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.

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

“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.

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

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

Bramhall Playhouse,1915. On March 27, 1915, the New York Times reported on "Manhattan's Tiniest Theatre." The Playhouse was hosted in a former residence and later a church and was the brainchild of playwright and theatrical entrepreneur Butler Davenport. Davenport, who lived in an apartment above this theatre was fond of addressing his audiences each night by saying, "I’ve been tremendously rich in everything but money.” The theatre later became known as the Gramercy Arts Theatre which produced avant-garde productions in the 1960s. In 1968 Gilberto Zaldívar and René Buch formed Repertorio Español, "to produce excellent theatre in Spanish." In 1972 the troupe moved into the Gramercy Arts Theatre and remain here to this day presenting works directed, designed, and performed by Latino theatre artists from the U.S. and diverse Spanish-speaking nations.

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

Labor College, ca. 1972. The Mayan-inspired B.W. Mayer Building was completed to the plans of architect Herman Lee Meader in 1916. The facade of the seven-story building is awash in brickwork, terra cotta snakes and skulls, and turquoise details. Originally offices, the building was bought in 1923 by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, a trade union, and in 1930 it became a trade school for the Electrical Workers. The Labor College was established in 1971 as the first such program in the United States. Affiliated with the SUNY system it focused on work, workers and the working-class presence — social, cultural and institutional — in a historical and contemporary context. The building was bought in 1994 by the Society of Friends (Quakers) who converted it into the Friends House, a residence for people with AIDS.

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.

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."

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.

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.

American Cinephone Company, 1910. Referred to as the Camera Building, this structure on 25th Street was home to the American Kinograph Company and the American Cinephone Company. Both companies provided equipment related to the "talking picture" movie industry.

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.

Burning of the Second Avenue Armory, July 1863.