A round-up of our favorite pics of your dads on Urban Archive.

City Lodging House, 23rd Street and First Avenue ca. 1895. Attempting to address homelessness, The Municipal Lodging and House Act, passed in 1886, encouraged the city to operate lodging houses for those left with other recourse, In 1893, another type of housing emerged which gave men a place to stay so long as they performed labor, such as chopping wood or other similar tasks. This house, located at 398-400 First Avenue, gave a night's stay to almost 2,000 men, women, and children from March 17 through 23rd, as reported in Charities, a "Weekly Review of Local and General Philanthropy."

New York Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital. October 7, 1911. The hospital at Second Avenue and 20th Street opened in May, 1894, with a reception attended by friends and benefactors of the institution. The New York Times described the new facilities: “Physicians who have visited the great hospitals of Europe pronounce the new building as second to none In Its equipments for advanced medical work,” also noting that “the baby incubator, in which there was a baby, was a source of great interest.” The hospital closed in 1963, when it was rendered obsolete by the newly-completed Bellevue Hospital. The building was demolished and its site was converted to a playground for the Simon Baruch Junior High School.

326 East 18th Street ARCHITECT: Unknown DATE: 1853 STYLE: Italianate No. 326 is the Western most house of a charming row of three brick Italianate residences. This low-lying, two story row is set far back from the street behind exceptionally deep front yards, a great rarity in Manhattan. This row recalls a time when the area east of Third Avenue was just beginning to be developed.

My Archive Spring 2019 "Swings in a playground in Stuyvesant Town." —Stephen Silverman

129 East 19th Street ca. 1904 Son of the author Frances Hopkinson Smith, F. Berkley Smith (1868-1931) resided and worked at this charming Gothic Revival row house near Gramercy Park, at 129 East 19th Street. Smith was an architect and practiced that profession until 1896, when he turned his attention to painting. Built originally as a stable in 1860-1861, the house still stands today under landmark protection.

George Bellows house (center). Ca. 1915. The painter George Bellows, known for his realist depictions of boxing matches, New York City scenes, and portraiture, purchased this Greek Revival townhouse in 1910. He renovated the building’s top floor, raising the ceiling and adding large windows to provide light for his studio.

Epiphany Branch, NYPL, 1916. Opened in 1907 and designed by the firm that worked on a large number of Carnegie libraries in New York City, Carrère and Hastings, the Epiphany Library actually dates back to the 1880s. The library was founded by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York as a part of the Cathedral Library Association in 1887. (The unique name of the branch is understandable given the religious origins of the institution.) The new Carnegie building opened in 1907 and underwent a large renovation by the WPA in 1939. In the late 1960s the community successfully blocked plans for its demolition. Originally a four bay building, as seen in this early photograph, the building had a fifth bay, set back from the street, added during substantial work in the 1980s. The addition included a new front door, which was handicap accessible, and the original door was converted into a window.

Henry Maurer Company, 1938. Henry Maurer was a German immigrant who learned the brick trade from an uncle and in 1856 purchased the Excelsior Fire-Brick and Clay Retort Works in New Jersey. The 75-arcre plot on which his Perth Amboy, New Jersey factory was stood was named Maurer some years later. The business was known as Henry Maurer & Sons, and they manufactured hollow bricks, fire bricks, items for gas combustion processes, and French roofing tiles. These products were used in the construction of many 19th and 20th century New York buildings. The Henry Maurer Building at 420-422 East 23rd Street was the company's offices and depot (conveniently located near the East River). According to one source they remained in business until 1937 (though this photograph is from a year later and the building looks to still be active). The New Jersey factory was not sold until 1942, though it is unclear if production continued until that date. Adjacent to the nearby Gas House District, the entire area was redeveloped in the 1940s for the residential development of Stuy-Town and Peter Cooper Village.

Old Stuyvesant High School 345 E. 15th Street, Manhattan 1907 Founded in 1904 and constructed between 1905 and 1907, the (former) Stuyvesant High School was one of the first high schools built after the creation of a citywide system of public secondary education. Designed by C.B.J. Snyder, the school’s innovative H-plan allowed more natural light and air into the classrooms than older designs. Featuring a distinctive façade in the Beaux-Arts style, the building was designated a New York City Landmark in 1997 and today is home to the Institute for Collaborative Education, the High School for Health Professions and Human Services and P.S. 226.

Scheffel Hall ARCHITECT: Weber & Drosser DATE: 1894-95 STYLE: German Renaissance Revival The (former) Scheffel Hall, dating from 1894-95, is a significant reminder of the German-American community known as Kleindeutschland which flourished on the Lower East Side in the last half of the nineteenth century. Scheffel Hall’s unusual and flamboyant facade, designed by the architectural firm of Weber & Drosser after the modeled of the famous Friedrichsbau at Heidelberg Castle, is one of the few examples of the German Renaissance Revival style in New York.

Beth Israel Hospital, April 4, 1929. When Beth Israel’s new, 500-bed facility opened in 1929, the thirteen-story building was the world’s tallest hospital.

216-222 Second Avenue; 301-309 East 13th Street Building Date : 1856/1890-1893 alt. Original Use : Institutional Original Owner : New York Eye and Ear Infirmary Original Architect : Unknown/Robert Williams Gibson (alt.) Description & Building Alterations The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary was founded in 1820, originally located at 83 Park Row. It is the oldest specialized hospital in the Western Hemisphere and the third-oldest hospital in New York City after the New York Hospital and Bellevue. In its first year, the hospital attempted the first surgery to restore sight to the blind. The infirmary built a four-story Italianate building faced in brownstone at this site in 1856, and remodeled and enlarged the site between 1890 and 1893. This expanded building was designed in a Richardsonian Romanesque style by Robert Williams Gibson. The base is rusticated in rock-face stone with arched windows and deep reveals, and the building has a high arched entryway on Second Avenue. It features golden brick with sills, lintels, courses of rough stone, recesses and projections, transom bars, and clustered blind arches. Alterations include an additional building in 1900, an additional story in 1908, the extension of the rear elevation in 1909, and the addition of a wooden gravity tank on the roof in 1924. The building is six stories in height and is clad in buff brick with limestone classical details and a quarry-cut stone block base. This base unites the upper story sections and features round arched windows and round arched entries on both the Second Avenue elevation and the East 13th Street elevation. There are quarry-cut stone belt courses at the upper stories, round arches above the fifth story windows, and paired windows at the attic or sixth story.

406 East 14th Street; 413 East 13th Street Building Date : 1894-96 (No. 406), 1945 (No. 413) Original Use : Institutional Original Owner : Church of the Immaculate Conception Original Architect : Barney & Chapman (No. 406), Eggers & Higgins (No. 413) Description & Building Alterations Two buildings currently stand on this lot, both originally built and owned by the Church of Immaculate Conception. No. 406 East 14th Street, the former Grace Chapel, was designed by architect Barney & Chapman and erected in 1894 in stone and Roman brick. The mission closed in 1943, after which the complex was bought by Immaculate Conception, which had lost its 1858 Gothic Revival church during the construction of Stuyvesant Town. This building is a great example of Gothic Eclectic architecture and as such was designated as a New York City landmark in 1966 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. The church consists of three major sections, a free-standing tower with clean-cut profile at center, a church section with a steep gable facing the street and an attached intimate round chapel, and two wings of three and a half stories with peaked roofs. According to the Office for Metropolitan History, the four-story building at No. 413 East 13th Street was built in 1945 as a convent and school. It features brick facing, simple window enframements, crosses at the top of the side bays, an inscription on top of the first floor, and projecting brickwork at the first and second stories.

Two storefronts on East 21st Street: Frank J Baker, Plumber; and a kosher meat and poultry shop. June 28, 1926.

October, the month when we mark Columbus Day, is also Italian-American Heritage and Culture Month. That combined with the recent celebrations around the 125th anniversary of Veniero’s inspires a closer look at the East Village’s own historic Little Italy, centered around First Avenue near the beloved pastry shop and cafe. While not nearly as famous or intact as similar districts around Mulberry Street or Bleecker and Carmine Street in the South Village, if you look closely, or know where to dig, vestiges of the East Village’s once-thriving Italian community are all around.

Stuyvesant Apartments, December 18, 1936. Completed in 1870, the Stuyvesant Apartments are considered New York’s first apartment building for middle-class residents (as opposed to tenement dwellings). The Victorian Gothic building was designed by Richard Morris Hunt, the celebrated architect who designed the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Fifth Avenue facade, and numerous private residences. Annual rent at the Stuyvesant Apartments was between $1,000-1,800, and tenants included the landscape architect Calvert Vaux, and Elizabeth B. Custer, the widow of General George Custer. The apartment house concept took off; soon, similar developments were planned throughout the city. The Stuyvesant, however, was demolished in 1958, making way for a new — what else — apartment building.

Built in 1919, this 6-story office building between 2nd and 3rd Avenue originally housed the Cloakmakers Local 48 of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. In New York in the early 20th century, nearly all-female garment workers were Jewish or Italian, and while they often worked closely together, there were also separate organizations and entities catering to differences of language and culture. The dramatic relief marble carvings on the building depicting workers’ struggle against exploitation are believed to be the work of poet and sculptor Onorio Ruotolo. In the 1920s, after Mussolini’s takeover of Italy, the Center was a hub of anti-Fascist organizing in New York.

Snowstorm on Avenue A, ca. 1888. This is possibly the aftermath of Great Blizzard of 1888, a March snowstorm that lasted three days and froze transport across the Northeast. In New York City, frozen and broken telephone and telegraph lines created hazardous conditions, with exposed wires and infrastructure (poles, etc.) obstructing street and sidewalk traffic, as seen above. The building at far left (with Meltzer Bros. beer advertisement) is likely 225 Avenue A at the southwest corner of 14th Street. In the background at center is the 14th Street station of the Second Avenue El, which ran over First Avenue between Houston and 23rd Streets.

A & P, Great American and Pacific Tea Company ca. 1936 Begun on Vesey Street in 1859 as a tea and coffee importer, the Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company grew into the world’s largest chain store. In 1937, there were 119 A & P’s in Manhattan and 15,500 stores nationwide. The store in Abbott’s photograph occupied the ground floor of a tenement one block east of Gramercy Park. As the window indicates, most of the store’s products were nationally advertised brands. A comparison of the image with Abbott’s photographs of ethnic groceries documents a dramatic change in modern American life. Today the store is a plumbing supply outlet.

Pretzel vendor at First Avenue and 14th Street, under the Second Avenue elevated station, ca. 1935.

Stuyvesant High School ARCHITECT: C. B. J. Snyder DATE: 1905-07 STYLE: Beaux-Arts The (former) Stuyvesant High School was built in 1905-07 as Manhattan’s first “manual training” public school for boys, one of the educational reforms brought about by William H. Maxwell, first Superintendent of Schools following the consolidation of Greater New York in 1898. The five-story building was designed by Superintendent of School Buildings C.B.J. Snyder in a Beaux-Arts style, with distinctive classically-inspired and Secessionist detail, and has an H-plan organized around light courts at the sides. The main facade on East 15th Street, clad in tan brick and limestone, is dominated by a pedimented entrance pavilion, flanked by three bays of windows on each side, while the East 16th Street facade, of red brick above a limestone base, has more restrained ornamental detail.

The Roman Revival public baths at the far eastern end of 23rd Street were designed by the Brunner & Aiken firm and built between 1904-1906, during a period of increased efforts to address public hygiene. Asser Levy, a 17th century merchant, was one of the first Jews to arrive in New Amsterdam, possibly arriving as a refugee of Dutch Brazil. Levy’s presence in the colony of New Netherland was first recorded in 1655, when he protested his both his exclusion from the colony’s military on the basis of his faith, and the tax penalty assessed for having not served. Levy’s appeals led to the 1657 extension of citizenship rights to Jews in the New Netherland. In 1661, Levy became the first Jew to own a house in North America. Levy became a successful merchant in Albany and New Amsterdam, appearing frequently in litigation and transaction records. In New Amsterdam, he owned a butchery on Wall Street and also operated a tavern.

A new chapter in the long Black freedom struggle took shape in New York and elsewhere following World War II. African-American New Yorkers and their allies mobilized against a range of discriminatory policies and practices, including exclusion by employers and banks, whites-only housing, segregated and unequal public schools, and controversial uses of force by police. By the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act, New York had passed anti-discrimination laws in employment and housing, and activists had staged an enormous school boycott protesting segregated schools. Yet racial discrimination remained, and that year, rioting broke out in Harlem after a white policeman fatally shot African-American teenager James Powell. Activists have continued to mobilize in response to police conduct in communities of color, as well as against city schools and housing that remain divided along racial lines.

Friends Meeting House, Stuyvesant Square, ca, 1900. The Friends Meeting House and Seminary in Stuyvesant Square date to 1860. In the 1820s a schism occurred within the Society of Friends in New York. When the larger Quaker community began accepting the then in-fashion focus on intense Bible study, a group led by Elias Hicks of Long Island defected. (Traditional Quaker practice places the utmost importance on the personal relationship and direct interaction between worshiper and deity.) The break off group, referred to as Hicksites, purchased land on what had formerly been Peter Stuyvesant's estate. In 1860 one of their own, Charles Bunting, designed and built the pictured the Meeting House and Seminary. The red brick buildings are a mix of Federal and Greek Revival styles, rendered in a simple and unassuming design. In the 1950s, more then a century after the split, the two Quaker sects reunited. Today, they continue to occupy these buildings. The Friends Seminary, a private day school, run here is the oldest continuously coeducational school in New York City. The school was founded in 1786 with funds from a $10,000 bequest by wealthy merchant Robert Murray (who the neighborhood Murray Hills named).

235-237 First Avenue; 350 East 14th Street Building Date : 1949 Original Use : Commercial Original Owner : First Federal Saving & Loan Association Original Architect : R.B. O'Connor & W.H. Kiham Jr. Description & Building Alterations Built in 1949, this five-story building was originally the First Federal Savings & Loan Bank, designed by R.B. O’Conner & W.H. Kiham Jr. The building housed a vault, offices, banking hall, and a store front. In 1951, two dental offices were housed in the upper floors of the building. It is five stories in height, three bays on the First Avenue elevation and five bays at the East 14th Street elevation. It is clad in brick in a Flemish stretcher bond. There are limestone classical details and belt courses above and below the top story. A limestone cornice caps the first floor. There are stone lintels with keystones at the second floor. The corner of the building is chamferred and the main entry is at that corner. The entry features a classical surround with pediment and half columns. Some of the first floor windows are arched with limestone keystones. The building no longer houses a bank; however, the name of the original tenant is carved in the limestone over the first floor.

Friends Meeting House and Seminary ARCHITECT: Charles T. Bunting DATE: 1861 These two buildings are fine brick buildings built in the style of an earlier period. They display great elegance in their simplicity and, as a pair of buildings, set off in spacious grounds, they are a positive addition to Stuyvesant Square.

In the late 19th and early 20th century the densely crowded neighborhoods of New York, whose apartments lacked bathing facilities, combined with a progressive civic action to create a peculiar and somewhat short-lived (for its original purpose) municipal facility: the public bath house. In the 19th century, public baths, of a sort, were established as floating pools in the rivers during the hot summer months. A few "People's Baths" were built with private funds through the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor prior to 1900. In 1895 the passage of a state-wide law required the construction of public bathing facilities in the state's largest cities. The first truly municipal bath opened on Rivington Street in 1901. Many of the resulting public baths were architecturally impressive, both inside and out. The complexes usually included laundry facilities, a swimming pool, and separate tubs for men and women. The immediate need for the baths diminished some with the passage of the 1901 Tenement House Act, which required new apartments to provide toilet facilities. (Many, though not all, landlords also included baths.) Yet the public baths saw periods of high volume especially in the summer months. The year 1920 saw 7.5 million baths taken in these 20 facilities. In the 1930s some of the baths were renovated by the WPA. By the mid century, the public baths were closing and being demolished or being converted to other usages. Some facilities located in parks were made into recreational facilities. The final bath to close, in 1975, was the Allen Street Bath at 133 Allen Street.

"“E. 17th Street, north side, west from Third Avenue, to and across Irving Place. The low ornate structure at the right (No. 143 East) is now occupied by a Greek Orthodox Church. It was formerly Scheffel Hall, a German restaurant, owned and operated by one, William Allaire. 1938.” In 1928, the heirs of former proprietor William Allaire sold the Third Avenue beer hall to the German-American Athletic Club, while the 17th Street wing was acquired by the Greek Church of St. John the Baptist."

Empire State Building, viewed from an interior courtyard of Peter Cooper Village, September 19, 1951. City leaders, most notably Robert Moses, also encouraged middle-class, large-scale, master-planned, low-density projects. Stuyvesant Town, developed by the private company Metropolitan Life Insurance, required a massive slum clearance program paid for largely by the city. Located between 14th and 20th streets and First Avenue to Avenue C, the 80-acre site replaced the Gas House district of gas storage tanks. Planned in 1942, the first buildings opened in 1947. The buildings of Stuyvesant Town covered only 26 percent of the site and delivered 302 pp/acre. Stacking up the 8,757 apartments in 15-story buildings failed to overcome the impact of low ground coverage. The all-white residents benefited from generous apartments, private green spaces, and neighborhood retail. Sponsors carefully managed occupancy to prevent crowding. Those families lucky enough to get apartments realized that they had gotten far more than just apartments—they were living in a new, lower density urban landscape that stood apart from the city and was secured by private police. Many would stay for decades.

20th Street east of Second Avenue was in the old "gashouse district" named for the gas houses built along the East River. Berenice Abbott's photograph shows one of the remaining Con Ed tanks between First Avenue and Avenue A. Also in the distance, the Second Avenue El, which ran on First Avenue below 23rd Street.

Asser Levy Public Baths, ca. 1915.

\#345 East 15th Street, north side, showing Stuyvesant High School.

219 First Avenue; 351 East 13th Street Building Date : 1848-50/2014 Original Use : Residential Original Owner : Bowen Original Architect : Unknown Description & Building Alterations While this building was originally constructed as a row house in 1849-50 for owner John Bowen, little remains of the structure except for the four story, three bay facade on First Avenue and a small part of the brick facade facing East 13th Street. In 2014, it was given a mostly new facade and a two and a half-story rooftop addition. According to tax assessment records, the original building on this site was constructed along with those on the adjacent three lots. It was home to a dry goods store in 1934.

Stuyvesant High School Front Building, ca. 1914. This 1905 building was constructed to house Stuyvesant High School. The school, which was established in 1904 as a manual training school for boys, was originally located on East 23rd Street. In 1907, the school moved into the Snyder-built Beaux-Arts building where it remained for the next 85 years. In 1919 the school, which was cultivating a reputation for excellence in math and science, began limiting admissions based on scholastic achievement, and in 1934 they implemented an entrance exam. Though Stuyvesant High School moved out in 1992 for a larger, more modern facility in Battery Park City, this building remains an educational institution. Famous alum of this school include mathematician Paul Cohen (1950), jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk (who attended in 1935 but did not graduate), actor Tim Robbins, former United States Attorney General Eric Holder, and Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent.

231-237 Second Avenue ca. 1900-1910 U.S. Senate and The W.M. Evarts are somewhat peculiar names for apartment buildings. But these two structures were called such after William Maxwell Evarts, a distinguished 19th-century lawyer, and politician. Evarts, who lived in a brownstone on the site during the 1850s when the area was quite fashionable, was Secretary of State under Rutherford B. Hayes and a United States Senator. Though Evarts would move his family out of the brownstone, he would continue to rent it and supposedly had great affection for the building. Following Evart's death, it was demolished and the pair of apartment buildings were erected. The New Yorker reported that "none of the family had anything to do with naming the buildings that are there now." Evart's grandson stated " I suppose The U.S. Senate got its name in honor of Grandfather's last public office, but the connection seems pretty thin. It was the style in those days to give apartment buildings fancy names, and the builders must have been desperate." Adding insult to injury, he added "drab-looking places, aren't they?"

223-225 Avenue A Building Date : 1951 Original Use : Commercial Original Owner : Fleetwood Syndicate Inc. Original Architect : Charles E. Greenberg Description & Building Alterations According to the Office for Metropolitan History, the new building application for this one-story commercial building was filed in 1949 and construction was completed in 1951. The storefronts have been through various alterations. In the early 20th century, this lot housed at least two five-story buildings consisting of stores and tenements.

World War I Memorial, ca. 1930-1940. While memorials, particularly war memorials, are usually permanent to the locations where they are originally dedicated, this is not always the case. For reasons of street improvements, upgrades to public safety, or expanded parks, a memorial might be moved. The World War I Memorial seen in the background here was first located on a small pedestrian island southeast of Union Square. Dedicated in 1934 it was moved off the site in the 1990s upon request of the MTA. After approval by Community Board 5, veterans groups, and the New York City Arts Commission, the memorial was moved to a space in front of the Veterans Hospital at East 23rd Street and First Avenue. The triangle on which the memorial sat was expanded to three times its size, though a planned glass-roof subway kiosk for the Union Square Station was never constructed. The memorial itself is a simple modernist stone monument that was dedicated on Armistice Day (November 11th) 1934, ''in memory of the men of the East Side who lost their lives in the World War.'' Ten feet tall and six feet across each of its three convex sides, it was designed by Wilhelm Hunt Diederich, a sculptor best known for his animal-themed ironwork.

334-336 East 14th Street Building Date: 1869-70 Original Use: Institutional Original Owner: First German Baptist Church Original Architect: Julius Boekell Description & Building Alterations This Romanesque Revival building was originally The First German Baptist Church, and later became the Ukrainian Autocephalic Orthodox Church of St. Volodymyr (1926-1962). Since 1962, the building has been home to Congregation Tifereth Israel, Town and Village Synagogue, which was founded in 1949. The religious structure, built in 1869-70 in the Rundbogenstil style, was designated a New York City Landmark in 2014.

Saint George’s Church ARCHITECT: Blesch & Eidlit DATE: 1846-56 STYLE: Romanesque Revival, Church The Saint George’s Church is one of the great examples of Romanesque Revival architecture in New York. It has characteristics which may be identified with the sturdy Romanesque architecture of South Germany. It is notable for its excellent detail and that it makes a significant contribution to the architectural beauty of Stuyvesant Square.

Grace Chapel ARCHITECT: Barney & Chapman DATE: 1894-96 STYLE: Gothic Eclectic Among its important qualities, the Grace Chapel is a superb example of Gothic Eclectic architecture. The building possesses individual distinction and character. Along with its companion buildings, the Clergy Houses, it combines to form a notable architectural composition, adding to the prestige of the neighborhood and that the building contributes a rare charm and architectural beauty to New York City.

My Archive Spring 2019

Burning of the Second Avenue Armory, July 1863.

East 14th Street, east of the Second Avenue El station, April 18, 1917. Despite its name, the Second Avenue El tracks ran over First Avenue between Houston and 23rd Streets.