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.

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.

The Schepp Building at 165 Duane Street was completed in 1881 for the businessman Leopold Schepp who needed a large manufacturing building for his spice business. His main commodity was coconut, which was processed and packaged here (millions passed through the building each year 🥥). Schepp was an interesting character who according to the NY Times in the later 1880s had "a temper that would make the North Pole melt." In the 1920s, he began giving away his large fortune: gifts up to $5,000 to his employees and the establishment of a foundation to assist boys who pledged "to abstain from bad habits." By the time of his death in 1926, he had given away more than $7 million. The Leopold Schepp Foundation continues to award educational scholarships to this day. The building lost its mansard tower between 1915 and 1928, according to a 1991 Christopher Gray Streetscapes article. The building has been co-ops since 1980 and is part of the TriBeCa Historic District.

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

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

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.

Entrance to New York Telephone Building, ca. 1995.

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

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.

“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.

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.

Duane Park 1797; redesigned: Calvert Vaux, 1887; redesigned: Signe Nielsen, 1999 161-163 Duane Street, Babcock & Morgan, 1891-92 165-169 Duane Street, Stephen D. Hatch, 1881 173 Duane Street, Babb & Cook, 1880 168 Duane Street, Stephen D. Hatch, 1886 172 Duane Street, Jacob Weber, 1871-72 Named for James Duane, a Revolutionary War figure and mayor of New York City (1784-89), this is the city’s second oldest public park after Bowling Green. Its formal layout was redesigned by Calvert Vaux in 1887, paved over in the 1940s, and restored to evoke Vaux’s design in 1999. The buildings lining the park were originally warehouses for Washington Market, many housing dairy products. Tribeca’s iconic entrance canopies, of which there are many in this nook, were installed to protect goods from the sun. Numbers 161-163, 165-169 and 173 were designed in the Romanesque Revival style of brick, brownstone and terra-cotta. They feature intricate cornices, round arches and pilasters. The gabled corner tower on number 165-169 is particularly striking. On the south side, number 168 stands out for its Flemish-style silhouette (in 1891-92, its architect designed another Flemish-style building at 451-453 Washington Street) and number 172, whose cast-iron façade was preserved in front of a renovation in glass, evokes the Maison de Verre, an iconic 1931 Paris work by Pierre Chareau. Each site is located in the Tribeca West Historic District.

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.

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.

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

Ferry, Erie Railroad, April 9, 1936. A ferry crossing from the foot of Chambers Street was established in the 1850s, carrying passengers from lower Manhattan to Jersey City. Run by the Erie Railroad Company, the Chambers Street Ferry Terminal conveyed travelers to Erie Railroad lines leaving from the Pavonia Terminal on the New Jersey side. The building at the foot of Chambers Street was constructed prior to 1890. Following the decline of passenger rail service in the United States, the ferry service from this terminal saw its last trip on December 12, 1958. The terminal was demolished in 1964.

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.

23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 37, 39 and 41 Harrison Street 1796-1828 The formation of this L-shaped enclave of nine Federal houses is the result of a preservation effort in the late 1960’s, when plans for the Washington Market Urban Renewal Area left many buildings in danger. The newly-established Landmarks Preservation Commission negotiated funding to move three Federal buildings on a now-extinct part of Washington Street to join six similar structures on Harrison Street. All nine were designated as individual landmarks in 1969. The only two with a known architect are 25 and 27, designed by John McComb, Jr., one of the architects of City Hall, who is thought to have occupied one of them. The stairway and bridge at the end of Harrison Street, part of the Borough of Manhattan Community College, provides a good vantage point from which to view them. Each site is a New York City Individual Landmark.

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.

196 Reade Street (at left), April 8, 1936.

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.

My Archive Spring 2019 "This photo shows the southernmost bay at the Hudson Street facade on the occasion of Morse & Rogers employees moving office furniture and inventory into their newly constructed building from previous locations on Duane Street, around March 1, 1911. This photo is from a family album that I own and features my great-grandfather William Paul Fitzpatrick (1883-1968) of Richmond Hill, NY, third from left in the center with his hands on his hips. I have a large company photo of Morse & Rogers at an outing near the docks, and photos of his retirement locking up the office one last time. Morse & Rogers was a shoe seller/distributor and later manufacturer founded by Daniel P. Morse on August 1, 1884, and originally located at the first-floor loft of 132 Duane Street. On March 1, 1911, the company moved into a brand new twelve-story building developed by Central Building Improvement & Investment Company, built in 1910-1911 and designed by Rouse & Goldstone." —James Russiello

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.

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.

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.

The area now known as Tribeca was originally developed in the early 19th century as a residential neighborhood close to the city’s center in Lower Manhattan. Its street grid was laid out at right angles off of Greenwich Street and on a diagonal off of Broadway, creating blocks of different lengths and irregular open spaces. The residential character of these blocks allowed for the retention of small lot sizes in future waves of development, thus creating a neighborhood with richly textured streetscapes of varying styles of architecture. After the Civil War, shipping hubs moved from the East River to the North River (later renamed the Hudson River), and South Street Seaport was traded in for steam-powered shipping on the west side via long piers. With a newly thriving industrial waterfront, the neighborhood was poised for change. Around 1812, Washington Market was established on the streets from Fulton to Vesey and Washington to West (near the current site of the World Trade Center). The market grew considerably between 1812 and the middle of the century, becoming the city’s major source for consumables. Hundreds of vendors sold all manner of imported and locally made goods and produce to store owners, restaurateurs and home cooks alike. The growth of the market was, no doubt, fueled by the shipping industry on the river nearby, facilitating the transfer of goods. The market moved to Hunts Point in The Bronx in 1967 and the World Trade Center was developed shortly thereafter. Washington Market Park, located at Greenwich Street between Duane and Chambers Streets and designed by Lee Weintraub in 1978, was named after the historic market. With the combination of a bustling industrial waterfront and thriving commerce, the Federal and Greek Revival residential buildings north of the market were transformed into food storage warehouses and over the course of the rest of the 19th and into the 20th century, the majority of these would be replaced entirely with store and loft buildings and warehouses. This architectural development, which spanned roughly 50 years from 1860 to 1910, encompasses a balance of utilitarian and decorative forms in a range of popular styles of the period, all while defining the identities of the enterprises housed within and the expression of American commercialism as a whole. These buildings still dominate the character of the neighborhood today. Originally referred to as the “Lower West Side,” there are differing accounts as to where the name “Tribeca” came from. It originated in the 1970s, after a Special Lower Manhattan Mixed Use District was adopted for the area south of Canal Street, between Broadway and West Street. A realtor, advertising real estate within the new district, referred to it as Tribeca, which stood for the Triangle Below Canal. Most likely, the realtor hoped to inspire a similar transformation to that of Soho, whose industrial buildings had been converted into artists’ lofts and trendy apartment buildings. Four historic districts were designated in 1991–92: Tribeca East, Tribeca West, Tribeca North and Tribeca South, which was extended in 2002. These are located in Tribeca’s center, while pockets around the historic districts and most of the neighborhood’s periphery remain unprotected. Community members are currently advocating for more individual landmarks and expansion of the historic district borders.

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.

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.

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.)

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

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.

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.