridge Café was the oldest continuously running tavern in New York City until it closed in 2012 after Superstorm Sandy. Former Mayor Edward Koch was a regular customer in the 1970s. The owners are currently repairing the building and are hoping to re-open the Café in 2016. The Bridge Café is located in the New York City and State and National Register of Historic Places South Street Seaport historic districts.

70 Pine Street ARCHITECT: Clinton & Russell; Holton & George DATE: 1930-32 STYLE: Skyscraper The Cities Service Building is a 66-story skyscraper that rises from a trapezoidal site bounded by Pine Street, Cedar Street, and Pearl Street. At the time of completion it was the tallest structure in lower Manhattan, and at 952 feet, the third tallest structure in the world. It was commissioned by a major American corporation and was an expression of the owner’s success. The Cities Service Company w quickly grew to become one of the largest corporations in the United States, controlling approximately 200 energy firms in thirty states, including numerous oil and power suppliers.

Downtown's first exemplar of the International Style contrasts dramatically with the sturdy brick and stone of its neighbors. Its 1960s architecture is stripped of historical references and ornament, and its grid of glass and aluminum mirror sunlight down to street level. The sixty stories are carried on twenty columns that, at great expense, were expressed on the exterior as long verticals, faced in white anodized aluminum. At the base, the columns are stilt-like supports for the double-height entry lobby, enclosed in broad expanses of clear glass. As innovative as the architecture of the tower is the plaza in which it sits. The Chase Manhattan Bank headquarters, called "1 CMP," Lever House, and the Seagram Building, created a new paradigm. These towers occupied only a portion of their building plot (in the case of Chase, thirty percent); the rest was a "public" plaza, maintained by the owners. This "tower-in-the-plaza" was encouraged in the 1961 Zoning Law, which allowed developers to trade a bonus of two square feet of extra floor space for every square foot of plaza. One Chase Manhattan Plaza occupies a full-block site for which the street pattern was changed. The tower and plaza rest on a plinth elevated above the street. Below plaza level is the flagship branch of Chase Manhattan Bank. This sleek modern room is lit with natural light from a glass-enclosed sunken garden cut out of the plaza above. The garden, by Isamu Noguchi, synthesizes elements of the traditional Japanese Rock Garden with a 1960's corporate aesthetic. Jean Dubuffet created the large sculpture, Group of Four Trees, in 1972.

Singer Tower at night, ca. 1908.

New York City is full of Revolution-related history and sites, but you need to know where to look. We’ve compiled 5 key places to visit and discover the American Revolution history that’s all around us. Check out these sites below in a family-friendly tour. As you make your way around town, be sure to take recreations and pictures and tag us on Twitter or Instagram at @nyhistory.

Singer Building, 1913. The Singer Building, constructed for the Singer Sewing Machine Corporation, was originally constructed as a small red brick building with a mansard roof in 1896. Designed by Ernest Flagg, the building was later incorporated into the larger, more well-known Singer Building, also designed by Flagg and completed in 1908. For a single year (1908-1909) it was the tallest building in the world. At 47-stories (the base was only 12 stories, while the tower topped out at 612 feet), the building was quickly surpassed by the Metropolitan Life Tower on 23rd Street. Visitors to the building could pay 50 cents to take in the view from the 40th-floor observation deck. The Beaux-Arts building had a marble columned and bronze trimmed lobby and was described by architectural historian Christoper Gray as having "celestial radiance." The building was sold in 1961 to Webb & Knapp, a real estate development company, who attempted to have the New York Stock Exchange moved into the structure. That bid was unsuccessful and in 1964 U.S. Steel purchased the building. It was demolished in 1967 (two years after the Landmarks Law was passed). Today the site is occupied by One Liberty Plaza, a 54-story office building completed in 1973. The Singer Building remains the tallest structure to be intentionally demolished.

20 Nassau Street, 1913. Stretching the entire block of Nassau Street between Pine and Cedar Street, this was the location of the Fourth National Bank. The six-story Second Empire Style building was suffering from intense structural problems when the Germania Life Insurance Company, who originally owned the structure, sold it to Fourth National. Most of the problems of the building came from its sinking foundation, which caused cracks and misalignments to appear in the facade's stones and windowsills. Many of the building's openings had to be braced by heavy timber. In some parts of the building, the ceiling sloped three or four inches and doors had to be trimmed down to be function at all. Despite the structure's impending doom, Fourth National purchased the building for 1.5 million dollars. This was "the highest figure yet paid in the financial district," at the time, at around three hundred dollars a square foot. The New York Tribune noted that the lot had ample light, and "unusual advantages," due to the building's squat neighbors. Though the building was purchased in 1909, the Germania Life Insurance Company didn't move out until two years later. In 1914, Fourth National merged with the Mechanics and Metals Bank and continued to occupy the building, despite concerns over structural problems. The Mechanics and Metals Bank was consolidated with Chase National Bank in 1926, who would ultimately call for the demolition of the building. However, razing a structurally-deficient building proved to be harder than anticipated. The safety vault of the bank was a "miniature fort in the heart of New York's financial district", according to a Connecticut newspaper, because it was encased in thirty inches of masonry and five inches of steel plates to withstand any bombing or burglary. Removing it required the effort of "fifteen men, consisting of drillers, blasters, burners, rock-men, and engineers...employed continuously trying to batter \[it] down." Once the ground was finally leveled, Chase National Bank had plans for a tower almost 500 feet in height, with stepped levels resemblant of a pyramid.

In its history, New York City has seen its fair share of accidents, disasters, and catastrophes. Some have been man-made, while others were the work of Mother Nature. These events have, over time, altered and shaped the city and its citizens.

Bankers Trust Building, 1938.

By Atiba Pertilla William Allen Butler, Jr., the founder of downtown Manhattan’s Lawyers Club, would later explain that its creation was inspired by a disturbing encounter. One afternoon in the 1880s, he went out for lunch with his father and partner, William Allen Butler, Sr.—a respected corporate lawyer, son of a former U.S. Attorney General, and co-founder of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. The restaurant was crowded, but moments later an office boy from his law firm finished lunch and “my respected father occup\[ied] that same stool to order a slice of roast beef.” Unable to find a seat for himself, the younger Butler ended up standing at the restaurant’s “oyster counter” and swallowing down a sandwich “of the genus warranted to stand on one’s chest for a couple \[o]f hours.” He found the blurring of class boundaries and the uncomfortable conditions troubling, wondering “Was there not some better way for the noon-day hour luncheon?” His conclusion was that there was a need for “a reputable and decent place” where men like himself and his father could enjoy a decent midday meal in private, dignified surroundings, away from their subordinates. He decided, in short, to establish a lunch club. Read this in its original format here

Potter Building, ca. 1980. The Potter Building, constructed from 1883 to 1886, was designed to the plans of architect Norris G. Starkweather. Commissioned by Orlando B. Potter, a prominent politician and real estate developer, he built the 11-story building to replace his former World Building, which was destroyed in 1882 by fire. In addition to employing the most advanced fireproofing methods that were then available, the newly erected Potter Building was designed in a combination of Queen Anne and neo-Grec styles. Making using of rolled iron beams, cast iron columns, brick exterior walls, tile arches, and terra-cotta, the building's elaborate details even provoked Mr. Potter to later start his own terra cotta company on Long Island. In 1980, the iron-frame office building was converted by Martin Raynes to a co-operative apartment building with 41 units.

While most people think of chop suey as a specific dish, in reality, it is more of a style of cooking. It is an Americanized style, an often improvised stir fry of mixed ingredients, namely meat, vegetables, and a starchy gravy. First popularized in Chinatown around the turn of the 20th century, it spread throughout the city, becoming more Americanized (read-more bland) over the course of time. It is sometimes referred to as one of New York’s first fusion cuisines.

Manhattan Company Building ARCHITECT: H. Craig Severance; Yasuo Matsui; Shreve & Lamb DATE: 1929-30 STYLE: Art Deco, Skyscraper The Manhattan Company Building, built in 1929-30, was planned as the tallest building in the world. The 71-story, 927-foot-tall Manhattan Company Building was completed in a year, an unprecedented feat for such a project, and ready for occupancy in May 1930. The picturesque skyscraper, with an overall massing characteristic of Art Deco style skyscrapers in New York of the period, rises through a series of setbacks to a tower, clad in buff brick and ornamented with terra cotta, with continuous vertical piers and recessed spandrels, and is crowned by a pyramidal roof capped by a spire.

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

Park Row Building ARCHITECT: R. H. Robertson DATE: 1896-99 STYLE: Skyscraper The 30-story, 391-foot Park Row Building was the tallest building in New York City and one of the tallest structures in the world between 1899, the year of its completion, and 1908. It is one of several surviving late nineteenth-century buildings that formed Newspaper Row, the center of newspaper publishing in New York City from the 1840s to the 1920s. Among its many tenants, the building housed the offices of the Associated Press news agency, as well as the headquarters of August Belmont’s Interborough Rapid Transit Company. The great height and irregular plan of this building led to the use of innovative construction techniques including a pile and steel-grillage foundation, a Roehling concrete floor system for fireproofing, and Sprague Electric elevators to transport the thousands of people using the building each day.

146 Beekman Street, date unknown. Constructed in 1885 as a smokehouse, the building at 146 Beekman has been tied to the NYC fishing industry, centered in this neighborhood, since its construction. By 1904, the building was also the headquarters of the New York Wholesale Fish Dealers Association. The painted signs on the facade that read "Fresh, Salt Smoked Fish" were in place by the 1930s, though likely were painted earlier. From 1914 to 1997 the building was home to the The Meyer and Thompson Smoked Fish Company. In 2004 a bar and cafe called Fresh Salt opened in the ground floor space and, despite damage endured during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, remains open, serving the neighborhood under its historic sign.

214 Front Street Architect unknown 1802 214 Front Street was built for merchant William Shotwell, and has been altered many times over the years.The cast-iron façade is ornamented with decorative, paneled square columns and a modillioned metal cornice. On the four upper stories, the smooth-pressed bricks were assembled in a stretcher bond pattern and several gudgeons from the 19th century shutters still remain at the windows. 214 Front Street is located in the New York City and State and National Register of Historic Places South Street Seaport historic districts.

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

"New Street looking toward Wall Street, Blizzard of 1888." The Blizzard of 1888 was a catastrophic snowstorm that blanketed large parts of the East Coast. New York had 85 mph wind gusts and snow drifts that reached the second stories of some buildings. The wind and snow combined to create a dangerous situation with overhead electrical and telegraph wiring (as can be seen in this photograph). Just walking down the street was dangerous as the ice and snow made the tall poles and wires ready to fall at any time. A number of people, including Senator Roscoe Conkling, New York’s Republican Party leader, collapsed in the snow. He ended up with pneumonia and died a few weeks later. In all more than 200 people died in New York City alone. In the aftermath of the storm, city officials realized that above ground electrical, gas, telegraph, and water lines were dangerous in these types of natural events. In the ensuing decades the infrastructure that once loomed over the streets on utility poles was moved underground in Manhattan.

My Archive Spring 2019 "This is my great-great-great grandfather’s hat shop. His name was John Henry Day. He was born in New York in 1832 and died in 1909." —Todd Hirsch

Crowd gathers in City Hall Park for a Liberty Bond sale under the auspices of the the Mayor's Committee of Women on National Defense, ca. 1917-18. A man perched atop a fully extended firemen's ladder waves an American flag. In the background is the former City Hall Post Office and Courthouse; the mammoth French Second Empire civic building was torn down in 1938.

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

“Federal Hall National Memorial, ca. 1975. The Federal Hall National Memorial commemorates historic events at the former Federal Hall, which occupied the same site until 1812. The original building, completed in 1703 as New York’s second City Hall, became a meeting place for colonial delegates prior to the Revolutionary War, and later for representatives of the nascent American government in the First United States Congress. Federal Hall became the first Capitol of the United States in 1789, when the Constitution came into force. Under the first Congress, Federal Hall was the site of Washington’s Inauguration and the proposal of the Constitutional amendments that today make up the Bill of Rights. After Congress moved to Philadelphia in 1790, New York’s City government operations returned to Federal Hall until a new City Hall building was completed in 1812. The building was razed thereafter. The current temple-front Greek Revival marble structure was designed by John Frazee and completed in 1842.

This office block was built as a speculative venture by the American Tract Society. Revenue from this investment would fund the charitable works of the Society which published and sold inexpensive Bible editions to Foreign Missionary Societies and newly arrived immigrants. Rising from a plot 100 by 94 feet, this 22-story building contained 700 offices. The tower is topped by an elaborate open-arched pavilion with spectacular terra-cotta caryatids on its four corners that recall the figureheads of nineteenth-century schooners. Inside the building's lobby, the elevator hall is a semicircular space with the cabs arranged around it in an arc, one of the few surviving examples of this early configuration in New York. The building is currently undergoing renovation for residential use.

One of the most interesting structures in the State and National Register of Historic Places South Street Seaport Historic Districts is the Romanesque Revival building that was erected in 1885 for Ellen S. Auchmuty, a Schermerhorn family descendent. It was designed by George B. Post, an architect trained in the Beaux-Arts tradition, who also designed the old New York Times Building (1889) at Printing House Square, Bronx Borough Hall (1897), and the New York Stock Exchange (1904).

My Archive Spring 2019 "Apolina Stasa, my grandmother, from Moravia (now the Czech Republic ) worked Downtown as a cleaning lady. Old family photo circa the early 1920s probably on a Sunday before or after going to St. Peter's on Barclay Street." —Joseph Svehlak

The Corbin Building was erected in 1889 by architect Francis Hatch Kimball. The structure is a rare surviving example of late 19th-century commercial architecture. While hardly qualifying as a skyscraper today, at nine stories the building towered over its neighbors in 1889. Its slender form, dark stone, and eclectic detail stand in stark contrast to the neoclassical and International Style towers around it. This building is an early design of Francis Kimball, who emerged as a leading skyscraper architect in the 1890s and early 1900s. His buildings include 71 Broadway, 111 Broadway, and 115 Broadway.

Completed in 1896, at 312 feet, the 22-story American Surety Building towered over surrounding structures. The design by architect Bruce Price was one of the most elegant of New York's early skyscrapers. Price divided the tower's height into three zones - base, shaft, and capital - corresponding to the parts of a classical column. Far above the street level, life-sized figures flank the round windows above the second cornice line. The tower stood in splendor until the 1910s when its neighbors rose to equal its height. In 1921 the company expanded the tower, doubling its mass and broadening its elegant proportions. The architect of this expansion, Herman Lee Meader, recycled stone elements from the obscured back façades in his extension of the Broadway and Pine Street façades to ensure visual continuity. In 1975, the Bank of Tokyo renovated the interiors. This modernization, which maintained the tower's historic shell, was at the time a bold strategy for balancing the needs of a modern company with preservation interests. This juxtaposition of mid-seventies modernism and late nineteenth-century classicism is best observed in the starkly minimalist open colonnade between the building's nineteenth-century Broadway façade and the banking hall inserted behind it. Certain period elements were retained in the new interiors, namely the ornate coffered ceiling and the dark red marble columns.

Water Street, South from Fulton Street; January 15, 1928. The barber's pole is outside a storefront barbershop in the United States Arcade Building, a 1898 commercial building occupying a site on the south side of Fulton Street, between Water and Pearl Streets. In 1961, U.S. Arcade was sold and razed to developers Meyer Bros., who put up a parking lot. Later, the site would become part of the full-block footprint of 127 John Street (a.k.a. 200 Water Street), an International Style high-rise designed by Emery Roth & Sons and completed in 1971.

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

Edmund Vincent Gillon shot thousands of photographs documenting New York’s architecture and public art from the 1970s to the 1990s. Among Gillon’s rolls, his keen eye for civic sculpture stands out. Admire this set of memorable monuments, part of the Museum of the City of New York’s collection:

City government in New Amsterdam had met in the Dutch Stadt Huys, built as a tavern in 1642 on Pearl Street, then known simply as The Waterside. After the British takeover, in 1703, a new building, seen in the upper image, was constructed to serve as City Hall. Together with Trinity Church and the First Presbyterian Church, City Hall gave weight to the dignity of the west end of Wall Street. After the Revolutionary War, in 1788, Pierre L'Enfant, who was best known for his later planning of the new capital city of Washington D.C., designed the renovation and enlargement of City Hall, which became knows as Federal Hall when it housed the Continental Congress. The balcony served as the location of the inauguration of George Washington as the nation's first president on April 30th, 1789. The nation's capital moved to another temporary home in Philadelphia in 1790 and the building resumed its previous function of city hall until the current City Hall was constructed in 1812.

Singer Building ca. 1908 Architect Ernest Flagg had already designed two buildings for the Singer Manufacturing Company when, in 1906, the company declared it would build the world's tallest building. Flagg achieved the company's goal by utilizing innovative techniques in wind bracing and the anchoring of the building's steel frame, which allowed it to soar to a height of 612 feet. Completed in 1908, the ornate Beaux-Arts tower, with its distinctive lantern top, stood out in the Manhattan skyline and served as a billboard for the Singer Company. For 50 cents, visitors could ascend to the 40th-floor observation deck. In accordance with newly enacted zoning laws, the slender tower was set back from the street and occupied only one-fourth the area of the building from which it arose. The success of the design influenced the use of setbacks, which became a standard feature of successive skyscrapers. In 1968, the Singer Tower became the tallest building ever demolished when its new owner, U.S. Steel, sacrificed it for the glass and steel One Liberty Plaza.

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

This 30-story Park Row Building was the tallest office building in the world from the time of its completion until the completion of the Singer Building in 1908. Built as a speculative office building by a syndicate of investors lead by August Belmont (also the entrepreneur behind the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), a private company responsible for the building and operation of the original subway line) the office block originally accommodated 950 offices and over 4,000 workers. It exploited the newly developed all steel skeleton technology. The syndicate bought and consolidated seven smaller lots to create this large but very irregularly shaped site which lacked the corner lot. The exterior lacks the soaring profile and slender tower of the office buildings that would take the title of tallest building in the next decade, the Singer Building, Metropolitan Life Tower and Woolworth Building. The most distinctive elements of its design are the two three-story cupolas and four life-sized sculpted figures projecting from the fourth floor of the Park Row front.

The Federal Hall National Memorial commemorates historic events at the former Federal Hall, which occupied the same site until 1812.

122 William Street ca. 1913 This Dutch colonial building was made of brick imported from Holland and in 1913 was said to be one of the oldest homes still standing from the New Amsterdam settlement. Located near the site of the pre-Revolutionary War Battle of Golden Hill, the building housed the Golden Hill Tavern, which was a popular rendezvous for Revolutionary figures like George Washington, Marquis de Lafayette and Benedict Arnold during the Revolutionary War. The building was demolished in 1919.

Berenice Abbott's photo of the "Mary P. Mosquita", a trawling vessel, at Pier 17. November 26, 1935. In the background, the chimney of the New York Steam Corporation at 130 John Street is visible, as well as the tallest buildings of the Financial District (from left to right): Farmers Trust, 60 Wall Tower, Bank of Manhattan, 116 John Street, and 111 John Street.

Evening Post Building ca. 1926 Completed in 1875, the same year as the Tribune Building, the headquarters of the of the Evening Post was an imposing ten-story, 140-foot tall structure that stood on the southeast corner of Broadway and Fulton Street. Like the Tribune, it was a load-bearing brick structure with stone trim, but its vaguely Romanesque style was restrained and utilitarian, with the exception of a low mansard-like cupola above the central bay and heavy stone piers and columnettes that framed the main entrance. The architect was the little-known Thomas Stent, who took over the commission from an earlier architect dismissed from the project. The Post wrote in its July 1, 1875 supplement on the new building that its simplicity would be "admired more for its massiveness and substantiality, and for its complete adaptation to the uses for which it was constructed, than for anything peculiar or striking in its outlines or extravagant in the treatment of its interior." The main Broadway entrance, raised a half-story above street level, as was common at the time, led to the major commercial spaces and the lobby access to the hydraulic elevators. The upper floors were partitioned offices, all leased to tenants except for the top floor, which was reserved for the paper's editorial offices and space for the compositors. The printing presses and other machinery operated in the basement levels, and compositors of the job-printing department worked in the vault spaces below the sidewalks on Broadway and Fulton Street. The New-York Evening Post was originally established in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton and his political allies as a Federalist broadsheet after the election of Thomas Jefferson to the presidency. Famed poet and abolitionist William Cullen Bryant took over the paper in 1828 and served as its editor-in-chief for fifty years. The Post changed its format from broadsheet to tabloid in 1942, under the tenure of Dorothy Schiff, after which circulation grew by two thirds. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch purchased the paper in 1976.

A utilitarian 12-story addition was added onto the top of the restrained Italian Renaissance style former United States Assay Office in the 1950s. Note the very finely sculpted frieze running beneath the cornice of the first story, as well as the graceful iron-work.

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.

World Building ca. 1890-1899 Completed in 1890, the World Building, (also known as the Pulitzer Building) was commissioned by editor Joseph Pulitzer as a headquarters for his paper the New York World. Designed by the prolific skyscraper architect George B. Post, it was the first building in New York to surpass in height the 284- foot spire of Trinity Church. The number of stories is disputed: estimates range from the 26 stories claimed by the World to the 16 or 18 suggested by recent scholars. The World and Tribune buildings were demolished in 1955 for the expanded automobile entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge.

If 1 CM Plaza typifies gossamer modernity, its neighbor represents the weighty historicism in vogue in the days before the Stock Market Crash of 1929. York & Sawyer turned to the fortified palaces of the Renaissance bankers of Florence for inspiration for this design. The fortress-like character is appropriate, as the Federal Reserve houses the world's largest concentration of gold bullion in its basement vaults. The elaborately wrought iron lamps flanking the main doorway on Liberty Street are the work of Samuel Yellin, the most noted artist of wrought iron of the twentieth century.

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

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

The NYC subway is more than a means of transit; it's a living, breathing entity that tells a story at every stop. It acts as the city's vascular network, essential in weaving together the rich mosaic of neighborhoods, cultures, and economic activities. This complex system embodies the heartbeat of New York, vibrating to the diverse culture of its people, each station providing a different window into the spirit of the city. It is also a great reflection on the dynamics of urban change by witnessing the disparity between stations that shine with modernity and those that languish in the shadows of neglect. This contrast raises critical questions about resource allocation, city planning priorities, and the impact on the communities that rely on this crucial transit network. A consideration of inequality in the subways provides a window to rethink what our city and its subway system should and could be. A place where infrastructure serves all communities with fairness and dignity, where the richness of each neighborhood is celebrated and preserved, and where the future of urban living is shaped by the voices of its people. Join me in this exploration, as we look at the layers of New York City's subway system. Together, we'll discover the challenges it faces, celebrate the vibrancy it harbors, and envision a future where it emerges not just as a transit system, but as a symbol of a more connected, equitable, and thriving city.

American Telephone and Telegraph Building, ca. 1917. The 29-story building, also known as 15 Dey Street, was designed by architect William Welles Bosworth as the headquarters of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Construction was completed in stages between 1912 and 1916. In 1915, the building hosted the Atlantic end of the purported first transcontinental telephone conversation (the technology had previously been tested (also from this building); this call was a demonstration for marketing purposes). Alexander Graham Bell reprised his famous call to Thomas Watson, who this time answered from San Francisco.

174 South Street, 1934. No. 174, a four-story brick building which sat directly under the Brooklyn Bridge, was the home where Al Smith, four-time New York State Governor, was born in 1873.

Several buildings in the South Street Seaport District are considered to be some of the oldest standing structures in Manhattan. From taverns to warehouses, built by the most famous American architects of the 19th century, the buildings of the Seaport have big stories to tell. Take a walk with us and discover the origins of New York's greatness.

New York Times Building ARCHITECT: George B. Post DATE: 1888-89 STYLE: Richardsonian Romanesque The New York Times Building, erected in 1888-89 as the home of the New York Times, is one of the last remnants of Newspaper Row, the center of newspaper publishing in New York City from the 1830s to the 1920s. The building was designed by the pioneering skyscraper designer George B. Post and is his sole remaining office building in the downtown area. The Times Building was Post’s first in the Richardsonian Romanesque idiom and was considered “a masterpiece of the Romanesque style.” It has rusticated limestone and granite facades that are articulated in a complex composition featuring a series of impressive arcades and carefully-scaled details including compound colonnettes, roll moldings, miniature balustrades, foliate reliefs, and gargoyles.

Western Union Building ca. 1885 At 230 feet tall, the Western Union Building, completed in 1875, became the city’s second-tallest office building after the Tribune, and its spired silhouette dominated the vista of Broadway. It was the first “skyscraper” – although that term was not used in print until the 1880s – of George B. Post, who in the following decades would become one of New York’s most prolific architects of tall buildings, designing twelve of the structures featured in our survey, including Joseph Pulitzer’s World Building, which in 1890, at 309 ft., took the title of the tallest office building in the city and in the world. Like its contemporaries, the Tribune Building and the Evening Post Building, Western Union was a masonry bearing-wall structure that also employed some cast-iron columns and wrought iron girders and beams. Architecturally, it was a horizontally striped Victorian pile of red brick and gray stone, crowned with a high mansard roof built over a metal frame. The ornate roof capped an arcaded eighth story where the company’s telegraph operators sent and received messages from a net of wires that crisscrossed rooftops. From the mid-19th century, telegraphs were the major method of long-distance communication. Using code developed by Samuel Morse to covey “written messages by electricity,” competing companies connected cities, the continent, and opposite sides of oceans with wires and cables that, for considerable charges, carried vital messages. By the 1870s, through inventions and business mergers, Western Union had become the dominant telegraph company. As an article on the new building in the journal The Aldine described: “No single enterprise, in the whole world, has grown so rapidly within a few years, as the telegraph interest of America, of which the Western Union Telegraph Company is the principal exponent; and perhaps it is quite correct that the Company should be the builder and owner of one of the most remarkable structures on the continent, if not in the world…. That the Telegraph Building is to be, architecturally and practically, an immense success, there can be no question; its great height making the amount of disposable space within, simply enormous; and its location, so near the Post Office and the great business centres, rendering its availability quite as marked as its size”.… Called by The Daily Graphic the city’s new “business palaces,” the Western Union Building, like the Tribune, advertised the success of their companies, but they also offered offices for rent on their middle floors.

EXCELSIOR POWER COMPANY BUILDING, MANHATTAN Address: 33-43 Gold Street Constructed: 1888 Architect: William Milne Grinnell The Excelsior Power Company Building is the oldest power generating station in New York City. 11 power plants, whose energy helped grow New York into the city that it is, have been demolished throughout the five boroughs. The monumental Romanesque Revival style building, complete with rough-cut ashlar and rounded, springing arches, features Queen Anne terra cotta details, while the Art Nouveau letters that read “Excelsior Power Co. Bldg 1888 A.D.” add the final touch. The building, an architectural anomaly in the Financial District, has overcome functional obsolescence in its conversion to residences. Its successful adaptive reuse is a gift to Gold Street. The Excelsior Power Company Building at 33-43 Gold Street is a Romanesque Revival structure designed by the architect William G. Grinnell. The Excelsior Steam Power Company acquired this Gold Street property in 1887 from the Columbia Heating and Power Company. Two buildings from the 1840s were on the property and were altered to meet the needs of the Excelsior Company. The red brick facade is distinguished by ornamental terra cotta detail. Incorporated in the terra cotta design detail is the name of the building and the date--"A.D. 1888."

Strand Book Store, South Street Seaport, ca. 1991.

Westinghouse Building, 150 Broadway, ca. 1924. Architects Starrett & Van Vleck erected the 23-story Westinghouse Building in 1923-1924. According to architect and critic Robert A.M. Stern, the Westinghouse Building "marked an important step toward realizing the aesthetic potential of the zoning law," the 1916 statute governing skyscraper height and lot use.

This high-rise was erected as a headquarters for the venerable Bank of New York, which had occupied the same site on the northeast corner of Wall and William Streets since 1797. The famously conservative institution chose society architect Benjamin Wistar Morris to design a headquarters that would reflect the bank’s eighteenth-century origins. The building’s exterior is decorated in a Colonial Revival style. Windows set nearly flush with the wall and lightly incised quoins give the limestone an apparent thinness. Morris used a similar design for 25 Broadway. The tower telescopes to a slender spire crowned with a federal eagle. A marble plaque on the ground story relates back to the building of the bank’s first headquarters on this site. Note also the railings for the subway entrance at the corner, which incorporate complementary Colonial Revival motifs. The main banking hall, on the second floor, is reached via an elliptical, cantilevered, marble staircase. With its three enormous brass chandeliers and checkered marble floor, the banking hall feels as much like a ballroom as a Wall Street bank. Murals decorating the northern wall depict the bank’s founders. The five murals on the eastern wall represent facets of the bank’s business: Foreign Trade; Agriculture and Mining; National Credit; Transportation; Steel and Electricity. They were painted by J. Monroe Hewlett in 1929. The Bank of New York left its home of two centuries in 1997 and moved to One Wall Street, which it acquired in a merger with Irving Trust

Fulton Fish Market, ca. 1935. The origins of the market that would become the well-known Fulton Fish Market date to 1807, when the market opened on land that was donated to the city. In 1822 a new market building was constructed and opened on South Street between Fulton and Beekman Streets, selling fish and other goods. In its first decades the market largely sold to individual retail shoppers. After 1850 the enterprise become a majority wholesale market. In 1924, 25% of all seafood sold in the United States passed through the Fulton Fish Market. The market occupied two open-air structures, including the 1907 Tin Building. In 1936 the original 19th century market building slid into the river after its pilings failed. Mayor LaGuardia advocated for and opened the "New Building" in 1939. Still the largest consortium of seafood wholesalers in the country, the Fulton Fish Market left its lower Manhattan home of 180 years in 2005 when it was relocated to the Bronx.

Paris Cafe certainly fits the bill of New York's oldest watering holes. The pub has proudly served beer since 1873, as is noted on the building's facade. The bar was founded by Henry Meyers, an alcohol merchant, who opened the pub to accompany his hotel upstairs. In its heyday, the Meyer Hotel hosted numerous celebrities, including a young Theodore Roosevelt, the cowboy Buffalo Bill, and outlaw Butch Cassidy, to name a few. However, once passenger ships diverted traffic by docking at the Chelsea Piers rather than the Seaport, the hotel briefly fell into obscurity. Shortly after, the mob took over the business and the Meyer Hotel saw a rotating cast of mafiosos use its quarters. In 1951, the building was purchased from the Meyer family estate by Silvio (Steve) Schiaffino. It was Schiaffino who christened the establishment with its new name. At first, he renamed the eatery "Paris Bar and Restaurant," after his prior business which he lost to the city. The name has since been simplified to Paris Cafe. Schiaffino made extensive updates to the kitchen and dining area of the Cafe. Despite renovations, the longshoreman's pub kept its original ornate polished wood bar that was shipped from Germany. Both the bar and the sparkling mirrors behind it have maintained their illustrious sheen for almost 150 years, even surviving a devastating flood brought on by Hurricane Sandy. Sadly in 2020, the fabled bar was forced to close its doors due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

This historic masonry, cast iron, and timber-framed landmarked building, located at 167-171 John Street, was built in 1850 for the A.A. Low & Brothers, a famous export firm until well past the end of the 19th century. Founded by Abiel Abbot Low (1811-1893), the company was New York’s most successful firm in the China trade importing cinnamon, pepper, silks, porcelain, firecrackers, and tea. A.A. Low & Brothers occupied the building well into the 20th century, and as a whole, the building represents the success and importance of the original builder.

Potter Building ARCHITECT: Norris G. Starkweather DATE: 1882-86 STYLE: Queen Anne, Neo-Grec, Renaissance Revival, Colonial Revival The Potter Building was commissioned by Orlando B. Potter, a prominent figure in New York politics with prime commercial real estate holdings in Manhattan. Potter was determined to build a structure with the most advanced fireproofing then available. The eleven-story Potter Building was distinguished stylistically from most downtown buildings, with its picturesque, flamboyant fusion of Queen Anne, neo-Grec, Renaissance Revival, and Colonial Revival motifs. The vertically-expressed design is executed in red brick and brownstone-colored terracotta above a cast-iron-clad base. Among its distinctive features are continuous piers, some of the handsomest brickwork in New York City, a dramatic, colossal three-quarter-round column terminating in a pinnacle on the acute primary corner of Park Row and Beekman Street, walls elaborated by ornamental pediments, segmental arches, panels, and corbelling, and a roofline punctuated by finials and broken scroll pediments with urns.

Former National Park Bank Building, 216 Broadway, ca. 1895.

This iron-framed, brick building is a riot of robust clay capitals and classical details. What was viewed as its greatest innovation at the time of its completion was its virtually fireproof construction, a strength advertised by its iron-clad lower stories and storefronts. The richly ornamented façade is anchored by dramatic eight-story vertical piers in brick with enormous terra-cotta capitals, and the colossal eleven-story embedded column that seems to hinge the corner of Nassau Street and Beekman Place. A builder's plate giving the name of the foundry responsible for the cast iron work remains at the building's southwest corner. The Potter Building is a masterpiece of architectural terra-cotta, and its construction played an important role in the development of terra cotta as a building material in New York. Terracotta, a type of clay that is molded and fired, was chosen by the building’s owner, Orlando Potter, for its fire resistant properties and low price. At the time, no source of terracotta existed in New York, and a Boston company was hired to provide the material. Soon after the building’s completion, Potter founded the New York Architectural Terra-Cotta Company, which would manufacture much of the terra-cotta ornament widely used in later skyscrapers.

Federal Hall, built in 1703 as New York's City Hall, later served as the first capitol building of the United States of America under the Constitution, as well as the site of George Washington's inauguration as the first President of the United States under the Constitution. It was also where the United States Bill of Rights was introduced in the First Congress. The building was demolished in 1812.

The Fish Market on South Street between Peck Slip and Beekman Street, November 26, 1935. By the time Berenice Abbott took this picture in 1936, the South Street fish market filled a six-block area and was the largest wholesale seafood market on the Atlantic Coast. At the southern end of the block (Nos. 116-119) is Meyer's Hotel, notorious for selling alcohol during Prohibition.

Gillender Building, 1910. Constructed on a plot of land only 25 feet 2 inches wide by 73 feet 5 inches long, the 1896 Gillender Building was the brainchild of Helena L. Gillender Asinari, who dreamed of a new skyscraper. Architect Charles I. Berg was left to create a building with innumerable issues to design and construction. Massive caissons were needed to build on the soft soil, and with such a narrow plot, much of the interior spaces was taken up by common corridors, stairways, and elevator shafts. At 306 feet from the curb to the tip of the tower it was the tallest building nearby and was, in fact, struck by lighting a number of times. In 1908 Helena sold the building to her major tenant, the Manhattan Trust Company who quickly resold it. The new owners, Bankers Trust, made plans for a new building on the two corner plots of land they now owned. In 1910 the Gillender became to the first skyscraper to be demolished. Disassembled from the top down, the structural sections of the building were examined by a chemistry professor, looking to study corrosion and the state of the metal infrastructure. The building was replaced in 1912 by the Bankers Trust Company Building, which still stands. The New York Times said of the demise of the Gillender, “Here is a modern steel skyscraper in every respect, which was finished barely twelve years ago, and yet the purchasers of the property are going to sacrifice it as ruthlessly as though it were some ancient shack whose usefulness had long outlived the demands required from it by the immediate business vicinity.”

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.

In the United States, power and the ability to pass laws is spread out across three levels of government: the federal, state, and local levels. Each level has different responsibilities and is in charge of a different group of people. Government at the federal level is in charge of the entire nation. Members of the federal government include the President, the House of Representatives, and the Senate. They make laws and deal with issues that affect the whole nation. Members of the state government are in charge of making laws and protecting the interests of people in a specific state, like New York for example. The governor, and state representatives are examples of people involved with state government. Finally, every city, town, or county has their own local government. They deal with the most specific needs of a local group of people, like keeping communities clean and safe. Members of the local government, can include a mayor, city council members, or county executives. Throughout New York City's history different places have served government functions for each level of government. As you look through this story, consider some of the different responsibilities the various levels of government have and how they have changed over time. New York Social Studies Scope and Sequence Standards 4.4b,c For Teachers: Different Levels of Government Lesson Plan

“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.”

Titanic Memorial Lighthouse and stores on Fulton Street, ca. 1976. Originally installed on the top of the Seaman's Church Institute in 1913, the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse has stood on the corner of Water and Fulton Streets since 1976. The 60-foot-tall structure was installed at the insistence of Titanic survivor, socialite, and philanthropist Molly Brown. Originally the ball on the top of the structure dropped every day at noon as a remembrance of the victims. The ball drop stopped in 1967 and the Seaman's Institute moved locations in 1968. The lighthouse was donated to the South Street Seaport Museum and was installed near the entrance of the museum's complex of buildings.

The Bennet Building, ca. 1928. The Bennett Building is a landmark structure constructed in 1872-1873 by Arthur D. Gilman for James Gordon Bennett Jr., the publisher of the New York Herald. Originally the French Second Empire structure was only six stories tall, but in 1890-1892, the mansard roof was removed and three floors and a penthouse were added by James M. Farnsworth for the building's new owner, John Petit. In 1894, Farnsworth constructed an extension of the building to Ann Street. In each case, Farnsworth's additions carefully mimicked Gilman's original design. The Bennett Building's key feature is its facade: it is the tallest structure in the world with an entirely cast-iron facade. Its richly decorated facades meet at these distinctive curved corners.

Guaranty Trust Building ca. 1912 Here the colossal Ionic order, set off by simple ashlar masonry walls, lent great dignity to the front facade, while an equally handsome colonnade screened the windows of the main banking room along Liberty Street. York and Sawyer proved their versatility in departing from their Romanesque mode of this more purely Classical theme.

"Backed by popular support, the City devised a plan to build a new market at the Fulton Ferry landing, on the block bounded by Fulton, Beekman, South, and Front Streets. This block had already been developed, and its lots and buildings were all privately owned; to take the property, the City would need permission from the State Legislature, which had the sole authority to grant the use of Eminent Domain. The Common Council submitted its request in January of 1816, and in March of that same year the Thirty-Ninth session of the Legislature passed a Law allowing the City the right to condemn and take the properties — with fair-market compensation to each owner — for the purpose 'of erecting thereon an extensive and commodious public market.' … It opened its doors as Fulton Market on January 22, 1822. It went on to become New York City’s premier destination market for several generations, then gradually transformed into the Fulton Fish Market — one of the largest and most renowned wholesale markets in the world, which remained at the Seaport until 2005 until its move to the Bronx. It continues generating business and employment for the city after 186 years of active trade." For more on Fulton Market, check out this article by Robert LaValva in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.

By Rob Koehler New York City’s oldest continuously operating library is the New York Society Library, currently located on 79th St. just east of Central Park. The Library was originally founded in 1754 but was forced to close for fourteen years during the lead-up to the Revolutionary War, the British occupation of the city, and the ensuing Post-War depression. It was re-founded in 1789 as part of the larger cultural revival of the city in the 1780s and has been open since. The library has always functioned on a subscription basis, with members providing the funds by which the library continues to operate and buy new books. Yet, the re-founding of the library was not just the reemergence of a lapsed cultural institution during the post-war recovery, it was also a part of larger debates about the cultural resources necessary to sustain the new national government. Read this in its original format here.

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

The 40 Wall Street Corporation was formed in 1929 to construct a speculative skyscraper for the anchor tenant, the Manhattan Company (the Bank of Manhattan). Among the principal investors was the Starrett Corporation, a company owned by the men who were also the building’s general contractors, Starrett Brothers & Eken. Architect Craig Severance and associated architect Yasuo Matsui designed a simply ornamented, setback skyscraper with raised brick patterning and cast stone-ornament, and with an elaborate crown and spire in French Gothic style. The story of the building’s height, which topped out at 927 feet above the sidewalk, has become an urban legend. In the real estate boom of the late 1920s many developers sought a PR angle to promote their buildings. In 1929 there was a celebrated “race” to erect the tallest tower in the world. The rival for the title was the Chrysler Building, then under construction in midtown. Adding an edge to the competition was the fact that Severance had only recently dissolved his professional partnership with William Van Alen, the architect of the Chrysler Building. The race between the two towers was avidly reported by the press. Both buildings were topped out within a year of their first steel columns. Van Alen was ultimately victorious, having kept secret the Chrysler Building’s 185 foot aluminum spire, erected within the tower’s fire shaft. After 40 Wall Street had been topped out, that thin needle was hoisted from inside the tower to bring the height to 1046 feet and the title to Chrysler. Bested, 40 Wall Street went on to a lackluster career. The building opened after the Stock Market crash, and many of the prospective tenants reneged on their leases. The building was not fully rented until 1944, nearly fifteen years after its construction. Its bad luck continued. In 1946 an army transport plane en route to Newark Airport got lost in fog and crashed into the building’s fifty-eighth floor, killing all five people aboard. Badly in need of renovation and eighty-nine percent vacant, in 1992 40 Wall Street was purchased by the Trump Organization for less than eight million dollars. With a great deal of investment, 40 Wall Street has been well tenanted since the late 1990s.

The New York Stock Exchange holds a certain place of privilege in the iconography of American finance. The columns and pediment of its Broad Street front are immediately recognizable, even if the name of the architect behind the design is largely forgotten.

Mortimer Building, 9-11 Wall Street ca. 1919. 50 years before this building was erected, Richard Mortimer built a four-story brick building in the same spot. After years of disrepair, the building was torn down and replaced with the Mortimer Building by the executor of the Mortimer estate W.Y. Mortimer. Completed in 1885, the Mortimer Building was used entirely for office space for lawyers, brokers, and bankers. After its construction, the New York Times detailed the interior, describing a light-filled space with wainscotting in marble and mahogany walls, accompanied by iron and stone staircases. The building was touted as completely fireproof. The building adjoined the New York Stock Exchange until it was acquired by the Exchange in 1918 in order to consolidate and make room for additional trading floor space.

Mutual Life Insurance Building, ca. 1890. Erected during the Civil War for the Mutual Life Insurance Company, this ornate, mansard-roofed building was considered the "handsomest and costliest" building in the city when completed. The building's original owners occupied the structure for less than two decades. In 1911 the building was sold to the Guaranty Trust Company who planned to raze it and rebuilt. 'Engineering News,' trade magazine reported on the intricacies of demolishing such a large structure. The grand Guaranty Trust Building was completed in 1912.

Group of Four Trees.

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.

Though now populated with shops and restaurants, the South Street Seaport used to be a bustling hub of commerce and enterprise. Come with us as we walk you through its historic past.

Mail and Express Building Completed in 1892, the odd skyscraper headquarters of the Mail and Express was an extraordinarily ornate and narrow 14-story slab embedded in a mid-block site, with a main facade on Broadway a mere 21 feet wide. The building was L-shaped, extending 211 feet deep into the lot; a second section on Fulton Street was wider, but only eleven stories. Designed by the Beaux Arts architects Carrère and Hastings, the Broadway façade had the appearance of the entrance to a French chateau squeezed and stretched vertically and capped with an attenuated mansard tower and spire. The Broadway entrance to the paper's business offices were adorned and overwhelmed by four large caryatids designed by the sculptors J. Massey Rhind and Philip Martiny representing the "four continents." The high degree of sculpture and architectural ornament, also seen in the World Building, seems to have been driven by the desires of the strong-willed client, the publisher Col. Elliott Shepard, who was married to the heiress Margaret Louise Vanderbilt. In 1888, Shepard purchased the newspaper from Cyrus Field, the prominent businessman responsible for laying the first transatlantic cable. An extremely religious man, Shepard included text from the Bible on the editorial page; the paper was politically Republican. The critic Barr Ferree reviewed the building in Stone Magazine, noting that the individual detail of the Broadway façade made a better impression than the structure as a whole. He credited Carrère and Hastings for doing the best they could under the difficult circumstances of lot size and shape and client demands, noting that, "commercial requirements, however, have little regard for the necessities of the architect." The presses of the Mail and Express occupied the basement and could turn out 98,000 papers per hour. The editorial offices and the composing room were located on the tenth and eleventh floors. Like all the other newspaper buildings of the time, the Mail and Express rented extra floors to tenants; these included technology companies and publishers, such as Electrical Engineer and the American Lithographic Company. The Mail and Express Building survived only until 1920 when it was torn down along with others on the block to make way for the monumental American Telephone and Telegraph Building.

National City Bank Building, 1931.

New York Post Office, 1912.

Completed in 1875, the Tribune Building was the first tall building on Park Row. Whether or not one considers it a "skyscraper" it was the tallest office building in the city, with a clock tower stretching to 260 feet-just short of the Gothic spire of Trinity Church. This ambitious architectural statement was the project of Whitelaw Reid, who in 1872 became editor of the venerable New-York Tribune, which Horace Greeley had established in 1841. Reid aspired to erect a "printing palace" that would answer the paper's need for more space and be entirely fireproof, a consideration made key by recent major fires in Chicago and Boston. Reid closely controlled all decisions about the project, including the selection of the prominent architect Richard Morris Hunt, and he acted, in effect, as the contractor, hiring the various vendors of the construction work. The structure, typical of the 1870's, was traditional load-bearing masonry, but the mechanical systems entirely modern. The Scientific American wrote admiringly of the building on May 1, 1875: "On April 10, the 34th anniversary of its commencement, the New York Tribune opened the doors of its new office to the public. The structure is of great height and immense solidity, and is built of brick laid in cement, with dressing of stone and granite. The finial on the clock tower is 260 feet above the sidewalk, surmounting a building containing a sub-cellar, basement, nine stories, and attic. The walls of the lower portion, sustaining the great weight of the masonry, are 5 feet 2 inches to 6 feet thick. The building is claimed to be absolutely fireproof. No wood is used in its construction except for flooring, doors, and window frames; and the wooden floors are mere plankings laid over solid cement. No iron pillars are used, masonry being employed to carry the superstructure. The floors are ingeniously constructed, being flat arches of hollow concrete blocks, resting at the end on the flanged iron beams; they are made of plaster of Paris, coke dust and hydraulic lime of Teil. When the whole building is complete, it will certainly be an exceedingly handsome and commodious structure. "A Hoe web press is already at work in the new pressroom, and has a capacity of 16,000 complete copies per hour. The composing room is fitted up for one hundred compositors, and the editorial and other offices are intended to be models of comfort and convenience. Speaking tubes are used for intercommunication, and pneumatic tubes convey papers and documents between the editors' room, the counting room, and the composing room; and the elevators and heating and ventilating apparatus are all of the most modern design."

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

There were several successive Equitable Buildings on this site as the powerful insurance company headquarters expanded over the last decades of the nineteenth century to fill the entire block framed by Broadway, Pine, Nassau, and Cedar Streets. The first Equitable Building, a seven-story building designed by Kendall & Gilman, was finished in 1870 and was innovative both in terms of its structure and technology. Said to be the first office building in New York to use a passenger elevator, the building exploited technology to render the upper floors as convenient, and even more desirable, than the lower floors. In addition, the building's use of metal structural columns represented a major step towards the construction techniques that would later develop into steel cage construction. The building expanded in numerous construction campaigns, most notably George B. Post's extension of 1889 which more than doubled the building's Broadway frontage. It was a highly profitable investment that the Equitable Company was keen to optimize. On January 9, 1912, the Equitable Building was almost completely destroyed by fire, despite its much-touted "fire-proof" construction. Chicago architect Ernest R. Graham's firm was retained the day after the fire to supervise the stabilization and demolition of the ruin, and later the redevelopment of the site with a much larger structure. The company had previously discussed plans for the building's redevelopment with Graham for three years before the fire. The new Equitable Building was to represent once again the heights of modernity: ample and speedy elevator service, state-of-the-art heating and ventilation systems, fireproof construction, and fire- safety systems. At 38 stories, the Equitable Building was never the tallest, but it was the largest building in the world with 1,200,000 square feet of rentable office space. The massive size of this building galvanized the political forces necessary to enact the 1916 Zoning Resolution, which required high-rises to set-back at their upper levels. The main entrance to the building is on Broadway.

Manhattan Company Building, 1930. 40 Wall Street, a 71-story neo-Gothic skyscraper now called the Trump Building, was built in 1930 by Craig Severance for the Manhattan Company, a bank founded by Aaron Burr in 1799. The building was also known as the Manhattan Trust Company building. During construction, Severance's ex-business partner, William Van Alen was designing the Chrysler Building. The two architects were racing for the tallest building in the world. When completed, Severance's tower measured 927 feet, a figure soon surpassed by the Chrysler Building and its famous 125-foot spire. There was debate at the time because the highest usable floor in 40 Wall Street was higher than Chrysler’s, and the spire the Chrysler building was said to be cosmetic, not functional. The debate was short-lived: less than a year later, the 1,250-foot Empire State Building was completed, robbing both architects of the coveted "tallest building" title.

Isamu Noguchi's "Red Cube," ca. 1970. Noguchi's sculpture was installed in 1968, outside the Marine Midland Building at 140 Broadway.

251 Water Street, door detail, ca. 1960. Constructed in 1888 for John N. Eitel, a clothing merchant, the Romanesque Revival and Italianate building is a striking structure. The main entrance facade (at 22 Peck Slip) opens up into three sweeping archways and the residential entrance on Water Street features a detailed terra cotta plaque above the door, as seen here. Suffering through the middle of the 20th century, along with the rest of the Seaport area, the building lost some ornamentation, including its cornice. A more recent renovation has restored the facade of the building, and the once seafood wholesale market now has a bar and restaurant on the ground floor.

Stamp Center Building, Nassau Street, 1954. Nassau Street was a hub of New York’s stamp collecting community in the early 20th century. Collecting was especially popular during the 1930s, and stamp storefronts and dealers operated along the street until 1994, when the last shop relocated to Pennsylvania.

St. Paul Building & St. Paul's Chapel, ca. 1907. While many skyscrapers were made taller by pointed roofs or cupolas, George B. Post's St. Paul Building (1897) reached its lofty height with a flat roof. Its neoclassical style, with its many-layered rows of columns, was consistent with older neighboring buildings. The St. Paul Building was 315 feet tall. The 26-story building was demolished in 1958 and replaced by the Western Electric Building.

Mac Lac Shellac, November 29, 1935. Mac Lac Shellac was an early 20th-century shellac manufacturer that during the 1920s and 1930s (as shellac was utilized on more products) grew through a number of mergers. They had their headquarters at 80 Cliff Street before moving to 127 Maiden Lane. The streets depicted here, Cliff Street from Ferry Street, no longer exist. They were demapped in the 1950s and 1960s for the Brooklyn Bridge-Southwest Urban Renewal. Today the former location of this section of Cliff Street is on the land occupied by the Southbridge Towers.

American Tract Society Building ARCHITECT: R. H. Robertson DATE: 1894-95 STYLE: Romanesque, Renaissance Revival The American Tract Society Building was commissioned as a speculative venture by the American Tract Society, founded in 1825 to publish and distribute religious tracts and literature, which emerged as one of the largest American publishers prior to the Civil War. It is one of the earliest, as well as one of the earliest extant, steel skeletal-frame skyscrapers in New York, partially of curtain-wall construction. It was also one of the tallest and largest skyscrapers in the city upon its completion. The design combines elements of the Romanesque and Renaissance Revival styles, with two similar principal facades arranged with an overall tripartite vertical scheme, and the building is clad in rusticated gray Westerly granite, gray Haverstraw Roman brick, and buff-colored terra cotta.

The dark mass of 53-story One Liberty Plaza was an unusual departure from the glass curtain-wall typical of International Style office buildings. One Liberty Plaza's thick columns and horizontal steel spandrels, which have the appearance of massive I-beams, give the building enhanced strength and were appropriate for the tower’s original tenant, the U.S. Steel Company. The exterior walls, which are an integral element of the building's structure, showcase an advanced use of steel in high-rise construction. This structural system frees the building of most interior columns allowing for a more open and readily adaptable floor plan. One Liberty Plaza occupies the site of the Singer Building (once the world's tallest) and City Investing Company Building (once the world's largest) both built-in 1907 and demolished in 1969. The Singer Sewing Machine Company initially commissioned Ernest Flagg to design a 35-story tower, but soon decided to nearly double that height to 600 feet. Completed in 1908, just twenty months after the foundations were set, the Beaux-Arts style tower clad in red brick and bluestone stretched to 612 feet, besting 15 Park Row by more than 200 feet. However, the Singer Building held the title for only a year before it was surpassed by the Metropolitan Life Tower at Madison Square. The tower's demolition sparked a little protest at the time. Major losses throughout the 1960s -- Penn Station being the most prominent -- galvanized public concern regarding the preservation of landmark-quality buildings. Architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable described the Singer Building's last hours: "Piranesi anyone? The master never produced a more impressive ruin than the Singer Building under demolition. Curious New Yorkers who risk a piece of Pavonazza marble on the head by looking beyond the boarding that surrounds the tower will find a scene of rich, surrealist desolation. Domed vaults supported by bronze trimmed marble columns await the sledgehammer in the half-light and plaster dust. The distinctive tower, a triumph of 'modern' steel construction that added its Beaux-Arts silhouette to the picturesque bouquet of early skyscraper spires, will probably be replaced by one more 'flat-top,' diminishing the character of the downtown skyline." Erected simultaneously with the Singer Building was the City Investing Building, a speculative office block that contained more rentable space than any other in the city at the time of its completion in 1908. Francis Kimball, the architect of many other early skyscrapers, designed it. The building occupied an awkward and long site with narrow frontages on Broadway and Church Street. Liberty Park occupies the full block directly to the south. The developers of One Liberty Plaza in exchange for additional floors created it under an incentive available under the 1961 Zoning Law. On the block that is now the open plaza to the south of the skyscraper once stood the Washington Life Building, an early skyscraper of 1898 by Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz.

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.

100 years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, a 24-year-old black New Yorker stood her ground on a streetcar. With courage and perseverance, she won the first recorded legal victory for equal rights on public transportation. This story appeared in its original format here.

142-144 Beekman Street Designed by George B. Post 1885 This fine Romanesque Revival style building was designed by George B. Post for Schermerhorn descendant Ellen S. Auchmuty. Post, who trained in the Beaux-Arts tradition, also designed such notable works as the New York Stock Exchange, Bronx Borough Hall and the Fifth Avenue mansion of Cornelius Vanderbilt II. The Beekman Street façade is ornamented with sea motifs, a fitting theme given that its first occupants were businesses associated with the Fulton Fish Market. The four stories above the cast-iron ground floor are decorated with starfish tie rod washers, fish keystones and a cockle-shell roof cornice made of terra cotta. 142-144 Beekman Street is located in the New York City and State and National Register of Historic Places South Street Seaport historic districts.

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.

In 1905, James Hazen Hyde threw one of the grandest parties of the Gilded Age: a Versailles-themed costume ball at Sherry's restaurant.

Just shy of the stock market crash and at the tail-end of a real estate boom of the late 1920s, a race to the top broke out between three buildings, who vied for the title of the World's Tallest Building. A clear rivalry developed between Craig Severance, architect of 40 Wall Street, and his ex-business partner, William Van Alen, who designed the Chrysler Building. Just uptown, the Empire State Building threatened to cast a shadow over its two competitors, topped off with an unlikely crown.

Wall Street bombing, 1920. At lunchtime on September 16, 1920, as banking clerks and businessmen bustled through the streets, a massive bomb tore through the Financial District. Set off from a rickety horse-drawn wagon at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets, the bomb was heard AND felt for blocks. It derailed a streetcar a block away, sent debris as high as the 34th floor of a neighboring building, and created a rain shower of glass from broken windows. In total 38 men and women were killed, while hundreds were injured. Though the investigation into the culprits and motivations of the terrorism went unsolved, it was believed that the business of J.P Morgan was the intended target (who some felt had profited from the horrors of World War I). Most of the dead though were not high-level bankers but secretaries and clerks. Historians believe that the action was carried out by Galleanists (Italian anarchists), who had been responsible for similar, though smaller bombings in 1910. This was the deadliest domestic terror attack until the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing.

New York Stock Exchange, ca. 1970. Long before the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011, the area of Lower Manhattan near the Stock Exchange was the site of political protests. Established in 1987 as the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, the group was well known for their confrontational style of advocacy. On the same day as a planned protest of pharmaceutical companies they felt were profiting from the AIDS epidemic on the street outside of the building, a few members sneaked into the building. They chained themselves to a balcony and rained fake $100 bills onto the trading floor. This was the first time in history the opening bell of the Exchange had been disrupted.

New York Stock Exchange. Contained in this building we find, paradoxically, a complete sculptured pediment of Classic inspiration and what was probably the first all-glass curtain wall in New York. The pediment figures were executed by the sculptor J.Q.A. Ward, assisted by Paul W. Bartlett. The glass curtain wall, placed directly behind the colonnade, provides light for the great floor of the Exchange itself.

New York Stock Exchange ca. 1970 On the morning of May 8th of 1970, 700 activists, mostly college and high schoolers, gathered at the intersection of Broad and Wall Street to protest the Kent State shootings and Vietnam War. However as the day wore on, hundreds of construction workers, mobilized by the head of the AFL-CIO John Brennan, arrived as counter-protestors and began harassing the activists. At first, the construction workers simply pushed the activists but realizing the police were indifferent to their actions breached the line and started assaulting them. In what became known as the hard-hat riots, the construction workers then pursued the students and beat them, as well as forcing their way into PACE University and City Hall. Only six arrests were made as the police largely observed the riot.

63 Nassau Street, ca. 1974. No. 63 Nassau Street, a New York City Landmark since 2007, included one of just five extant cast iron facades by James Bogardus. A trained watchmaker and inventor with Dutch colonial roots, Bogardus took out the first patent for the architectural use of cast iron in 1850. The Bogardus facade at No. 63 Nassau was an update to an 1844 structure owned by Augustus Thomas, the son of "kitchen tinware manufacturer" Thomas Thomas (real name). When the elder Thomas died in 1856, Augustus Thomas — who had offices in another Bogardus-designed cast iron-fronted building at 183 Broadway — contracted Bogardus to update his Nassau Street home to stand out among new commercial storefronts in the area's nascent jewelry district. The LPC attributes the facade to Bogardus, taking a number of indicators into consideration, including a distinctive detail: bas-relief medallion busts of Benjamin Franklin, visible at the third story. Similar details had been identified at confirmed Bogardus facades (he was known to retain and re-use wooden patterns for his cast iron molds).

Liberty Tower, ca. 1980. Rising 33 stories on a site only sixty-eight feet by eighty-two feet, Liberty Tower was a prominent feature of the early twentieth- century skyline. Its white terra-cotta cladding and steeply pitched copper roof evoke late English Gothic architecture. So slender a tower required elaborate wind bracing in its steel frame, and its foundations were also unusual, as caissons had to be sunk through quicksand to bedrock at a depth of 95 feet. In 1980, Liberty Tower became a pioneering example of the adaptive re-use of early office buildings when it was converted into condominiums.

US Navy Admirals arrive at City Hall Park, on their way to the unveiling of the USS Maine National Monument, 1913.

City government in New Amsterdam had met in the Dutch Stadt Huys, built as a tavern in 1642 on Pearl Street, then known simply as The Waterside. After the British takeover, in 1703, a new building, seen in the upper image, was constructed to serve as City Hall. Together with Trinity Church and the First Presbyterian Church, City Hall gave weight to the dignity of the west end of Wall Street. After the Revolutionary War, in 1788, Pierre L'Enfant, who was best known for his later planning of the new capital city of Washington D.C., designed the renovation and enlargement of City Hall, which became knows as Federal Hall when it housed the Continental Congress. The balcony served as the location of the inauguration of George Washington as the nation's first president on April 30th, 1789. The nation's capital moved to another temporary home in Philadelphia in 1790 and the building resumed its previous function of city hall until the current City Hall was constructed in 1812.

This temple-like building was erected as the U.S. Custom House. Its initial design was the work of Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis, one of the famous and talented partnerships in America in the early nineteenth century. The Greek Revival style temple form used here set the standard for commercial and government architecture on Wall Street in the pre-Civil War period. This building stands on the site of the first City Hall, later called Federal Hall. George Washington took the first presidential oath of office on the site in 1789. A designated National Landmark, the building is maintained by the National Park Service and open to the public with exhibits.

Federal Hall National Memorial prior to 1883 To place a circular rotunda in a rectangular building may seem illogical, but such were the vagaries of the Greek Revival. It was originally planned to build a Roman dome over the rotunda, set squarely in the middle of this Greek temple. The dome was never built, but the handsome rotunda may still be seen. This building is located on the site of the old Federal Hall, a Federal Style building designed by Major L'Enfant, on whose balcony George Washington took the oath of office as President.

127 John Street, 1971. Designed by Emery Roth & Sons, 127 John Street fills the full block from Fulton to John Street and Pearl to Water Street. The architects employed the corporate modernist style they were well known for in this period. The building was rendered in a straightforward and somewhat simple International style. The building's developers, though, hired an innovative designer named Rudolph de Harak for the graphic components. In fabricating the building's address on the facade, de Harak used four-inch diameter, pin-mounted silver balls in the typeface Microgramma. Microgramma was created in 1952 by Aldo Novarese and Alessandro Butti and was popular for use in technical illustrations, packaging, and science fiction films. The oversized addresses no longer grace the facade of 127 John Street; the 32-story office building was converted to residential use (an NYU dorm) in the late 1990s and was renamed 200 Water Street. ⠀ One of de Harak's other major design features does still remain on the site, though. No. 127 was constructed hugging a pair of low-rise 19th century brick buildings that stood on the northeast corner of John and Water Streets. Here on the Water Street facade of the old corner building the designer constructed a massive digital clock, 48 feet long and 24 feet high. Using Helvetica Medium for the numerals, the clock illuminates the hour, minute, and second. Current reports suggest that the clock no longer keeps accurate time. ⠀

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.

331 Pearl Street, ca. 1870. In 1854, Harper & Brothers, the preëminent publishing house of 19th century New York, retained architects James Bogardus, the pioneer of "fire proof" architectural cast iron, and John B. Corlies to design a new building for its offices and printing operation. Facing what was then Franklin Square, the Harper & Brothers building was located where the Manhattan approach to the Brooklyn Bridge lies today. "The Harper Establishment; or, How the Story Books Dre Made," an illustrated guide to the state-of-the-art building and the company's printing processes, was published in 1855 by — who else? — Harper's. Although the historic building was razed in 1925, its legacy lives on: the New York Public Library's DeWitt Wallace periodical reading room includes a 1982 mural by Richard Haas documenting landmarks in the city's publishing history, in which Bogardus's facade is featured.

New York Stock Exchange, 1889. The origins of the New York Stock Exchange date to 1792 when 24 brokers signed the Buttonwood Agreement, which set a set a floor commission rate. The exchange was housed in a rented space at 40 Wall Street (until it burned down in the fire of 1835) and a few temporary locations. The New York Stock Exchange, officially named in 1863, moved into its first permanent home at 10-12 Broad Street in 1865. Stock trading increased sixfold between 1896 and 1901, necessitating a large venue. The building at nos. 10-12 was demolished in 1901, along with its immediate neighbors, for the construction of a new Stock Exchange. Designed by George B. Post, the Classical Revival structure opened for trading in April of 1903.

"Rudy’s Lunch, Hungarian American Home Cooking,” the Prohibition-friendly guise of the tavern at the corner of Water and Dover Streets, 1932. Built in 1794 (though the historic district designation report lists 1801), 279 Water Street is the only surviving wood-frame house in Manhattan’s Seaport district. Originally home to a “grocery and wine and porter bottler,” the building’s 19th-century tenants included a variety of alcohol-serving establishments and a brothel, matching the area’s reputation for vice and depravity. The building’s Victorian details date to an 1888 renovation — 5 years after the adjacent Brooklyn Bridge opened — and many of its interior features date to the original construction. The Bridge Cafe opened in 1979 but has been shuttered since Hurricane Sandy, when it was inundated with nine feet of floodwater.

By the late 1980s, the AIDS epidemic had impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of people globally. New York City’s LGBT community was among the hardest hit, with infections and deaths occurring at an alarming rate. Government inaction prompted activist Larry Kramer to give an impassioned speech in March 1987 at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center (now the LGBT Community Center) in Greenwich Village. As a result, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) was formed a few days later as a political action group that sought to bring widespread attention to the AIDS crisis. “Silence = Death” became its motto. One of its biggest fights was against Burroughs Wellcome, the pharmaceutical company that manufactured the high-priced AZT, the only approved AIDS drug at the time. On September 14, 1989, ACT UP led a noon rally of 350 people in front of the New York Stock Exchange, targeting Burroughs Wellcome and other companies that it felt were profiteering from the AIDS epidemic (the demonstration was planned to coincide with those held in San Francisco and London that day).

New York Clearing House, ca. 1912. Founded in 1853, the New York Clearing House was a financial institution that facilitated the daily exchanges and settlements of money between the city's banks. The building, which stood five stories high with a marble front, was erected in 1896 by architect R.W. Gibson. Throughout its existence, the New York Clearing House dealt with many financial waves of panic and emergencies. By 1913, the Clearing House had begun to feel overwhelmed by surrounding skyscrapers and its growing company, but it wasn't until 1963 that it relocated to its new headquarters at No. 100 Broad Street. In 1964, the building was demolished for a Skidmore, Owings & Merrill acclaimed nondescript glass office tower.

George B. Post gave the New York Stock Exchange an appropriately monumental temple façade. The pristine white marble used for both Post’s original structure and Trowbridge & Livingston’s office building addition distinguishes the Exchange from its granite and brick-clad neighbors. The massive portico makes the presence of the trading floor within. Paul Wayland Bartlett sculpted the figures in the pediment after a design by John Quincy Adams Ward. They represent “Integrity Protecting the Works of Man.” The originals, which had weathered badly, have been replaced by copies in sheet metal. Trowbridge & Livingston’s restrained addition derives most of its visual impact from the richness of its marble cladding and its elegant form.

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

251 Water Street Designed by Carl F. Eisenbach 1893 In 1788-89, Water Street was widened to its current size and paved with cobblestones, but Belgian blocks have since replaced them. John Eitel commissioned this tenement for eight families with stores on the ground floor. This building is an impressive example of the Romanesque Revival style, and features gracious terra-cotta ornament, especially above the entrance on Water Street. The building is separated into three tiers, demarcated between the second and third stories by a stylized foliate band course, and between the fourth and fifth by a geometric-patterned band course. The ground floor features a wooden entrance door in the style of a double-X brace barn door, as well as a set of double doors and wide fanlight enclosed within a large horseshoe arch. The fourth story round-arched windows feature terra-cotta keystones with faces peering down to the street below. The great variety of window treatments and decorative motifs enliven the façade and allow this former tenement building to shine. 251 Water Street is located in the New York City and State and National Register of Historic Places South Street Seaport historic districts.

Federal Reserve Bank of New York The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at 33 Liberty Street, was designated a New York City Landmark on December 21, 1965. "This enormous building occupies an entire city block; it is fourteen stories high and has five stories below grade. The remarkable stone exterior is reminiscent of an early Italian Renaissance palace with the horizontal and vertical joints of the stones deeply grooved (rusticated). The wrought iron window grilles and lanterns represent some of the finest craftsmanship of this Century. The importance of the Federal Reserve Building lies in its vast size, fortress-like appearance, fine proportions and in the superb quality of its construction. It set a precedent for many later banks which were influenced by its design." On April 10, 1918, the New York Federal Board of Directors gave the Real Estate Committee the go-ahead to negotiate for the Maiden Lane/Liberty Street/Nassau Street block. The committee acquired a total of 45,750 square feet at the total cost of $4,797,881.72. Inside the cornerstone, sealed in a copper container, is a time capsule holding documents including a roster of current employees, the New York Times and Herald from the morning, the 1921 Annual Report of the Bank, several Federal Reserve notes and a 1922 Peace Dollar. Completed in 1924, the New York Fed's main building at 33 Liberty Street in New York City is the largest bank structure in the world, filling almost the entire block bounded by Maiden Lane, Nassau, Liberty and William Streets. The building is composed of rusticated limestone and sandstone ashlar with deeply inset bronze windows and doors. The auditing and accounting departments moved to the eighth floor of the new building on May 29, 1924, beginning a process that would take several months with the last of the 2,500 employees settled in the new quarters by the end of October. The Fed's $3 billion in cash and securities was transferred from the Equitable Building to the recently opened main building on September 21st, 1924. After months of planning, the move was carried out on a quiet Sunday morning taking nearly 100 trips with a fleet of 37 armored cars, 150 NYPD officers, 50 detectives, 15 bomb squad members, 60 Secret Service agents & 40 Federal Reserve guards armed with Thompson automatic rifles. In September 1933, the New York Fed was finally able to purchase a small building on the east side of the 33 Liberty Street block (known as the Montauk Building) for $356,250. This was less than their original bid over a decade before. It now holds ownership of the complete block. The timing was propitious. Its trucking enclosure was taxed to capacity and the space the extension provided permitted trucks to drive in one way and out the other. On January 17th, 1936, the William Street Addition (on the site of the former Montauk Building) was completed. The addition took two years and cost $800,000.

City Hall Post Office and Courthouse, May 25, 1938. Construction on the City Hall Post Office and Courthouse — nicknamed “Mullett’s monstrosity” for architect Alfred B. Mullett — began in 1869, but was not completed until 1880, by which time the building’s elaborate French Second Empire design had fallen out of fashion. By the early 20th century, calls for the reviled building’s demolition were frequent. It was finally torn down in 1938, about one month after Berenice Abbott took this photograph.

Schermerhorn Row is a collection of individually New York City Landmark buildings, located within the National Register-listed South Street Seaport Historic District, and home of the South Street Seaport Museum. It is one of the most significant examples of early 19th century commercial architecture in New York State.

Singer Building ca. 1905 Entering the lobby of this building in the summer of 1908, one would have been struck by its appearance, so different from the staid Classical interiors of the day. Here, for the first time, was a commercial building with a twentieth-century feeling- an almost plastic flow of lines; rich, warm-colored marble edged with crisp bronze profiles; columns flowing upward into pendentives which once supported glowing saucers of glass; and above all a great feeling of height and elegance. Ernest Flagg, the architect, was one of the few who, having caught the spirit of the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, were able to apply its principles with freedom of expression.

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

The Bankers Trust Building, ca. 1938. The original granite clad, Neoclassical tower, topped with a monumental stepped pyramid, rises on the corner of Broad and Wall Streets from a site ninety feet square. The pyramid, which was once the trademark of the now-defunct Banker’s Trust, is modeled on the classical Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. Until this point, the more prominent banks and investment houses of Wall Street had eschewed the novelty of high-rise construction. Trowbridge and Livingston were also the architects of the J.P. Morgan Building, diagonally across the street, and the New York Stock Exchange Extension, across Wall Street. They imbued the tower’s design with a sense of monumentality. Note how the deeply set windows in the ground and first floor give the base a sense of real solidity -- an effect also achieved by the deep-set Ionic colonnade below the pyramid top. An L-shaped Art Deco extension surrounds the tower on three sides. While the extension employs a modernist vocabulary, its design defers to the architecture of its origins. Shreve Lamb & Harmon were also the architects of the Empire State Building. Until recently the tower contained one of the most beautiful Art Deco banking halls in the city and was home to the Skyscraper Museum from 1998-1999. It has since been converted to a health club.

The story of the New York World Building begins directly after the Civil War.

World Building, ca. 1910. In commissioning the controversial New York World Building (1890), Joseph Pulitzer hoped to assert his paper's dominance in American journalism. George B. Post's design stood out, not only for its imposing height (it was the tallest building in New York City in 1890), but also for its colorful facade and iconic dome. The building was 309 feet tall (349 at the tip of the spire). The building was condemned in 1953 and razed in 1955 for a new car entrance ramp onto the Brooklyn Bridge.

This trompe l'oeil conceals what author Glenn Palmer-Smith called a "twentieth-century utilitarian intrusion," a Con Edison substation. Artist Richard Haas was commissioned by both energy company and City Walls Inc. to paint this Landmarks Commission-approved mural depicting a revivalist Greek facade with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge. The real bridge is, of course, blocked by the building.

Metal Exchange Building ca. 1910 Today we see only the stuccoed remains of this small masterpiece. Built as the Seventh Ward Bank, it later became the Metal Exchange, housing the Lion Brewery in its basement. This building with its delicate Corinthian pilasters is a fine late example of the Classic Revival in Manhattan, as it comes closer to Roman precedent than it does to Greek.

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

R. G. Hutchinson Stationer and Printer, 1897. Robert L. Bracklow worked as a clerk at this stationery store and printer in his early 20s. He soon took over ownership of the business and moved the store to 18 John Street. Bracklow was a member of the Camera Club of New York, known for his photography of New York in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Robert L. Bracklow Stationary Store, 1909. Pictured is Robert L. Bracklow's Stationary and Dutton's Restaurant. Robert L. Bracklow was a member of the Camera Club of New York. He sold prints of his photography at his store.

Queen Insurance Company Building (right) at William and Cedar Streets, March 26, 1936. The Mutual Life Insurance Co., Chase National Bank and Equitable buildings are visible in the background, along Cedar Street. The Queen building, a steel-frame structure completed in 1897, was part of the “superblock” razed in the mid-1950s ahead of the construction of One Chase Manhattan Plaza.

R. G. Hutchinson Stationer and Printer, 1902. Robert L. Bracklow was a photographer in the late 19th and early 20th century. He took over the R.G. Hutchinson Stationary Store in the early 1900s and moved it to 18 John Street in 1902 (notice the added name on the sign). The store specialized in legal stationary.

The Walter Franklin House (also known as the Samuel Osgood House), where President George Washington lived between April, 1789 and February 1790, making it the First Presidential residence. The building was demolished in 1856. Today, the Brooklyn Bridge approach rises over its site.

Charles Solomon was a 20th century Jewish, socialist New York City politician and judge. Born in 1889 on Manhattan’s East Side to Russian-born, Yiddish-speaking parents, Solomon was a resident of Brooklyn for most of his life. He made frequent speeches in Lower Manhattan. He can be seen here in 1932 at Wall and Broad Streets.

Tin Building Pier 17 at South Street between Fulton and Beekman Streets Berlin Construction Co., 1907; reconstruction: Wank Adams Slavin Associates 1995; reconstruction: SHoP Architects, 2016- The Tin Building site hosted the Fulton Fish Market from its inception in 1835, originally housed in a small wooden shed, which was rebuilt in 1848. In 1869, the Fulton Fishmongers Association constructed a more permanent building, though still made of wood. That structure was moved to Pier 18 in 1894 (since demolished), and the Tin Building was constructed on the site in 1907. Modeled after the 1869 building, the neo-Classical design of the structure consists of a corrugated metal façade with decorative two-story sheet metal pilasters. The building was largely destroyed by fire in 1995, but was reconstructed by Wank Adams Slavin Associates. In 2005, the Fulton Fish Market, which occupied both the Tin Building and the New Market Building, moved to Hunts Point in The Bronx, where it continues to operate today. In 2016, the Tin Building will be rehabilitated into a seafood-themed market. HHC plans to relocate and reconstruct the building about 18 feet southeast of its current location as part of its Pier 17 revitalization. SHoP Architects plans to restore historic features that disappeared in the 1995 fire and repair damage sustained during Superstorm Sandy in 2012. The Tin Building is located in the New York City and State and National Register of Historic Places South Street Seaport historic districts.

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

New York City is one of the most photographed places in the world. With globally-recognized icons like the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building, this collection includes some of the city's most popular spots to recreate a historic photo, along with a few underrated gems. Remember, tag your photos on social media with @museumofcityny and @urbanarchiveny for a chance to have your before/after photos featured!

John Street Methodist Church ARCHITECT: Philip Embury DATE: 1841 STYLE: Anglo-Italianate Among its important qualities, the John Street Methodist Church is an outstanding example of the best architecture produced on a small scale in the Anglo-Italianate style. As the first home in New York City of Methodism, it serves as a fitting and important symbol of that faith. The church has remained virtually untouched in the heart of the financial district. This church is notable for its simple dignity, having as a central feature an extremely handsome Palladian window placed directly above the broad main entrance door.

By Harold Schechter When Joseph Pulitzer purchased the New York World in May 1883, a typical front page consisted of a half-dozen columns of densely packed type, unrelieved by illustrations or eye-catching headlines. Viewed from a slight distance, the page resembled a solid block of gray print, so dreary in appearance that the layout was referred to as a “tombstone.” The content was equally numbing. On May 10, 1883—its last day under the ownership of the financier Jay Gould—the World ran page-one stories on the recent nominations submitted to the Board of Aldermen, the forthcoming dedication of the Brooklyn Bridge, and the election of the executive committee of the American Cocker Spaniel Club. Little wonder that the paper had a daily circulation of fewer than 12,000 copies and was losing $40,000 a year. Read this in its original format here.

41 Park Row ca. 1975. The New York Times moved to Park Row in 1857 after outgrowing its rented quarters at Nassau and Beekman streets. 41 Park Row would be the third office location for the rapidly growing Times since its founding in 1851. The Times Building was designed by architect Thomas R. Jackson as two mirror-image five-story stone buildings facing onto Printing House Square and City Hall Park. Printing presses and other machinery occupied the basement levels and the paper's offices were located on the first, fourth, and fifth floors, leaving two floors available for rent. Tenants included the Surrogate Court Office and the Patent Office. By 1888, the high-rise development of Park Row and the demand for rentable space in the area prompted the Times to capitalize on its prime location with a building that would more than double their space and provide additional rental income. George B. Post, the country's pre-eminent architect-engineer, was hired to design and erect the new building on the same site without interrupting any of the paper's operations. As the cover of Scientific American here shows, the replacement literally went up around the old. Stone load-bearing walls were gradually replaced by a metal-cage construction favored by Post that embedded iron members within the granite walls. King's Handbook of 1893 declared the new Times Building: "discreet, moderate, bold, vigorous, perfect in every detail of ornamentation, in moldings, in capitals, in gargoyles, so beautiful that it charms the naïve and the refined, the ignorant and the most learned, in art; the Times Building is the Times expressed in stone." After the paper relocated to Times Square in 1905, the former Times Building was renamed 41 Park Row and enlarged. Architect Robert Maynicke designed the alteration, which included the removal of the original mansard roof and the inclusion of two additional stories. Today, Pace University occupies the building.

85 and 99 John Street, June 9, 1938. "Looking through the wrought iron railing on the roof of 60 Wall Tower (at 70 Pine Street). The buildings seen at center with the significant setbacks are 85 and 99 John Street at Gold Street. Generally from left to right: City Hall Park, the back of the Municipal Building (very top center), and the approach ramp of the Brooklyn Bridge. The Third Avenue El is visible on the lower right."

"Manhattan’s major waterfront area in the late nineteenth century was located in the Fourth Ward, a district that formed an apron around the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge. In 1885, the Fourth Ward contained 30 acres of tenements that housed around 17,000 people. The area had been awash with cheap groceries, rat pits, and stale beer dives for years, and due to the growing population of transient sailors, prostitute traffic thickened exponentially; at this time in New York history, the Fourth Ward was, as historian Timothy Gilfoyle describes it, 'the most significant and the poorest waterfront zone of prostitution.' But the waterfront was also the centerpiece of an international trade city, signifying plurality and opacity. Significantly, the district appealed to no one ethnicity, class, race, or gender. Ethnically cohesive neighborhoods, or 'ghettoes,' would only emerge when jobs and industries became associated with specific ethnic groups–garments for the Jewish, cigars for the Bohemians, etc. But through the 1870s and ’80s, the East Side waterfront region of New York, though perhaps mainly Irish, was still composed of workers and unemployed groups that largely allied themselves with trade and the lifestyle of the wharves rather than with any particular language, religion, or national origin." For more on the Fourth Ward Waterfront, check out this article by Robert M. Dowling in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.

Cities Services, a petroleum company, erected this tower to house its corporate headquarters as well as rental floors. The company’s founder and chairman, Henry L. Doherty, an eccentric engineer and inventor supervised the design of the tower and intended to live in the penthouse, although poor health prevented him from ever doing so. The skyscraper was originally known as 60 Wall Street, a more prestigious address that was justified by the tower’s connection by a footbridge to a building with that address, now demolished. The 63 story tower rises as a slender shaft that is articulated with a series of shallow receding planes and at the top steps back to crest in a glass observatory which is illuminated at night. The brick cladding lightens from a browny-beige to a creamy-tan as the tower ascends. The base of the building is clad in a luxurious polished pink and black Minnesota granite.

207-211 Water Street Architect- uncertain but probably David Louderback 1835-36 The three warehouses at 207-211 Water Street were likely built by David Louderback, a mason who owned one of them. Excellent examples of the Greek Revival style, they feature monolithic granite piers with Tuscan capitals, brick bearing walls and Flemish bond brickwork in a distinguished, warm orange color. The façades are unified by granite lintels above the six-over-six windows and the granite cornice that spans all three rooftops. The South Street Seaport Museum owns the buildings, which they adaptively reused: No. 207 is the Museum Visitor’s Center; No. 209 is the Museum Books and Charts Store; and No. 211 is Bowne & Co. Stationers, a 19th-century print shop where old printing techniques and equipment are still in use. 207-211 Water Street is is located in the New York City and State and National Register of Historic Places South Street Seaport historic districts.

The Assay Office Building was designed and built by Martin E. Thompson in 1824 as the New York branch of the Bank of the United States. The building functioned as the U.S. Assay Office from 1853 until 1912. In 1915, The facade of the building was saved from destruction by I. N. Phelps Stokes, who paid to have it dismantled and stored at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was re-erected in 1924 as part of the facade of the museum's American Wing.

South Street between Peck Slip and Dover Street, April 1, 1937. No. 45 Peck Slip is the last building on the left of the row. Towers in the background are (left to right): Farmer's Trust, 60 Wall Tower, Bank of Manhattan, and 116 John Street. The large chimney is the New York Steam Corporation at 130 John Street.