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."

Cooper-Hewitt House, Gramercy Park, June 1925. In 1848, Peter Cooper left his longtime residence at Fourth Avenue and 28th Street (then a busy industrial area and slaughterhouse district), for a new mansion in the Gramercy Park neighborhood. Cooper shared his 35-room residence with his extended family, including son-in-law and future Mayor of New York City Abram Hewitt. Hewitt had befriended Cooper’s son Edward Cooper — himself the city’s 83rd Mayor — while traveling abroad in Europe. The Cooper-Hewitt bond was cemented when both me survived the capsizing of their return ship off of Cape May. Hewitt would go on to marry Edward’s sister, Sarah Cooper. Hewitt’s family continued to reside at 9 Lexington Avenue after Peter Cooper’s 1883 death, and even enlisted Gramercy Park neighbor Stanford White to design updates to the structure. The building was eventually replaced by a 13-story apartment building, completed in 1951.

3-4 Gramercy Park West, ca. 1970-1990.

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.

Samuel Tilden House ARCHITECT: Vaux & Radford DATE: 1881-84 STYLE: Victorian Gothic This building is a fine example of conservative Victorian Gothic architecture. It displays a wealth of unusual details and varicolored stones. It was once the home of an American distinguished both in the realm of politics and the world of culture and scholarship.

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

“Stanford White’s city house,” ca. 1884. Stanford White was one of the leading American architects of the Gilded Age, a leading practitioner of Beaux-Arts architecture and a partner in the firm McKim, Mead & White. His New York City buildings include the second Madison Square Garden, the Washington Square Arch, the Gould Memorial Library, and the Judson Memorial Church among several others. White moved into 121 East 21st in 1898, and immediately began an extensive interior renovation which included ornate furnishings, sculptural elements and antiquities imported from Europe. White is also known for the spectacular circumstances of his 1906 murder: he was shot in the head on the roof of his own Madison Square Garden by Harry Kendall Thaw, whose wife, the actress Evelyn Nesbit, had been assaulted by White years earlier, and later carried on an affair with the architect. Thaw’s murder trial became a tabloid spectacle, bringing the unsavory acts of White’s private life into public view. After White’s death, his art collection was auctioned off and the house was sold to the Princeton Club in 1907. The building was demolished in 1924, with construction on the Gramercy Park Hotel commencing later that year.

Stuyvesant Fish House, 19 Gramercy Park South; March, 1909. In 1845, the politician and Whig Party official Samuel Johnson, built a four-story townhouse at 86 Irving Place, just south of the newly-developed Gramercy Park (the fifth floor would added by its next owner, paper merchant Horace Brooks). Just as developer Samuel Ruggles intended, Gramercy Park became a fashionable address in the latter 19th century, and attracted a set of socially prominent residents. In 1887, the house was purchased by Stuyvesant and Mamie Fish, the son of Secretary of State and New York governor Hamilton Fish. Mamie, a renowned hostess in possession of biting wit, immediately set about brining the townhouse up to her standards. The first order of business was a change of address, to the more desirable 19 Gramercy Park South. Next, the Fishes hired architect Stanford White, himself a Gramercy Park resident, to lead a thorough redesign of the interior — including a top-floor ballroom. The spectacular results were described by Brendan Gill, writing in The New Yorker in 1979, as "Unquestionably, the greatest house remaining in private hands in New York." (Some sources, including the Times' Christopher Gray insist that another architect, Sidney V. Stratton, was responsible for the redesign.) Mamie Fish, however, had her sights set on even greater things: the Fishes decamped for a new uptown mansion, also designed by White, in 1898. During the 20th century, the publicist and art collector Benjamin Sonnenberg lived at No. 19 for nearly 50 years.

146 East 24th Street, ca 1974. In the late 19th-century, this Beaux-Arts building was home to the Fiss, Doerr & Carroll Auction Mart. According to an 1895 advertisement, the firm was once "the largest dealer of horses in the world.'' The mart would host crowds of up to 1,000 people in a huge interior rink that was 65 feet by 197 feet. Before torn down, it was caught in a preservation battle against Baruch College, who eventually demolished the building to construct their William and Anita Newman Vertical Campus.

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.

Manhattan Trade School for Girls, 1929. The first vocational school for girls—the Manhattan Trade School for Girls—was organized in 1902. Here, young underprivileged female students were trained in a trade (dressmaking, millinery, etc) and given physical education until the age 14, when they aged out of mandatory education and entered into the industrial workforce. After continuously outgrowing smaller spaces, Superintendent of School Buildings C. B. J. Snyder was tasked with designing a new larger home for the school. The resulting building was rendered in the Collegiate Gothic style (a Snyder favorite) with a gleaming white terra cotta facade. The 10-story building could accommodate 1,200 student for classes during the day and 2,000 in the two sets of night classes. Completed in the summer of 1918, much of the training at the start was devoted preparing women to work in the war effort. They learned to drape military garments, cook for canteens, and being nurse's aids. While work for the war effort ended by the close of 1918, the school did continue to produce items that could be sold. An article in 1932 stated that items for sale included "children’s clothes, towels, hats and dresses for adults, neckwear, lampshades, novelties, cakes, cookies, and pies." Over the next few decades the curriculum of the school slowly changed with the times. By the 1980s, the school, then known as Mabel Dean Bacon Vocational High School, was concentrating on business education, nursing, dental assistance and cosmetology. Today the once again gleaming white building (following extensive restoration and upkeep) is the School of the Future, a middle and high school facility focused on small class sizes and an “ethnically, economically, academically, and geographically” diverse student body.

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.

The Players ARCHITECT: Unknown DATE: 1845 The porch of this building represents the epitome of refinement and elegance and that this handsome addition brought a new gaiety to New York City. This building was remodeled from a Gothic Revival townhouse. The very distinguished front porch of the Players with its handsome iron railings and gorgeous wrought iron lamps is the work of Stanford White.

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.

College of the City of New York, formerly the Free Academy of the City of New York. July 25, 1927.

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.

College of the City of New York, formerly the Free Academy of the City of New York. Ca. 1912.

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

Here at Urban Archive, we often focus our stories on the city streets and the public-facing architecture of the city. However, being stuck inside our apartments has given us a new appreciation for interiors so we thought we'd take a look at a diverse array of New York's interiors over the years. This particular story dives inside the homes and lives of New York's elite at the turn of the century and what their interiors meant to them.

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.

3-4 Gramercy Park West, 1935.

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.

Russell Sage Foundation Building and Annex ARCHITECT: Grosvenor Atterbury; John A. Thompkins II DATE: 1912-23 The Russell Sage Foundation Building was constructed in 1912-13 for one of the leading reform social service organizations of the Progressive era. The Russell Sage Foundation was established in 1907 with an unprecedented ten million dollar bequest of Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage that was to be applied “to the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States of America.” Grosvenor Atterbury’s elegant design was inspired by the sixteenth-century Florentine palazzo but adapted to a twentieth-century office building. The structure’s principal facades are almost entirely clad in rock-faced Kingwood sandstone of a light brown/pink color.

"Healy’s Cafe at the corner of 18th Street and Irving Place, March 1909. The 1829 building was originally the Porter Hotel and has been home to a tavern since at least 1864. In 1899, the bar was purchased by Tom and Jon Healy, who opened Healy’s Cafe, a regular haunt of the short story author O. Henry, who lived nearby. Henry is said to have written some of his stories in the establishment, though these tales are likely apocryphal. Now known as Pete's Tavern, the restaurant has officially been in business for more 150 years. It even survived prohibition, when a flower shop served as a front for its clandestine business.

Supergraphic on the facade of architect James R. Doman’s East 25th Street firm, ca. 1972. Doman’s offices are described in an October, 1972 Life Magazine feature on supergraphic painting: “The blueprint on the facade, painted by two of the firm’s architects in four days, is a replica of the plan the firm used in renovating the building."

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.

National Arts Club ca. 1977 Designed by Vaux and Radford for Samuel J. Tilden, the two houses now combined at this address were executed in a scholarly version of Ruskinian Gothic. They display on the exteriors a carefully modulated banding of polychromy replete with foliated sculpture and medallions containing busts of famous authors. The interiors are very rich and to our tastes gloomy, abounding in highly original foliate carvings. There is an exquisite glass dome in the westerly house.

The Players Club ca. 1935 Originally a Gothic Revival town house, this building was purchased by Edwin Booth for his home. In 1888 he made it into a clubhouse for his actor friends. At about this time Stanford White offered his services in remodeling the interior and adding the Italian Renaissance loggia and lanterns, which provide such a handsome entrance.

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.

Houses on Gramercy Park West, ca. 1923. The two Greek Revival houses at left (Nos. 3-4) share a cast iron porch designed by Alexander Jackson Davis. The pair were build around 1844, the same year planting began with the gates of Gramercy Park, signaling the beginning of the surrounding neighborhood's development. No. 4 (furthest left) was home to John Harper, Sr., a former Mayor of New York who moved to Gramercy Park West after leaving office. Harper’s tenure is commemorated by the twin gas lanterns at the gates of No. 4, a borrowed Dutch tradition marking mayoral residences. No. 4 also has a place in music history: the cover image of Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” was shot on its front steps; Albert Grossman, Dylan’s manager at the time, was the building’s owner.

Entrance to the Domestic Relations Courthouse, August 13, 1940.

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).

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.

Players Club, June 1925. The building that has houses the private social club, the Players Clubs (or just Players) was once Elihu Townsend's actual house. The Greek Revival townhouse was constructed in 1847 the banker, Townsend, and was purchased in 1888 by actor Edwin Booth to be the home of his passion project. Inspired by a social club for actors that he visited in London, Booth and 15 colleagues and friends (including Mark Twain and General William Tecumseh Sherman) established a social club. It was too be a place where actors "mingle \[..] with minds that influence the world." The Players is the oldest social club in New York City that remains in its original location.

"“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.

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

Henry William Poor House, 1899-1901. Formerly known the Cyrus W. Field mansion, this turn of the century photo depicts 1 Lexington Avenue after renovations by the architect Stanford White (a fellow Gramercy Park resident) on behalf of its new owner, the banker Henry William Poor. Poor purchased adjacent townhouses, both previously in the Field family, in April 1899, with the intention of building a larger and more modern mansion on their site. Apparently, White was able to convince Poor to abandon his tear-down project. Instead, the architect led a comprehensive interior renovation in characteristically opulent style. Outdoors, the building’s entrance was shifted to Lexington Avenue, in order to accommodate a windowed conservatory facing the park. Poor, for whom Standard & Poor’s is named, was forced to sell the mansion and its furnishings after the 1908 failure of certain investments and the subsequent liquidation of his assets. The house was razed in 1910 to be replaced by a 12-story apartment building.

Gramercy Park North, November 24, 1919.

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?"

Domestic Relations Courthouse, January 9, 1943. Legislation passed in 1933 combined the Family Court and Children's Court to create the Domestic Relations Court. More space was needed to house the increased functions of the court and a new building was undertaken next to the Children's Courthouse on 22nd Street. Designed by Charles B. Meyers and completed in 1940, the structure has a granite base and windows lined up in strong vertical orientation. Similar to other municipal buildings constructed at the time, the facade features reliefs that express themes illuminating the purpose of the structure. Here the reliefs, created by sculptor H.P. Camden, feature families in group activities such as reading, gardening, and praying. Since 1983 building has been a part of the campus of Baruch College. The school has preserved the facade and even some of the interior features. A tutoring space occupies an old jail cell in the building, complete with bars along the walls and windows and a thick steel door with a peephole.

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.

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.

Burning of the Second Avenue Armory, July 1863.

Gramercy Park was never meant to be public. Designed by Samuel B. Ruggles, who also designed Union Square, the park was envisioned as a kind of "front yard" for the residents of the 66 lots which face the park. Ruggles described it as "ornamental" to the Greek Revival row houses surrounding it. A fence, rendered in an English Romantic style, was constructed around the park in 1833, supposedly to protect the landscaping. Even today, you will need to obtain one of the 383 circulating keys to gain access to the park. This access is only available to park-facing residents for a fee of $350 a year. Activities such as music playing, dog walking or socializing with groups of more than six people are prohibited. The well-manicured park, protected by shrubs and stately American elms, rarely sees more than a few people at a time. In recent years the exclusive greenspace has opened its gates for one hour to the general public for carols on Christmas Eve.