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.

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.

Kitchen, Montross & Wilcox Store ARCHITECT: Unknown DATE: 1861 STYLE: Cast-iron The 85 Leonard Street Building is the last remaining building in New York City by James Bogardus, self-described “inventor of cast-iron buildings.” It is one of the few extant buildings of cast iron designed in the so-called “sperm candle” style, a style which uses classical elements in combination with a non-classical emphasis on verticality, lightness, and openness, and that the fine quality and wealth of detail enhance the basic forms of the building and illustrate the desirability of cast-iron as a building material in the 19th century.

Ericsson House, ca, 1913. John Ericsson was a 19th century Swedish-American inventor and mechanical engineer whose most well-known work was in the field of transportation vessels, including the steam locomotive and naval ships. Ericsson designed the USS Monitor, an ironclad warship built in Brooklyn and tested in the line of fire at the Civil War Battle of Hampton Roads. In 1864 he purchased the Federal style home on Beach Street, which at the time faced the southern boundary of St. John’s Park. The house was decorated with marble steps, the carved door- casings and fan-lights, the massive mahogany fittings (according to a description in a 1890 Ericsson biography). Ericsson died in 1889 and the home remained through the start of the 20th century. Originally surrounded by other fashionable homes in the early 1800s, by his death it was neighbors to factories and a freight railroad. In 1920 the house was demolished for a single story garage. The street where the home was located, Beach Street between Hudson and Varick Streets, was renamed Ericsson Place after the inventor in the 1920s. Around that same time, the whole north side of this block (the former site of the private square for St. John's Chapel) was razed for the curved exit roadway from the Holland Tunnel.

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.

226 West Broadway was the headquarters of the New York Fire Department's High-Pressure Service. This elegant structure looks remarkably different from its squat brick compatriot at 25 Joralemon. Architect Augustus D. Shepard designed this four-story and 20-foot wide structure with elements of both a "workshop and an office building," according to the structures' 1991 LPC Designation. Its facade features creme terracotta, a set of elegantly chiseled letters, and "iconographic representation of the work," including sculpted hydrants, valves and pipes. These symbols, secessionist in style, allude to the work that once went on inside.

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.

Church Street, east side, south from White Street, 1928. The major street work depicted in this 1928 photograph is the cut and cover method of subway construction for the IND Eighth Avenue Line. The groundbreaking ceremony for this new line was held in March of 1925 at St. Nicholas Avenue and 123rd Street and the line opened to the public right after midnight on September 10, 1932 (four years nearly to the day after this photo was taken). Church Street needed to be widened to accommodate the planned infrastructure. The west side of the street was moved back some 65 feet, with buildings demolished or truncated. 257 Church Street is the building at left on the south corner of Franklin Street, and in the hazy distance stands the Woolworth Building.

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.

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.

New York Life Insurance Company Building STATUS Designated Exterior and Interior Landmark 346 Broadway ARCHITECT: Stephen Decatur Hatch; McKim, Mead & White DATE: 1894-99 STYLE: Neo-Italian, Neo-Renaissance This building is a fine example of the neo-Italian palazzo mode popularized by Mckim, Mead & White. The interiors of the building are designed using excellent craftsmanship and lavish materials, typical of the finest buildings of the turn of the century. These interiors are designed in the neo-Renaissance style, and they bear the personal stamp of their architects.

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.

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.

2 White Street ARCHITECT: Unknown DATE: 1808-09 STYLE: Federal Among its important qualities, the Number Two White Street House, complete with its original gambrel roof and other fine architectural details, is an important remaining example of a style which is rapidly disappearing from our City. It is one of those very rare brick and wood houses in New York which still retains its gambrel roof and original dormer windows. Three rectangular second story windows have excellent splayed lintels with central keystone blocks.

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.

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.

140 Franklin Street, ca. 1977. 140 Franklin Street, located in the center of Tribeca, is one of Manhattan's most admired Romanesque Revival buildings. Trimmed in yellow terra cotta with grand arched windows, this 6-story yellow brick structure was built in 1889 to the designs of Albert Wagner, also the architect of Soho’s iconic Puck Building, for a paper manufacturing company. In 2000, AA Studio spearheaded the renovation of this building into 14 loft-style condominiums, including a two-story penthouse.

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'."

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.

Signage at 319 Broadway, looking at the facade of 317 Broadway, March 6, 1936.

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.

The building at 280 Broadway has been known by a number of names since it was erected in 1846 (later additions and alterations occurred between 1852 and 1884). Built for the A.T. Stewart Company, it was not only the first commercial building in the Italianate style in the United States but is also considered the country's first department store. The John B. Snook and Joseph Trench-designed marble structure remained home to Stewart's dry goods store until 1876. During the last 14 years, it housed only the wholesale trade, as the retail business had moved further uptown to 9th Street. Converted into an office building (two new stories were added to the five-story structure), it became the home to the New York Sun newspaper when they purchased it in 1917. Known as the Sun Building, the new owners installed a bronze clock (seen here) at the building's southwest corner. The paper folded in 1953 and the city took the title during condemnation proceedings. Though the building was to be razed for a planned civic center development, it remained. Substantially renovated between 1995 and 2002, today the building is home to the city's Department of Buildings and lower level retail.

Former A.T. Stewart Building 280 Broadway, Joseph Trench & John B. Snook, 1845-46 280 Broadway is one of New York’s most significant commercial structures. Built for Alexander Turney Stewart’s department store—the city’s first—the building and the business greatly impacted the city’s economic growth and American merchandising. With this building, Stewart introduced America to the pleasant shopping experience and to the idea that architecture can be employed to reflect a business’ image. Its marble façades emulated an Italian Renaissance palace, a trend for commercial architecture in London, with which Stewart was familiar. This style was a major departure from New York’s low-scale, simple commercial buildings, and it was imitated into the 20th century.

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.

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.

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.

New York City is known for many things: Art Deco skyscrapers, picturesque parks, the world’s greatest theater district, venerable museums and educational institutions, not to mention bagels and pizza! But above all of these, New York is most important as home to some of the world’s most fascinating and significant people and as the site of impactful and significant happenings throughout history. The city’s cultural influence is, perhaps, its greatest contribution to the world, and its built environment stands as a grand scavenger hunt of clues waiting to be uncovered. Lucky for us, the city’s Landmarks Law, passed in 1965, provides the legal framework for protecting the physical reminders of the city’s cultural wealth. In fact, one of the stated purposes of the Landmarks Law is to “safeguard the city’s historic, aesthetic and cultural heritage.” In the first 50 years that landmarks were designated by the City, much emphasis was placed on the historic and aesthetic. In recent years, though, more consideration has been made for the importance of sites associated with people or historical events, rather than just for their architectural or historical value. In 2015, the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designated the Stonewall Inn as an Individual Landmark solely for its association with the Stonewall Uprising of 1969. In 2018, the Commission designated the Central Harlem—West 130th-132nd Streets Historic District, describing it as “not only representative of Central Harlem’s residential architecture, but the rich social, cultural, and political life of its African American population in the 20th century.” Also, in recent years, Greenwich Village’s Caffe Cino and Julius’ Bar were listed on the National Register of Historic Places as significant and influential sites connected to the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBTQ) community, The New York Times profiled a historian giving tours of Muslim sites of significance in Harlem, and the City is commemorating some of our most storied and accomplished female citizens with the installation of statues in all five boroughs. Indeed, grassroots preservation activism around the city is also swelling around sites of cultural significance: Tin Pan Alley and Little Syria in Manhattan, Walt Whitman’s house in Brooklyn, Arthur Avenue in The Bronx and a recently-rediscovered African burial ground in Queens, to name a few. In response to this movement of interest in cultural landmarks, the Historic Districts Council undertook an initiative to highlight such places as one of its Six to Celebrate in 2018. The culmination of that effort was a conference in October 2018 entitled “Beyond Bricks and Mortar: Rethinking Sites of Cultural History.” The conference convened preservationists, historians, artists, planners, place-makers and more to work together to clarify what cultural significance is and how it can work, how to document and create compelling narratives around cultural sites, and how to identify the specific challenges of cultural sites from a preservationist perspective. This tour provides just a sample of some of the city’s cultural landmarks, organized thematically and representing all five boroughs. The list includes some sites that are legally protected — in some cases by more than one government body — and some that are unfortunately in danger of being lost. Preserving culturally significant sites that may not possess overtly aesthetic value often requires a particularly active and engaged form of advocacy to achieve protection from the wrecking ball. But, as long as there are interesting people making their mark on New York City and crucial events taking place here, that effort will never be in vain, since those stories are the lifeblood of this vibrant place.

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.

Merchants Refrigerating Company, ca. 1905. Constructed in 1891 as a cold storage warehouse for the Merchants Refrigerating and Ice Manufacture Company, the six -story Romanesque Revival building occupies the entire lot from North Moore Street to Ericsson Place (Beach Street when this building was constructed). Architect Thomas Jackson also designed a number of other industrial buildings in the neighborhood. After 1901 the building supplied its immediate neighbors (in the surrounding two blocks) with cooled brine (a refrigerant liquid). By 1924 the refrigerating company also owned and occupied buildings at 17-19, 27-29, and 31-31 North Moore Street. Both the North Moore Street facade (nos. 35-37 in tan brick) and the Ericsson facade (nos. 30-32 in red brick) retain the carved granite signbands with "Merchants Refrigerating & Ice Manufact. Co." and address numbers. Today the old warehouse included private loft residents and an art gallery at ground level.

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

Gideon Tucker House, 1928. This house — possibly the oldest surviving building in the Tribeca Historic District — was built in 1808-09 by Gideon Tucker, an alderman, school commissioner, and the New York City Commissioner of Estimates and Assessments, whose Tucker & Ludlum plaster factory was located further east on White Street. It was later home to the now-famous abolitionist and minister, Theodore S. Wright. As one of New York City's most prominent conductors of the Underground Railroad, Wright used this Lower Manhattan building as a safe house for slaves escaping to Albany. While the dormer windows and second-story windows on the White Street side are consistent with early 19th century Federal style houses, the gambrel roof recalls the previous century’s Dutch-influenced architecture. The building has likely included a storefront throughout its existence, leading to a series of ground floor alterations. In 1941, Leonard Hecht opened a liquor store on the ground floor of the property. The neon sign and etched glass advertisements on the West Broadway shop window date to this period.

246 West Broadway, 1939. No. 246 in this photograph is the two-story center structure, with the telltale striped decor of a barber shop. According to the notes of the photographer, this is a frame building, faced in brick. Today the building remains, though its wood-frame neighbors have disappeared and it has added a third story and new stucco facing.

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.

317 and 319 Broadway, March 6, 1936. Constructed in 1869–70, Italianate cast-iron buildings at no. 317 and 319 were designed by D. & J. Jardine. This firm is well represented in surviving 19th century commercial and residential buildings in the Ladies Mile, Upper East Side, Soho, and Greenwich Village Historic Districts. Called the "Thomas Twins" for the street they straddled, the mirrored five-story buildings remained together 1971 when no. 317 was demolished. The entrances to the buildings were both originally at what is now the second story, and were moved to altered ground floors in 1912. In this 1936 photograph, the second story of no. 319 seems to be encased in glass. Today the glass has been removed and the original entrance (now window) arch and its two neighbors on the second floor are unobstructed.

74 Franklin Street, date unknown. This Federal-style building was constructed in 1815 by a John Wood, likely a successful merchant. In 1853 the structure was purchased by G. A. Bradbrook and the ground floor was converted into a venue for his 'outfitting store.' At that time the cast iron storefront was added, as well as the full fourth floor with an Italianate pressed metal cornice. Later tenants of the storefront included shops that sold 'fancy goods and corsets' and one that produced and sold umbrellas and parasols. The upper floors were converted into a factory space. Throughout the 20th century the building cycled through a long lists of owners and tenants. In 1998 the upper floors returned to residential occupation, likely for the first time in nearly 150 years, while the lower level remains a commercial showroom.

Kitchen, Montross & Wilcox Store, No. 85 Leonard Street, ca. 1974. Constructed on property owned by the estate of Thomas Swords, this cast iron structure was commissioned in 1861 by dry goods merchants Kitchen, Montross, & Wilcox. The firm, leased the land to architect James Bogardus under the condition that he erect “a good and substantial store house.” When completed in 1861, he unveiled a five-story Italianate structure that amazed its owners. Unlike the neighboring buildings made of stone, the facade at No. 85 Leonard Street was made from cast-iron, allowing for greater detail in its ornamentation. Kitchen, Montross & Wilcox operated a retail store in the building until 1868, whereafter the ground floor remained in use by various other dry goods merchants. In the late 20th century, Joseph Salamon of FRF Promotional Fabrics purchased the building and rented out the fourth floor as an artists' studio. In 1974, the site achieved Landmark designation, in recognition of its significance as perhaps the only extant structure by Bogardus (while a handful of other Bogardus-designed cast iron facades remain on buildings associated with other architects, the design construction of 85 Leonard is believed to have been executed by Bogardus, alone). A plaque testifying to his influence reads: "James Bogardus, Originator and Constructor of Iron Buildings, New York."

The African Burial Ground is considered the largest colonial- era cemetery for enslaved African people, and in addition to being of great historical and spiritual significance, is a major resource for the study of the African diaspora. The African Burial Ground is part of the African Burial Ground & The Commons Historic District; a National Historic Landmark and listed on the State and National Register of Historic Places.

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.

\#386 Washington Street shows Lewis DeGroff and Son Wholesale Grocer. There are horse-drawn wagons at the loading dock, loading barrels onto their carts. There are several other business next to DeGroff and Son. 1906.

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.

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.

Looking east on Leonard Street toward McKim, Mead & White's Clock Tower Building, the former headquarters of New York Life Insurance Company, 346 Broadway; ca. 1977. In 1868, the New York Life Insurance company purchased a fire-damaged property at Broadway and Leonard Street from the Appleton's publishing house, and enlisted architect Griffith Thomas to design its new headquarters. By the 1890s, New York Life had expanded domestically and internationally was in need of a larger building for its main office. The firm solicited proposals for an eastward extension of Griffith's 1870 building, selecting Stephen D. Hatch's design for an extended structure to occupy the square block bounded by Broadway, Catherine Place, Elm (Lafayette) and Leonard Streets. Hatch — whose winning bid notably included a lower commission that his more-celebrated competitors — died just three months into construction in 1894. McKim, Mead & White took over the commission, and completed Hatch's design, with some alterations, in 1896. However, where Hatch's design was grounded in the materials and scale of the original Thomas building, New York Life and MM\&W came to favor a grander statement. The original, Thomas-designed building was razed later that year. The new design, supervised by partner William Rutherford Mead and architect Henry Bacon, associate called for a commanding, three-story pavilion and clocktower atop a new, twelve-story neo-Italian Renaissance building flush with the completed structure along Leonard Street. The updated building, complete with its signature clocktower, was completed in 1898. The clock itself was designed by the E. Howard Clock Company and installed, along with its 5,000-pound bell, in 1897. New York Life's tenure was relatively brief: the company moved to a new, Cass Gilbert-designed headquarters on Madison Square Park in 1928, with 346 Broadway and its clocktower passing into City ownership. In 1972, the curator Alanna Weiss, who would go on to found and direct the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center (now MoMA PS1), established the Clocktower Gallery in the building's top story of the former New York Life Insurance Company building. The gallery, a multidisciplinary space for exhibitions and performances by contemporary artists, operated until 2013 when the building was sold by the city. The fate of the clocktower and its clock became the subject of litigation and intense debate Following the sale to developers Peebles Corporation and the El Ad Group, who planned to convert the tower into a multi-story penthouse apartment. The condo conversion plan would have required the electrification of the clock — which was restored in 1980 and continues to be wound manually every week — a move initially approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, but later overruled by a State Supreme Court Judge. The Clock Tower's fate remains in limbo (the prospective developers are mired in court battles over project funding), but for now the massive, mechanical timepiece continues to tick away, still guaranteed to be accurate within 10 seconds per month.

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.