Trinity Church ARCHITECT: Richard Upjohn DATE: 1839-46 STYLE: Gothic Revival, Church The present Church is a Gothic Revival monument, executed in brownstone by the noted ecclesiastical architect Richard Upjohn in a free rendering of English Gothic. The Church displays a wealth of ornament and detail, that it is a truly outstanding Church of one of New York’s oldest parishes and through its beauty and its wealth of historical associations, it is one of the outstanding monuments of the Gothic Revival.

Sixth Avenue Elevated tracks above Murray Street, April 14, 1902. The elevated trestle carrying the Sixth Avenue El ran over Murray Street for one block, after its downtown route over Church Street, before turning uptown at West Broadway. In the background, the Ninth Avenue El trestle is visible over Greenwich Street.

New York County Lawyers Association, ca. 1930. This very handsome little building, although basically an eclectic version of Federal architecture, is executed in stone instead of brick and vaunts a fine row of Corinthian pilasters, floral swags, and medallions. These features are reminiscent of Adamesque design and British prototypes.

The Barclay Vesey Telephone Building was one of the first skyscrapers built on downtown's gritty westside - a working waterfront dominated by piers, warehouses, and small-scale industry. The building housed offices and communications machinery for the New York Telephone Company. This dual function explains the building's unusual massiveness, as the machines housed on the interior did not require natural light. At ground level, the builders provided generous public arcades as well as a fantastically decorated lobby. Architect Ralph Walker's complex sculptural accents play off of the skyscraper's somber brick bulk. These accents on the building's exterior and in the lobby feature stylized shallow-relief trees, flora, and fauna. The Barclay Vesey Telephone Building was one of the first major skyscrapers of the "setback style," the ziggurat-like form suggested by the city's 1916 zoning law. It was also a masterpiece of Art Deco design by the architect. The famed French architect and theorist, Le Corbusier, used the Barclay Vesey Telephone Building as the frontispiece for the English language edition of his polemic, Towards a Modern Architecture. For him, it represented the functionality and power of American building in the late 1920's.

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.

My Archive Spring 2019 "Tent & Trails: self-portrait with my buddy Nate on a downtown open house day in 1997." —Ethan Wolff

Saint Peter’s Roman Catholic Church ARCHITECT: John R. Haggarty; Thomas Thomas DATE: 1836-40 STYLE: Greek Revival, Church St. Peter’s Church is an outstanding example of Greek Revival architecture executed in fine materials. It is a temple-form building of excellent proportions and that it is one of the oldest Catholic churches in the City. St. Peter’s Church is a granite building with a fine six-columned portico and a low-angled gable. As an early Catholic church, the present building closely follows the tradition of Classic monumentality of so many of its predecessors in Rome.

New York can sometimes seem so immense that it would make sense that some of the world's largest animals would have roamed its streets.

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.

22 Cortlandt Street, 1936. This East River Savings Bank branch was constructed in 1933. Designed by the same firm, Walker & Gillette, as the National City Bank of New York on Broadway and Canal, the two buildings share a number of features. This Art Deco structure also includes stylized eagles surrounding the bank seal, towering over the main entrance of decorate metalwork. Today the building houses a section of the enormous flagship Century 21 department store.

The fact that this interior and its building were design by a French and an American architect is an early reflection of the cosmopolitanism of New York. The building combines French elements with the Federal style. Building progress of this edifice was slow, primarily due to financial problems, but also owing to workers’ disputes and a yellow fever epidemic. By 1807 the building had only reached the second story window sill level. The City Hall Rotunda shares a sense of elegant spaciousness and even certain details, such as the single first flight of stairs with curved hand railing. The entrance hall, from which one first glimpse the Rotunda, is entered through five handsome arched doorways corresponding to the archways leading into the vaulted central corridor which laterally bisects the building.

Trinity Church ca. 1895 The present is the third Episcopal church on this site. Its spire was long a landmark on the horizon. Today we see it surrounded by high buildings, which tend to dwarf it, although in its day it was quite a large church. The quality of the Gothic Revival is well exemplified by the rather naive detail, the plaster vaults, and the traceried windows. The beautiful bronze doors, added at a later date under the supervision of Richard Morris Hunt, depict biblical scenes based on Italian precedent. That all the figures on the doors are not biblical is testified to by a little head on the frame of the right hand door; here we find sculptor Karl Bitter's "cher patron," Hunt himself, complete with beret and pointed beard.

Statue of Nathan Hale, the Revolutionary War spy, in City Hall Park, in front of the Woolworth Building, ca. 1980.

The Woolworth Building, framed by the base of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers., ca. 1977.

Frank W. Woolworth, the five-and-dime store king, commissioned architect Cass Gilbert to design a Gothic-style skyscraper on a full block front on Broadway between Park Place and Barclay Street. When the building was erected it rose across the street from the main downtown Post Office by Alfred Mullett. This massive mansarded structure of 1875 was later demolished and the site reclaimed as part of City Hall Park. Woolworth wanted his building to become the tallest in New York, and in the world, which meant that it needed to raise more than 700 feet– the height of the Metropolitan Life Tower. As the height escalated from a projected 625 feet to 792 feet, the cost grew from an estimated $5 million to the final cost of $13.5 million. Extensive foundations and wind bracing necessary for the tall tower as well as the ornate terra-cotta cladding and sumptuous interior fittings both inflated costs and created one of the masterpieces of early skyscraper design. The exterior is clad in a cream-colored terra cotta with subtle blue and yellow accents in the glaze. The design evokes the guildhall architecture of France and Belgium. Above the 24th floor a tower rises to the equivalent of 55-stories and is capped by a high-pitched copper roof, now a green patina, crowned with tracery and gargoyles. An observation deck, once open to the public, has been closed for decades. The sumptuous lobby features marble, fine mosaics and a rich program of sculpture, including brackets with medieval-style caricatures, including Mr. Woolworth counting his dimes and Gilbert cradling a model of the building. Allegorical murals of Commerce and Labor and ceiling vaults accented with thousands of gold tesserae make the lobby seem like a church. Indeed, the gothic tower was nicknamed "The Cathedral of Commerce." Mr. Woolworth financed the skyscraper in cash, which was unusual for a project of this size and cost, and he noted that the tower would be a valuable generator of publicity for the company. Still, through the 1910s, the Woolworth Company only occupied one and a half stories of the building. The rest of the building was occupied by more than 1,000 tenants. For most of the twentieth century, the building never had a mortgage -- something almost unheard of for such a large commercial structure. In 1998 the Woolworth Company's successor, the Venator Group, sold the tower for $155 million: this was the first time the property changed hands in its 85-year history. At the time of its completion, the Woolworth Building was widely praised for its elegant massing and the slender proportions of its tower. It was a paradigm of responsible high-rise architecture for the slender tower. which did not significantly limit the amounts of light reaching the street. Its slender silhouette contrasts strongly with the bulk of 120 Broadway, the Equitable Building, completed in 1915. Still, as a business proposition, the building's tower section has always been impractical since its floor-plate allowed only a small number of elevators, hardly enough to serve the needs of the first class office space it was intended to house. This problem may be rectified with the tower's conversion to residential use - a program that will not require such high elevator capacity.

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.

My Archive Spring 2019 "Three months before September 11, 2001. —Joe Curran

Although Trinity Church now appears toy-like, nestled among glass and steel giants, its spire was once the highest point on the Manhattan skyline. Until the construction, in the 1890s, of such towers as the American Surety Building at 100 Broadway and 15 Park Row, the 284-foot tall church tower afforded views to sightseers. At the entrance, note the large bronze doors designed by Richard Morris Hunt and executed by Charles Niehaus, Karl Bitter and J. Massey Rhind, dating from 1890 to 1896. Architect Richard Upjohn used local brownstone for the church's exterior, feeling its dark tone well suited the building’s romantic architecture. This was a controversial decision due to brownstone's low status. Many considered it an unsuitable material for a church, especially one of the most prominent and wealthy churches in the city. A quiet and comforting rest stop, especially during the summer months, Trinity welcomes visitors. Trinity Church is also open daily to worshipers and offers an extensive schedule of services.

My Archive Spring 2019 "My husband and I on a boat in NY Harbor on July 5, 1988. We were entertaining friends from Tokyo, showing them around the city. It was our friend Nobuko's first visit to the states although her husband Yoshio had visited on business many times before. This photo of us was taken by our Yoshio while on the Statue of Liberty ferry." —Elaine Engelstein

New York Telephone Building, 1936. Designed by Ralph Walker of the firm McKenzie, Voorhees & Gmelin in a Mayan-inspired Art Deco style, the massive New York Telephone Building was one of the most impressive buildings of the 1920s. The 32-story, buff brick clad structure, completed in 1927, has unusual massing with a short obliquely-angled tower, vertical piers ending on battlements at the top and sculptural ornaments on the many setbacks. It is considered one of the first skyscraper designed under the 1916 Zoning Law that required setbacks. The interior was designed as monumentally, with a neo-Romanesque Guastavino-vaulted arcade that runs the whole length of the Vesey Street side. The five sub-basement levels were built for and continue to house communications equipment, today a telephone switching center. The building's east and south facades were damaged following the collapse of WTC Building 7 in the attacks on September 11, 2001. In the years after the attacks, the original limestone carvings on the facade were reproduced.

Cary Building ARCHITECT: King & Kellum DATE: 1856-57 STYLE: Cast-iron The Cary Building’s two cast-iron facades are among the earliest surviving in New York. It was built in 1856-57 for the early dry goods department store of Cary, Howard & Sanger. It was one of the first important cast-iron buildings fabricated by D.D. Badger’s Architectural Iron Works, the most important architectural iron foundry in 19th-century New York. Its design is a key monument in mid-19th-century commercial architecture, marking the joining of the Italianate style with the cast-iron technology.

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.

A walking tour of some of Lower Manhattan's most notable landmarks.

New York's City Hall is one of the oldest continuously used City Halls in the nation that still houses its original governmental functions. Designed by Joseph François Mangin and John McComb Jr. and completed in 1812, it is one of the finest architectural achievements of its period. The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated City Hall an individual landmark in 1966 and its central rotunda an interior landmark in 1976. In 1993, the African Burial Ground and the Commons, which includes City Hall and the surrounding park, was designated a Historic District.

100 Trinity Place, viewed from Liberty Plaza Park (now Zuccotti Park), ca. 1975.

The Hudson-Fulton Celebration began more than 100 years ago. Starting on September 25, 1909, over a million New Yorkers and tourists enthusiastically joined in the two-week festivities to commemorate the tricentennial of Henry Hudson’s discovery of the river that now bears his name and the centennial of Robert Fulton’s invention of the steamboat. This story can be read in its original format here.

Entrance to New York Telephone Building, ca. 1995.

Woolworth Building ca. 1939 Frank Woolworth opened his first store in 1879. By 1910, he owned more than 600 Woolworth five-and-dime stores nationwide. On the prestigious site he acquired on Broadway across from City Hall Park, he envisioned a Gothic building soaring taller than the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building at the time the world's tallest skyscraper. Architect Cass Gilbert, knowing that an authentic Gothic building of this scale would be impractical, built a modern steel skeleton clad in masonry and terra cotta with Gothic details. From the 30-story base rose a 25-story tower, for a combined height of 792 feet. Nicknamed the Cathedral of Commerce, it reigned as the world's tallest skyscraper from its completion in 1913 until William Van Alen's Chrysler Building surpassed it in 1929. A 1980s restoration of the exterior cost more than the original construction.

Workers lay pipe for the high pressure water system along Chambers Street, between Church Street and West Broadway; undated photo.

Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, honorary chairman of their tour, greeted 1936's champion "Maccabee" soccer team visiting from British mandate Palestine, here to play against the city's own All-Star team and American Soccer League team, as a fundraiser providing relief for Polish Jews, recently under siege by anti-Semitic riots.

Laing Stores, 1954. Famed cast-iron architectural pioneer James Bogardus designed this curved corner building at the northwest corner of Washington and Murray Streets in 1849. The four-story building was completed for the stores of Edward H. Laing. Construction on the building took just two months, an impressive accomplishment for the period. It was one of the earliest uses of prefabricated, mass-produced, modular iron parts for curtain-wall construction, and it was one of the oldest cast-iron building in the world. The building was scheduled for demolition in the late 1960s as part of the urban renewal of the Washington Market area. It remained standing until 1971. Owing to its iconic place in architectural history (the NY Times suggested that " in a sense, all skyscrapers are its grandchildren") the building was carefully dismantled. The pieces were labeled and stored in a nearby vacant lot. The hope was that the building would be reassembled next to its original site on the campus of Manhattan Community College. But in 1974 disaster struck, three men were discovered removing the building pieces from the lot. While a small section of panels was recovered, broken, in a Bronx junkyard, more than 60% of the pieces had already been sold for scrap. Later a building in the South Street Seaport was planned, and it was to use the remaining panels and new parts. While the remaining pieces were under lock and key following the earlier burglary, they too were stolen in 1977. An entirely new building, a reproduction of the Laing Stores, was completed at the corner of Fulton and Fronts Streets in 1983 and still stands.

Skybridges, which, though rare, could once be found in various Manhattan locations, are quickly becoming a thing of the past. While erected for pedestrian convenience, the utility of these aerial walkways became less relevant as elevator technology improved over the 20th century. Despite their decline, a handful of sky bridges remain today and are always an unexpected joy to see. In this list, we will introduce you to the history and wonder of some of our favorite "skywalks" (those long gone and those still extant)!

Central Building, 1915. The Central Building was constructed circa 1890 for the offices of the Central Railroad of New Jersey. The 12-story Romanesque Revival building was only a few short blocks from the ferry terminal used by the Central Railroad of NJ in Manhattan. The building was demolished in 1966 to make way for the construction of the World Trade Center.

Yep, NYC had a well-known firecracker district in the late 19th and early 20th century. Firecracker Lane was a short row of fireworks businesses on Park Place between Broadway and Church Street. James Pain was famous for his pyrotechnic shows, particularly his extravaganza in Manhattan Beach which for two weeks each summer nightly recreated the blaze that burned down the city of Pompeii (while "rebuilding" the city each day). This spectacle was an annual Manhattan Beach excitement for more than 25 years at the end of the 19th century. And Pain's Fireworks stood at 12 Park Place until they filed for bankruptcy in 1927, which was blamed in part (by the company and the press at the time) on a movement called "safe and sane Fourth." This was an effort by municipalities to prevent injuries and death from the explosives and instead to focus the holiday on family time and picnics.

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.

Tweed Courthouse, ca. 1975. The Old New York County Courthouse is better known as Tweed Courthouse, for the infamous Tammany Hall political boss who oversaw its funding (and the rampant kickbacks associated with construction costs). The massive Italianate courthouse, designed by architect John Kellum, quickly ran over its initial budget, with inflated materials costs used to fill Tammany coffers. In 1873, twelve years after the cornerstone was laid and two years after original architect Kellum's death, Tweed was convicted of embezzlement in an unfinished courtroom. Tweed's trial and imprisonment ground construction to a halt. Though architect Leopold Eidlitz was hired in 1874 to complete the courthouse interior and design a new wing, work did not resume until 1876. When Eidlitz's Romanesque south wing was completed in 1881, it was initially unpopular and considered incongruous to Kellum's Renaissance Revival design. For all its notoriety and expense, the Tweed Courthouse's utility as a civic structure was relatively short-lived. By the turn of the 20th century, the courthouse's association with political graft led politicians and press alike to call for its demolition, often as an element of redevelopment proposals for City Hall Park. When the new New York County Courthouse was completed in 1927, City Court operations shifted to the imperiled Tweed Courthouse. Over the next two decades, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and Robert Moses each called for the structure's removal. Still, the Tweed Courthouse survived, albeit without its grand entrance stairway, a casualty of the 1942 widening of Chambers Street. In 1984, the Landmarks Preservation Commission recognized both the historical and architectural significance of the long-unpopular courthouse in its designation as a New York City Landmark. A lengthy restoration project commenced in 1999, with the Giuliani administration declaring that the courthouse would become the new home of the Museum of the City of New York. The Bloomberg administration reversed these plans, instead determining that the Department of Education would become the next long-term Tweed tenant.

Singer Tower at night, ca. 1908.

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.

“Washington Market. Fish stand from balcony. April 28, 1933.” Decades before the World Trade Center was proposed, Manhattan’s Lower West Side was known for Washington Market, the city’s largest wholesale produce market. Established in 1812, the market became a prominent feature of the neighborhood, with over 500 vendor stalls by the 1880s. As regulations evolved, operations were moved into more orderly — and sanitary — quarters indoors. In 1962, the city closed Washington Market, shifting the wholesale food business to Hunter’s Point in the Bronx. Today, One World Trade Center’s base occupies the former site of the final Washington Market building.

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.

Once the tallest building in the world, the Woolworth Building remains one of Cass Gilbert's Masterpieces.

St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church ca. 1916 A full-fledged example of the Greek Revival in temple form executed in stone. The great dignity of this church is at once apparent. The shafts of the columns consist of only three drums, each one about ten feet tall. Such large pieces of stone usually came in by barge and were brought up from the river on horse-drawn drays.

America adopted the bald eagle as the emblem of the United States of America in 1782. The eagle symbolized strength, beauty, long life, flight, and freedom, characterized by its lofty flight and mountain top nesting. It not surprising then, with these idolized attributes, that the eagle would become an oft-seen decorative feature in architecture and memorial sculpture. In New York, a city that prides itself on its role as a powerful, resilient, and endlessly innovative center of financial, political and cultural life, the eagle has been incorporated into the built environment. Architects, designers, and sculptors have decorated their banks, civic buildings, statues of war heroes, skyscrapers, and airports (of course) with the noble birds. To see them, you usually just need to look up.

My Archive Spring 2019 "This is a photograph of my great-great grandfather’s jewelry store. His name was John William Day. He was born in New York in 1866 and died in 1908." — Todd Hirsch

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.

Hudson Terminal, ca. 1928. Hudson Terminal was a rapid transit station on the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad (H & M). The terminal, which contained five tracks and three platforms, was located along Radio Row. The two 22-story office skyscrapers, which sat above the terminal, were among the world's largest when the terminal opened in 1909. The main purpose of the H & M buildings was to connect the railroad and streetcar terminals on the New Jersey waterfront with Manhattan. The H & M's only station downtown near Wall Street was designed to handle as many passengers as possible to meet the demands of rush hour traffic. In 1962, as part of the construction of the World Trade Center, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey took over the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad. The terminal was eventually rebranded as the PATH and later, in 1972, demolished to make way for the World Trade Center. It was replaced by the original World Trade Center and an entirely new PATH station.

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

Evening Post Building ca. 1905. The Art Nouveau found little favor in New York, yet it offered many new possibilities to the designer. Here a beautiful expression of the underlying structure was combined with a novel, free-flowing design which subtly emphasized the vertical by means of elongation, both in the sculptured figures and in the niches behind them.

Thames Cafe, February 15, 1938. The the signage visible in this 1938 photograph, it seems likely that Thames Street was a busy lunch spot for the workers of the surrounding Financial District buildings including the twin Gothic skyscrapers at 111 and 115 Broadway, seen at center. The eateries include the Thames Tavern, the Thames Cafe Grill, and the Cooperative Cafeteria.

A walking tour through Lower Manhattan's skyscraper canyons and more than a century of high-rise construction. This walk focuses on the buildings on the west side.

Northwest corner of Church and Chambers Streets, 1927. The two five-story buildings on this corner were demolished in the early 1930s widening of Church Street. Today the building at the northwest corner of this intersection is the arched window Cary Building seen at the far left of this image.

In November 1952, the young Israeli state, a mere 4-years-old, sent their Minister of Police, Behar Sitreet, on an official fundraising tour. While in New York, Minister Sitreet paid a holiday visit to Mayor Vicent Impeliterri, who was also part of further holiday festivities at Madison Square Garden's massive Hanukkah pageant and fundraiser.

Chambers Street: Ruby's Book Sale (No. 119, left) and the former Irving Savings Bank (No. 115, center), ca. 1976. Ruby’s Book Sale, which opened in 1960 and moved to Tribeca in 1970, closed in March of 2005 after 45 years of business.

The New York City Department of Sanitation was established in 1881 to attack an overwhelming problem. New York City of the late 19th century was plagued with relentless filth. Horses left 2.5 million pounds of manure and 60,000 gallons of urine on the streets every single day. The unceasing expansion of the city left layers of grime on the streets.

Workers at a trench on Greenwich Street, beneath the Ninth Avenue El.

Cary Building Designed by King & Kellum, 1856-57 New York’s commercial influence grew in the mid-19th century, with the help of buildings like this one. Its early use of cast-iron and Italianate forms (most likely influenced by the A. T. Stewart Store) makes it a great example of some major trends and developments of its time. Cast by Daniel D. Badger’s Architectural Iron Works, it was one of the first to incorporate a façade made entirely of cast-iron. Its upper four stories are identical, with arched window openings supported by paired Corinthian columns and faux rustication to imitate stone. At its crown are a bracketed cornice and a pedimented roof with a cartouche bearing the building’s name. The Cary Building is a New York City designated Individual Landmark and listed on the State and National Register of Historic Places.

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.

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:

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.

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.

These twin Gothic towers, completed two years apart, are separated by the narrow canyon of Thames Street. Their roofs are connected by a small wrought iron- bridge. The Gothic ornament on these buildings harmonizes with the architecture of neighboring Trinity Church. They contrast sharply with the classical style that the eclectic Kimball used on the Empire Building on the south side of the churchyard. Beautifully restored in the 1990's, the lobbies of both towers are wonderful examples of High Victorian Gothic with floor and lower walls paneled in marble, bronze tracery moldings, and polychrome patterns stenciled on the walls. The elevator-door surrounds, designed to resemble Gothic choir stalls, seem more suited to a sacristy than an office building, as does the ceiling with its heavy beams and the transom windows with their leaded glass

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.

140 West Street ca. 1926 The east side of West Street was lined with cheap hotels, bars, luncheonettes, auto repair shops, and gas stations. Rising over these low buildings and filling an entire city block was an Art Deco behemoth, the headquarters of the New York Telephone Company (1926). Designed with a huge base, setbacks, and a tower, the building offered an ingenious solution to the height and mass restrictions of New York’s 1916 zoning law. Today it is a designated landmark.

City Hall Subway Station, ca. 1905. Considered the "crown jewel" of the original 28 IRT subway stations, the Old City Hall Station was in service from 1904 until 1945. Designed by architects Heins and LaFarge, the ornate station, with its curved track, was the showpiece of the city's new transit system. Tiled Guastavino ceilings rendered as soaring arches, brass chandeliers, and gorgeous leaded glass skylights wowed crowds on opening day October 27, 1904. By the 1940s the station was hardly being used. The nearby Brooklyn Bridge station was more convenient. Likewise the tight curve of this station made it difficult to operate as train technology developed and trains got longer. During the Second World War the skylights were blacked out and in 1945 the station was closed entirely. Renewed interest in the station prompted a plan for restoration and a museum annex location in the 1990s, but safety concerns (it sits directly under City Hall) stymied the plans.

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.

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.

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.

Church Street, beneath the tracks of the Sixth Avenue El; April 1, 1928. This survey photo was taken in preparation for construction on the IND Eighth Avenue Line subway, just south of the future Fulton Street station. At the next intersection south, entrance stairways to the Cortlandt Street elevated station are visible either side of Church Street. At right is the entrance to No. 30 Church Street, the Hudson Terminal Cortlandt Building, one of two towers atop the Hudson & Manhattan railroad station.

Listen to the Gotham Center and Gail Fenske's podcast on the history of the Woolworth Building, once the tallest building in the world, while examining these archival images!

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.

New York County Lawyers’ Association Building STATUS Designated Individual Landmark 14 Vesey Street ARCHITECT: Cass Gilbert DATE: 1929-30 STYLE: Federal Eclectic This building is four stories high, and above the third floor, there is an attic story set back behind a handsome rail (balustrade) and roof deck. The building is an example of Federal Eclectic architecture. It is built of stone, instead of brick, as it would have been if it had been built in the Federal Period in New York.

West Street (at left) and Telegraph Square (also Dey Street), looking generally east, August 12, 1936. The block of Dey Street between West and Washington Streets was named Globe Square in 1911 after the newspaper the New York Evening Globe. In 1923 the Globe merged with the New York Sun. The New York Telegram and Evening Mail took over the nearby offices of the Globe and as such the Square was renamed for the new tenant. This entire area including this intersection was demapped in the 1960s in the planning for the World Trade Center.

Sixth Avenue El tracks above West Broadway, April 14, 1902. The photographer is facing uptown, just north of the Chambers Street elevated station. The building at left, No. 16 Hudson Street, is a six-story neo-Grec warehouse dating to the 1870s and operated by the Thurber, Wyland & Co. grocery wholesalers. Bogardus Triangle, a small park bounded by West Broadway, Reade and Hudson Streets, is out of frame at left.

West Street at the corner of Warren Street, 1936. Most of the commercial buildings on this stretch of West Street date to the 1880s, when the Hudson waterfront was City's primary port. Known as "The Farm" these buildings contained wholesale distributors of fresh produce. The photograph shows, suspended from the building facades, the corrugated metal awnings that shielded the fresh fruit and vegetables from the sun. At the near corner is No. 176 West Street, the Lucky Star Cafeteria. The New York Telephone Building is in the background to the right and the Woolworth Building appears on the left. These blocks were demolished as part of the Washington Market Urban Renewal Project in 1962. Today, the site is occupied by 101 Warren Street, a massive luxury development by Skidmore Owings & Merrill completed in 2008.

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.

“St. Paul's Chapel, looking east from junkyard, general view of front entrance.” June 1, 1931. Built in 1766, St. Paul’s is the oldest church building in Manhattan. The Georgian chapel was designed by Thomas McBean as a northern “chapel-of-ease” outpost of the Trinity Church at Broadway and Wall Street. In its early years, St. Paul’s was a place of worship for early American luminaries like George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. More recently, St. Paul’s is known for its role related to the September 11, 2001 attacks and the aftermath. Despite its proximity to the World Trade Center site, St. Paul’s survived the towers’ collapse intact, without so much as a broken window. In the subsequent weeks, it served as a place of rest for first responders while its iron fence became the site of ad hoc memorial displays.

The Woolworth Building, 1913. The F.W. Woolworth Company commissioned the building in 1910 to serve as their new corporate headquarters. Initially conceived as a 20-story skyscraper, designed by Cass Gilbert, it eventually significantly outstripped the original plan. On completion in 1912, the Woolworth Building stood 57-stories and cost 13.5 million dollars. In fact the neo-Gothic skyscraper was the tallest in the world between 1913 and 1930. Frank Woolworth, the building's patron, was so pleased that he gave Gilbert a 15 pound commemorative silver Tiffany bowl. Though sold by the modern incarnation of Woolworth's in 1998, the building has been a National Historic Landmark since 1966 and a New York City Landmark since 1983.

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.

St. Paul's Chapel This chapel, where George Washington worshiped, was designed to face the North River, with its very fine spire above the entry. The porch on Broadway provided a secondary entrance. The interior with its High Georgian detail appears today much as it did when built. It is the sole survivor of all those ancient churches which once abounded in lower Manhattan, including the Dutch Reformed Lower, Middle, North churches; the Garden Street Church; and the Old Brick Church.

Alexander Hamilton's grave, ca. 1920. July 11, 1804... Weehawken, New Jersey... a duel... Hamilton and Burr...with one bullet Hamilton falls and dies the next day. On July 14, 1804, Alexander Hamilton was buried at Trinity Church, after his body was carried from the home of his sister-in-law through the street, lined with thousands of mourners, to his final resting place. The city had declared the date a day of mourning. Gouverneur Morris, a friend gave the eulogy. The large grave marker seen here was not installed right away but donated two years later by Society of the Cincinnati, a Revolutionary War fraternal group of which Hamilton was President General.

Astor Memorial Doors, ca. 1912. In 1891 William Waldorf Astor commissioned a series of bronze doors for Trinity Church in honor of his father John Jacob Astor. Karl Bitter won the competition to sculpt the largest doors at the front entrance (Charles Henry Niehaus and John Massey Rhind, the runners-up worked on the smaller north and south doors). The 14-foot pair, seen here, was created with six panels illustrating Biblical scenes. The doors are topped by a 4-foot tympanum with Christ standing above depictions of his twelve apostles. While the smaller doors were installed in 1893, Bitter was quite busy with work at the World's Columbian Exposition and his pieces were not completed until 1896.

The American Stock Exchange is housed in a distinctive Art Deco granite building facing Trinity Churchyard. The original facility, built in 1921, was enlarged with a massive new trading floor and refaced with this boldly expressive façade in 1929. Starrett & Van Vleck were the architects of both the original building and the subsequent addition. They also designed 21 West Street and the Downtown Athletic Club in a more jazzy Art Deco style. The American Stock Exchange was originally known as the New York Curb Exchange because the brokers met and traded in the street at the corner of Broad Street and Exchange Place, in front of 24 Broad Street, the Broad Exchange Building. They moved inside for the first time in 1921 when they occupied this facility. Now, to visit the interior one must be a trader, all access to the public is closed.

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.

Nathan Hale Statue, 1911. Designed by Frederick MacMonnies, the 13-foot-tall bronze statue of Nathan Hale was dedicated in City Hall Park in November of 1893. Hale, a 21 year old American soldier and spy for the Continental Army, infiltrated the British army in an attempt to gather information about the enemy’s Long Island military installations. Caught in September of 1776, Hale was hanged for treason. The figure was cast without life portraits for reference (as none existed) and unveiled by the Sons of the Revolution of New York State on November 25, 1893, which had long been celebrated as Evacuation Day, the date on which the final members of the British army finally left New York following the Revolutionary War.

New York Post Office, 1912.

New York, the city of great heights. Let's admire some buildings that were at one time the tallest!

West Street Building, 1905. Cass Gilbert, later architect of the Woolworth Building, designed this speculative office tower for developer General Howard Carroll. Originally, 90 West Street stood across the street from the Hudson River wharves and warehouses used by its tenants. This area became landfill in the late 1960s using material excavated in the construction of the World Trade Center. It is now occupied by the World Financial Center and Battery Park City. The tower's restrained granite base and shaft contrast sharply with its crown-like finale which is marked by a graceful three-story arcade, elaborate over-hanging cornice, and mansard roof decorated by pinnacles, look-outs, and niches – all expertly rendered in terracotta in the style of the French Renaissance. This was Gilbert's most elaborate use to date of colored glazed terracotta and can be seen as a clear precursor to the Woolworth Building. Badly damaged on September 11, 2001, the debris from the towers falling just a few hundred feet away tore gashes into the facade. Two workers were killed in an elevator and the entire interior was completed gutted by fire. The facade of 90 West Street remained shrouded in a protective covering for years as restoration was undertaken. Unveiled a few years later, the rehabilitation of the building was honored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2006.

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

Commercial buildings at the southern end of the Washington Market, March 23, 1938. No. 115 West Street, the Cortland Hotel, is at the end of the row at right. These and adjacent blocks were demolished in the 1970s for the construction of the World Trade Center.

New York City is home to coffee lovers. For centuries, coffee has been sold, traded, and enjoyed in the city. One aspect of coffee culture that has aided its popularity is the coffee house. Coffee houses' locations throughout Lower Manhattan were essential to the foundations of the City's political and financial institutions. Providing both public and private rooms to men of all classes for discussions of business, politics, new ideas, and the latest gossip, coffee houses quickly rose in popularity. Although these institutions no longer stand their influences are still felt today. Join us as we travel to the locations of several old New York City coffee houses to see what has replaced them in their stead.

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.

Starin's Pier, April 9, 1936. Pier 13 was constructed in the late 1890s and was occupied for at least the next few decades by the Lackawanna Railroad and the Starin Transportation Lines. The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad was established in 1853. The company bought a number of smaller local railroads in the NY/NJ area over the next decades and extended through New Jersey to the shores of the Hudson River in the 1860s. The fright station was used for floating freight across the river. The upper sign of this building notes it as a headquarters of the Starin Transportation Lines, which was a river, harbor, coast transportation company. They were one of the largest firms involved in the movement of mail, soldiers, supplies, and freight via steamboats, tugs and steamers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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.

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.

World Financial Center Architect: Cesar Pelli Completed: 1992 The four major towers of the World Financial Center are the business and commercial center of Battery Park City, a 92-acre swath of landfill built over the closely spaced piers of the working port. Separated from historic downtown by West Street an eight-lane highway, Battery Park City has been developed since the 1970s. The recently completed esplanade, the beautifully landscaped Wagner and Rockefeller Parks, and a rich program of public sculpture compliment the residential high-rises to the south and north of the World Trade Center site. Expanding on the success of the World Trade Center, and building literally on the landfill created by it, the World Financial Center was developed by Olympia & York in partnership with a state entity, the Battery Park City Authority. Planner Alexander Cooper was responsible for the master plan of the site, and architect Cesar Pelli designed the four towers and the waterfront plaza that connects them. In contrast to the barren plaza of the former World Trade Center, the World Financial Center centers on a lively Winter Garden with upscale shops and restaurants that spill onto a large riverfront terrace. The complex also has a ferry landing and a marina for sailboats, large yachts and charter boats. Badly damaged on September 11, 2001, the Winter Garden has since been rebuilt and reopened. The riverfront area is a nice place to stop and rest while enjoying views of the Statue of Liberty.

Workers laying pipes for the high pressure water system into a trench along Hudson Street, at Reade Street; undated photo. The covered sidewalk at center-left stands outside No. 13-15 Hudson Street. The market stand was operated by William Orlando Saxton, "one of the city's leading butter and egg merchants." Saxton, a Long Island native, founded W.O. Saxton & Co. in 1884; the company operated from a series of storefronts in present-day Tribeca, including, from 1901-12, the stand pictured above at the northwest corner of Hudson and Reade.

Trinity Building ARCHITECT: Francis H. Kimball DATE: 1904-07 STYLE: Neo-Gothic, Skyscraper The Trinity Building, built in 1905 and 1907, is among the first skyscrapers in New York designed in the neo-Gothic style. Among the notable design features of the building is its sympathetic relationship to Trinity Church, with its southern elevation providing an important and harmonious backdrop to the graveyard, thereby enhancing one of New York’s most important landmarks.

Of all the architectural styles, the Gothic seemed to lend itself best to skyscraper design. Cass Gilbert, using his West Street Building (Brady Building) as a trial balloon, arrived a remarkably expressive result in this high, self-washing, terra-cotta-clad building.

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.

Transportation Building (at left) Built in 1927. Architects York & Sawyer. The setbacks, which the building exhibits, were common following the 1916 Zoning Resolution.

Hudson River Railroad Passenger Station, 1860. The station, opened in 1851, was the southern terminus of the Hudson River Railroad passenger line. In 1864, Cornelius Vanderbilt gained control of the railroad. When the new freight depot at St. John’s Terminal was completed in 1868, Vanderbilt closed the Chambers Street Station.

Storefront and barbershop at the southwest corner of Church and Reade Streets; February 27, 1927. The building at left, No. 170 Church Street (a.k.a. 85-87 Reade Street) would soon be demolished to facilitate the widening of Church Street for construction on the IND Eighth Avenue line. The demolition exposed the eastern wall of the Cary Building, the 1850s-era cast iron fronted loft building stretching the full block between Chambers and Reade Streets.

Cortlandt Street Ferry Depot, ca. 1910 This marine terminal, built in 1891, housed ferries that brought passengers back and forth from Manhattan to New Jersey, at Exchange Place and Weehawken stations. This new terminal replaced the old ferry station built in 1856. During this time, Pennsylvania Railroad began modernizing stations in New York and New Jersey, and addition to the bulk of their ferry fleet. The new Cortlandt Street Ferry Depot featured a 12-track, canopied train shed for coach passengers. A large concourse allowed train passengers to enter the harborside ferry slips, where they boarded through the upper-deck. Prior to the depot's construction, the site was known as Mesier's Dock, where a ferry to Paulus Hook in Jersey City had been operating as early as the 1760s. It was founded by Abraham Mesier and Michael Cornelissen, who arranged with Cornelius Van Vorst to make a landing at Paulus Hook. Legal battles were waged over operators, crossings and passenger fares, as the founders had no legal authority to charter this route. They faced challenges from local officials in New Jersey for many decades. The Cortlandt Street Ferry Depot discontinued ferry service at the end of 1949, and in the 1960s it was demolished after years of inactivity.

My Archive Summer 2019 “This is a photo I took in April 1979 looking downward while on the escalator taking me from the 107th Floor Observation Deck to the rooftop Observation Deck on the 111th Floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center. The escalator was right next to the windows providing this spectacular view.” —Eric Smith

World Trade Center - Site of the Hudson Terminal Buildings, 1907-1908 by Clinton & Russell. Architects: Minoru Yamasaki and Emery Roth and Sons Completed: 1973-1974 The entire World Trade Center was more than its signature twin towers; it was designed as a complex of seven buildings on 16-acres comprising a city-sized 10 million square feet of rentable office space. The World Trade Center was built and operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey from 1966 to 1974. The Twin Towers, One and Two World Trade Center, represented the ambition of the bi-state authority and of the confident modernism of the late 1960's that saw bigger as better. The World Trade Center replaced the Hudson Terminal Buildings, a pair of 23-story buildings that housed offices as well as a three-level underground commuter rail facility from New Jersey. Dey Street divided the complex into two distinct buildings, which were connected both underground and by a sky-bridge. James Hollis Wells of Clinton and Russell designed the complex for the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Company. Altogether, the buildings yielded more than 1 million square feet of office space, which made the complex the largest in the world in 1908. The Japanese-born architect Minoru Yamasaki considered more than a hundred different building configurations before settling on the concept of twin towers and three lower-rise structures. Initially, the towers were to rise 80-90 stories. Only later were they to become the world's tallest man-made structures at 110 stories, following a suggestion said to have originated with the Port Authority's public relations staff. Tower 1 was 1368 feet tall; Tower 2 was 1362 feet. Yamasaki and structural engineer Les Robertson worked closely to create an innovative structural solution, an exterior wall of rigid "hollow tube" construction- closely spaced steel columns with floor trusses extending across to a central core. The columns, clad with a silver-colored aluminum alloy, were 18 3/4" wide and set only 22" apart, making the towers appear from afar to have no windows at all. One World Trade Center was ready for its first tenants in late 1970, even though the final construction on its upper stories were not completed until 1972; Two World Trade Center was finished in 1973. The foundations, which required excavation to bedrock 70 feet below, produced the material for the Battery Park City landfill project in the Hudson River.

Havemeyer Building, ca. 1910. Built in between 1891 and 1893, the Havemeyer Building was a massive structure on a long, narrow plot on Church Street between Dey and Cortlandt Streets. Designed by George B. Post, who just the year before had completed the World Building, the city's and world's tallest office building, the Havemeyer was 14-stories tall with a footprint of 47 feet by 214 feet. It was described by Kings Handbook as "a majestic pile of architecture." Developed by Theodore Havemeyer, of the sugar-refining family, the building featured seven Otis elevators, a layout that allowed for bright, light-filled offices, and a killer view from its roof. The structure survived until the early 1930s when it was razed for a branch of the East River Savings Bank.

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.

A walking tour through Lower Manhattan's skyscraper canyons and more than a century of high-rise construction. This walk focuses on the buildings around City Hall. This story is adapted from the Skyscraper Museum's "Ten Tops" exhibition.

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.

New York City Hall, 1917.

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.

St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, ca. 1979.

Cosmopolitan Hotel, 1935. The first part of this structure was built in 1844-5 by James Boorman, a merchant and later President of the Hudson River Railroad. Boorman likely anticipated the construction of the railroad’s southern depot at Hudson and Chambers Streets, and continued to buy and develop property for a hotel serving railroad passengers and those conducting freight business. In 1853, the Girard House hotel opened, while Boorman broke ground on the first of two additions. Renamed the Cosmopolitan during the 1860s, the hotel continued serving business clientele through the turn of the 20th century, despite the shift of railroad business further uptown following the construction of the St. John’s Terminal. By the 1960s, the hotel had been converted to S.R.O. dwellings and renamed “the Bond.” Today, the Cosmopolitan name has been restored and, despite its many alterations, the building is included in the Tribeca South Historic District.

Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal, August 12, 1936. Completed in 1865, the Liberty Street Terminal was the ferry terminal used to move passengers from New York to connecting travel on the Central Railroad of New Jersey, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Reading Railroad and the Lehigh Valley Railroad. The terminal the passengers arrived at on the New Jersey side was call the Communipaw Terminal. It was named after the community nearby and the historic ferry that traversed a similar route starting in 1661 That original ferry service reportedly fell into disuse in the 1780s, though it is possible it continued intermittently. Directly next to this building was another passenger terminal; the Cortland Street Ferry Depot was operated by the Pennsylvania Railroad and the West Shore Railroad. Depicted here in 1936, the service from this building continued until the final ferry departed for New Jersey on April 26, 1967. In the early 1970s the terminal was razed and the nearby waterfront was landfilled for the creation of Battery Park City. (This is why the once waterfront location of the ferry terminal is now a couple blocks in inland from the river.)

The Public Design Commission (PDC) was established as the Municipal Art Commission by the New York City Charter in 1898 (following the consolidation of NYC). The Commission was tasked with the oversight of all public artworks and monuments, but its purview quickly expanded to include public structures and open spaces. Renamed in 2008, the PDC reviews the design of permanent works of architecture, landscape architecture, and art proposed on or over City-owned property. Projects are submitted by City agencies and include the construction, renovation, or restoration of buildings; the creation or rehabilitation of parks, playgrounds, and plazas; installation of lighting and other streetscape elements; signage; and the installation and conservation of artwork, including monuments and memorials. The Commission also acts as caretaker and curator of the City’s public art collection, which is located throughout the city’s public buildings and open spaces, and maintains an extensive archive documenting the history of New York City's public works. The PDC Archive maintains a collection of projects reviewed by the Commission since 1902, documenting more than 7,000 sites throughout New York City and providing a unique view into the history of the City’s public works. The designs that have been reviewed by the PDC throughout its over 120-year history are representative of the policies and focus of Mayoral administrations while simultaneously following historical trends in public design, public health, and artistic and cultural movements in the city and country at large. The following examples illustrate the breadth of projects under the PDC's purview, from large scale developments to streetscape fixtures that often go unnoticed. For an in-depth history of the Public Design Commission, see Michele H. Bogart’s book, "The Politics of Urban Beauty."

New York City Hall. Quite aside from its position as the key governmental building of Great New York, City Hall is an architectural treasure without peer. It was ostensibly designed by the architects Mangin and McComb, working together. However, it is now well established that this delicate creation, with its ample fenestration and curving double staircase, was principally the work of the Frenchman Joseph Francois Mangin.

New York City Hall ARCHITECT: Joseph-François Mangin; John McComb, Jr. DATE: 1802-11 STYLE: Federal, French City Hall displays unusual architectural detail throughout representing both Federal and French influences. It is a marble building executed in the best tradition of fine craftsmanship. It is a building which – for over one hundred and fifty years – has provided the dignified setting in which the most important events in the history of the City have taken place. It is basically C-shaped in plan with two end wings projected forward at the front. It consists of two stories above a high basement. At the center, an attic story rises above the main roof level and is surmounted by a handsome domed cupola.

My Archive Summer 2019 “Looking east towards the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges from the 111th Floor Rooftop Observation Deck of the South Tower of the World Trade Center. The photo was taken by me in August of 1978.” —Eric Smith

New York Evening Post Building ARCHITECT: Robert D. Kohn DATE: 1906-07 STYLE: Art Nouveau The Old New York Evening Post Building is one of the few outstanding Art Nouveau style buildings ever constructed in this country and its ornament and sculpture, attain a high artistic level. It is a fourteen-story building with steel-framed structure veneered with stone. Although Art Nouveau in inspiration, it is not copied from any particular building executed in that style. In general appearance, its ornament, windows, and copper roof are more Continental than American and are reminiscent of the boulevards of Paris.

Architect John McComb, who had designed Castle Clinton in Battery Park, joined forces with Joseph Francois Mangin, an emigré architect from France, to win the competition to design a new home for the city government. McComb and Mangin eschewed the standard English forms and simple materials that had until then defined the architecture of the new republic. Instead, their design referenced French sources reflecting post-revolutionary politics City Hall Park has recently undergone extensive remodeling which created an open space with a nineteenth-century character. The elaborate tiled fountain and gaslights at the center of the park are reproductions of the park's mid-nineteenth-century fixtures.

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.

Trinity Church, ca. 1979. Constructed at the foot of Wall Street in 1698, the first Trinity Church faced the Hudson River. Captain William Kidd, later a notorious pirate, lent tackle from his ship to hoist stones to build the church. This Church burned in the Great Fire of 1776, which burned one third of the City just after British forces occupied it and was blamed by the British on revolutionary arsonists. The Second Trinity Church was completed in 1790; this time the Church faced Wall Street. At that time, New York was the U.S. Capital, and George Washington frequently worshiped at Trinity Church. Other notable parishioners included Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. Severe winters in the late 1830’s damaged the Church. Trinity gave Architect Richard Upjohn his first New York church commission for repair work. Trinity and Upjohn eventually decided to tear down the existing church and build the third Trinity Church in a Gothic Revival style designed to resemble a 14th century English parish church. The Church was consecrated in 1846. With its 281-foot-high steeple, Trinity Church dominated the Manhattan skyline until the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge rose 50 years later. Trinity Churchyard, adjacent to the church, is the burial place of many famous New Yorkers including Alexander Hamilton, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton and her sister, Angelica Schuyler Church, and Robert Fulton. Trinity was the first Anglican Church on Manhattan, and, in 1705, Queen Anne granted 215 acres of land to support the church. Consisting of the land West of Broadway from Fulton to Reade Street and a strip along the Hudson from Duane to Christopher Streets and known first as “Kings Farm” and later as “Church Farm,” the land was first used for agriculture from which the Church paid its annual rent of 60 bushels of wheat. Over the years, Trinity developed the land and sold or gave away most of the original tract, but today retains 14 acres on which sits 5.5 million square feet of commercial real estate worth over $2 billion. This makes Trinity Church one of the largest landowners in Manhattan, and the recipient of a large income used for church operations, care of its historic buildings, and its philanthropic mission.

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!

If you were walking down West Street in Tribeca in 1928, chances are you'd enjoy being mesmerized by Fred Jensen's clock museum full of his handcrafted mini mechanicals. Also, you could get your watch fixed at the legendary shop. Back in 1928, he was featured in the Forward's culture and local arty news "Roundabout" column too.

Benziger Brothers, 1951. Benziger Brothers is a Catholic publishing firm that was founded in 1792 in Einsiedeln, Switzerland. In the middle of the 19th century the firm expanded to the United States with an office in New York opening in 1853 and English-language publishing activities here commencing in 1860. The firm produced not only religious books, but also lithographs of religious images and liturgical paraphernalia (including Catholic vestments). They occupied a number of offices and storefronts in New York City starting in 1854 at 333 Houston Street. This mid century storefront housed the Catholic shop between 1950-1966.

Cortlandt Street between Washington and Greenwich Streets, April 8, 1936. Berenice Abbott’s view of Cortlandt Street includes the signs of "radio row" where radios and related electronic equipment were sold before the area was redeveloped as the World Trade Center. The Cortlandt Street station of the Ninth Avenue El is visible at right.