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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

39 Worth Street Building ARCHITECT: Isaac F. Duckworth DATE: 1866 STYLE: Italianate, Second Empire The 39 Worth Street Building was constructed for James Smith, a prominent manufacturer of fire engines. It was designed in a transitional style incorporating elements of the Italianate and Second Empire styles. The deep cornice features foliate modillions, a central segmental pediment, four large brackets with pellet molding and latticework, classically-inspired frieze and scalloped corbel table. Each story is separated by paneled spandrels and plinths or molded sill course.

Detail of Western Union Building, Hudson Street base, 1930. 60 Hudson Street was Western Union’s headquarters from 1930 to 1973, when the company moved operations to New Jersey. Designed by Ralph Walker of the Voorhees, Gmelin and Walker firm — who promoted the project as “the largest telegraph building in the world” — the massive building occupies the entire square block bounded by West Broadway, Thomas, Worth and Hudson Streets. Walker’s design incorporated German Expressionist elements, including a 19-shade color gradient brick, as well as Art Deco entranceway details closer to street level. Throughout its history, the skyscraper has been a key telecommunications hub: first for regional telegraphy; and, today, as a colocation (data centre) site for various Internet service providers.

Staple Street Skybridge, 2000.

Western Union Building, First Floor Interior ARCHITECT: Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker; Ralph Walker DATE: 1928-30 Style: Modernist The First Floor of the Western Union Building is a recognized achievement in Modernistic design. Its design was influenced by the work of German and Dutch Expressionist architects and drew upon Ralph Walker’s well-defined design theory emphasizing harmony and unity. In the design of the first floor interior, executed in the expressionistic style of the exterior of the building, Walker used materials and design motifs in an innovative manner to link the interior and exterior. The design of the interior is exceptional in its extensive use of brick with ingrained, modeled ornament of various colors and patterns.

New York Mercantile Exchange entrance, ca. 1975. Completed in 1884 (as the entrance way tells us), the New York Mercantile Exchange Building was designed by architect Thomas R. Jackson. The "exchanges" were the way that a number of trades (butter, cheese, egg, dried fruits, poultry and canned goods) organized in order to maintain quality and standards, eliminate shady practices and lay out rules. (The 1872 on the facade notes the establish date of the Butter and Cheese Exchange of New York, the first exchange that would later become this larger organization.) The red brick, Queen Anne style structure has an imposing off-set tower and a mansard roof. Today the building, which sits within the Tribeca West Historic District, includes condos, office spaces, ground floor retail.

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.

287 Broadway ARCHITECT: John B. Snook DATE: 1871-72 STYLE: Second Empire The 287 Broadway Building is notable for its combination of the Italianate and French Second Empire styles as executed in cast iron, and one of the few surviving examples in New York city. It is executed in richly detailed cast iron and is crowned by a prominent slate mansard roof with iron cresting. The prestige of the building was indicated both by the mansard roof and the installation of an early Otis passenger elevator. The building graphically illustrates the transformation of lower Broadway in the 19th century from a residential boulevard into the city’s commercial center.

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)!

176 Franklin Street, ca. 1980. The three-story Franklin Street structure was completed in 1907, replacing a Methodist chapel that had previously occupied the site. The family of Ida May Powell, the owner of the new building, had purchased the adjacent property at the corner of Hudson Street (at right) in 1903, to house their candy manufacturing business. Powell enlisted architect Henri Fouchaux, the architect who had just competed an eleventh-story extension next door, to design the Beaux-Arts building on Franklin Street. The facade was substantially altered in 1916, when another Powell, George, converted the storefront level to a restaurant. The leaded glass windowpanes date to this renovation. The Franklin Inn restaurant became a popular meeting place for the districts produce merchants, while a booster club for produce wholesalers was headquartered in the upper stories. No. 176 Franklin was raided multiple times during Prohibition, with the restaurant and a cabaret operation on the second floor censured by the authorities. In later years, the building was home to small manufacturing operations, which gave way to galleries, residences, and high end retail in more recent decades.

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.

“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.

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

Western Union Building ARCHITECT: Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker; Ralph Walker DATE: 1928-30 STYLE: Modernist, Skyscraper The Western Union Building is a recognized achievement in Modernistic skyscraper design. The building is characteristic of a group of communications buildings designed by Ralph Walker in the late 1920s, primarily for the telephone companies, in which he developed a distinctive design approach related to the contemporary Art Deco style. The design of the Western Union Building was influenced by the work of the German and Dutch Expressionist architects, and drew upon Walker’s well-defined design theory which emphasized harmony and unity.

Hot dog vendor at West and North Moore Streets, April 8, 1936. The tall building in the background is the AT\&T Long Distance building at 32 Sixth Avenue.

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.

Broadway Chambers Building ARCHITECT: Cass Gilbert DATE: 1899-1900 STYLE: Beaux-Arts The Broadway-Chambers Building was important within Cass Gilbert’s career because it was his first design built in New York City. It is designed in the Beaux-Arts style and, as is characteristic of the style, the building is richly ornamented with monumental sculpted figures, a dramatically arcuated crown, and a wealth of garlands, wreaths, and festoons. The Broadway Chambers Building is notable for its polychromy and early use of glazed terra-cotta. At the time it was built, the building was considered one of the best examples of the tripartite design scheme which is analogous to the classical column.

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.

39-41 Worth Street, ca. 1970-1990. No. 39 (at left) and no. 41 (center) are two cast-iron store-and-loft buildings constructed within one year of each other and designed by Isaac F. Duckworth. No. 39 was constructed ca. 1866 in mix of Italianate and Second Empire styles as an investment for James Smith, a manufacturer of fire engines. For more than 100 years (1860s through the 1970s) the building was occupied by various dry goods companies. Today it is, unsurprisingly, a residence. No. 41 was designed by same architect one year before no. 39. The “Venetian” Italianate style store-and-loft building also included a cast-iron facade by Daniel D. Badger’s Architectural Iron Works. Both buildings have retained much of their original detail above the ground floor. The AIA Guide to NYC notes that the first floors have been "castrated by banal 'modernization'."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Powell Building, 105 Hudson Street, ca. 1975. The Powell Building, a ten-story Carrère & Hastings design completed in 1892, was originally home to the Baker Chocolate Company and other food producers. The building was purchased by candy manufacturer Alexander Powell in 1903. Powell elected to add a further eleventh story, though the facade bears little trace of its alteration.

Broadway Chambers ca. 1905 Architect Cass Gilbert worked in New York as a draftsman for the renowned firm of McKim, Mead & White for a year before establishing a successful practice in Minnesota. The opportunity to design the Broadway Chambers building however, lured him back to New York. The success of this project (completed in 1899) established Gilbert in the City, where his distinguished career continued with his winning design for the U.S. Custom House and later, the commission for the iconic Woolworth Building. Still used as office space, the Broadway Chambers Building was designated a landmark in 1992.

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.

Workers dig trenches along Duane Street, near West Broadway and the Sixth Avenue Elevated trestle; undated photo.

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.

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!

Mutual Reserve Fund Life Association ARCHITECT: William H. Hume DATE: 1892-94 STYLE: Richardsonian Romanesque Revival The 13-story (plus basement) Mutual Reserve Building is one of New York City’s most significant examples of a tall late-19th-century office building designed in the Richardsonian Romanesque Revival style, with its two designed facades featuring granite and limestone cladding, rusticated piers, foliate carving, and arcaded base and upper section. The building is notable as an early steel cage-framed structure in New York, constructed just prior to the full development of the skyscraper.

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

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.

Fire Engine Company No. 7/Hook & Ladder Company No. 1 ARCHITECT: Trowbridge & Livingston DATE: 1904-05 STYLE: Beaux-Arts Firehouse was designed in the Beaux-Arts style–or what at the time was described as the “modern French” style. Its three-bay width was dictated by the two-bay requirement of an enlarged engine company and a third bay for a separate hook & ladder company. The architects created a facade remarkable for its symmetry and emphatic horizontality. It is visually unified by superimposed architectural elements drawn from early seventeenth-century French civic architecture: the boldly rusticated Indiana limestone ground story, the brick and raised limestone bands of the upper stories, the entablature and parapet.

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.

New York Mercantile Exchange Building 2-6 Harrison Street Thomas R. Jackson, 1884 In the mid 19th century, buyers and sellers of various commodities recognized the need to organize in order to maintain quality and standards, eliminate questionable practices and set down business rules. Among the city’s many industry-specific "exchanges" established prior to the creation of a central stock exchange was the Butter and Cheese Exchange of New York, formed in 1872. After admitting the egg, dried fruits, poultry and canned goods trades, the exchange changed its name to the all-inclusive New York Mercantile Exchange in 1882.To accommodate this expansion, land was purchased from Trinity Church for a new building at the corner of Harrison and Hudson Streets. Architect Thomas R. Jackson, who had been head draftsman under Richard Upjohn (architect of Trinity Church), created a five-story, red brick, Queen Anne style building with an imposing off-set tower. Ornament includes rusticated granite pillars, brick pilasters with terra-cotta Corinthian capitols, paired stone columns on the fifth floor and picturesque dormers in the tower’s mansard roof. The Former New York Mercantile Exchange is located in the Tribeca West Historic District.

Western Union Building Interior By the late 1920s, the grandeur of Beaux-Arts architecture had begun to seem old-fashioned. Meanwhile, new concrete vaulting methods started to rival the Guastavino system for spanning large spaces. Commissions like the Western Union Building reflect the company’s adaptation to these changing times. The Guastavino tiles in this magnificent Art Deco interior are primarily an ornamental finish, hanging from a superstructure of steel and concrete.

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.

The brick building at 161 Duane Street was originally constructed in 1843 as a private house. From 1860 until 1920 the structure housed a whalebone cutting business (as can be inferred by the painted sign on the facade). The workers here created hoops for horse whips, women's skirts, corset stays, collar stiffeners, and umbrella ribs out of whalebone, but by the early 20th century, fashion, material technology, and a significant decline in American whaling rendered this business largely obsolete. In the 1890s the whalebone work moved to the top floors, while the Ye Olde Tavern (seen here in 1902) moved into the ground floor. When the firm's final owner, a man named George Massmann, retired in 1920, he had worked in this building since 1866 (under both of the previous owners). Later in the 20th century, the building was home to a shoe company and likely dozens of other unknown businesses. During that time the facade and its Whalebone sign were painted white, and the older faded sign attached above the second floor was removed. In 2002 architect and developer Joseph Pell Lombardi purchased this building and its neighbor at the corner (at left). Known as the Mohawk Building—it was once the home to the Mohawk Electric Company— the 1891 corner structure was built for a confectioner. Pell combined the two interiors for residential condos while restoring both facades and repainting the building's eponymous signage.

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

Langdon Building, 1922. Originally known as the Mutual Reserve Fund Life Association Building, the Langdon Building is a Romanesque Revival structure designed by William Hume. The 13-story building was completed between 1892 and 1894 and it was one of the first towers in the city to use a steel frame structure (a sort of early version of a skyscraper). While the Mutual Reserve Fund Life Association occupied a number of floors, the other floors, including the ground level, included a barber shop, cigar stand, bike showroom, ticket office, and telegraph and telephone offices. The Association moved out in 1909 when it went into bankruptcy and the building was renamed the next year. This building later served as the headquarters for the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission between 1967 and 1980.

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.

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.

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.

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

277 Broadway - Broadway Chambers Building Architect: Cass Gilbert Completed: 1900 Cass Gilbert's first building in New York was this boldly designed tower. Gilbert's design juxtaposes the grandly ornamented pink granite clad base with the plain red and blue brick clad shaft. The tower culminates in a highly ornamented colonnade, attic story and projecting cornice. At the time, this design was hailed by architectural critic Montgomery Schuyler as "the last word" in the period’s dominant skyscraper style, which looked to the classical three-part column for inspiration. The building also features the first large scale use of polychrome terra-cotta architectural ornament in New York, a material that Gilbert would use extensively in later buildings. Even before construction began, building owner Edward Andrews, a Boston banker, aggressively pursued tenants that could pay some of the highest rents in the city, including the main tenant, the United States Life Insurance Company. By 1901, with the building fully rented, Andrews was able to collect $100,000 per year in rent, a considerable sum at the time.

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.

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.

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

Puffy's Tavern at 81 Hudson Street is a famed watering hole founded in 1977 by Frank E. Marco, Ned Schnier, and Jim Stratton at 81 Hudson Street. The pub served as a meeting place for local artists and intellectuals in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The tavern is still open, serving the ever-changing residents of TriBeCa.

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.

Workers dig a trench for the installation of the high-pressure water system at the northeast corner of Hudson and Thomas Streets; undated photo. The sidewalk shelter at right covers the loading area for the R.C. Williams & Co. building at 56 Hudson Street. Established in 1811, the wholesale grocers had been headquartered in this building since the late 1880s. Contemporaneous trade publications show the firm to have been an active player in the city's produce distribution sector (albeit with predictably dry headlines, e.g.: "Green Olive Importers Engage in Advertising"). In 1926, R.C. Williams purchased a full-blockfront site on Tenth Avenue, between West 25th-26th Streets, in anticipation of the construction of the High Line freight railway. The ten-story R.C. Williams warehouse, designed by Cass Gilbert and completed in 1928, occupies the full site between Tenth Avenue and the elevated trestle to its west. In fact, when the High Line opened to rail traffic on August 1, 1933, the first carload was delivered to R.C. Williams. After R.C. Williams departed, the Hudson Street warehouse was demolished to make way for Ralph Walker's Western Union Building at 60 Hudson Street.

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.

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.