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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Cornell University Medical College, ca. 1900. During the late 19th century, Cornell University sought to establish a medical college in New York City, but by the late 1890s had seen multiple attempts fail, including a proposed scheme to affiliate with New York University. In April 1898, Cornell University Medical College was established, with faculty who had left NYU following a dispute. Standard Oil Trustee Oliver Hazard Payne funded the construction of a new facility for the fledgling college, across First Avenue from Bellevue Hospital. Stanford White’s Neoclassical hospital occupied the full block between 27th and 28th Streets, with two Corinthian-columned entrances on First Avenue. Today, the capitals of four of those columns are preserved in the courtyard garden of the Bellevue Men’s Shelter. The teaching hospital was operated by Cornell until 1932. Between 1933-1955, it was operated by NYU. The building was ultimately leveled during the 1960s, as part of the Bellevue South Urban Renewal project.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.