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.

The first Madison Square Garden, ca. 1891. Originally a station for the Cornelius Vanderbilt-owned New York & Harlem Rail Road, P.T. Barnum converted the terminal space into the Great Roman Hippodrome Arena in 1871. It became Gilmore's Garden, named for the entertainment impersario Patrick Gilmore, in 1876. The following year, the area hosted the first edition of the competition that would become the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Following Vanderbilt's death, William Kissam Vanderbilt assumed control of the site, changing the name to Madison Square Garden. In 1889, the younger Vanderbilt sold the aging venue to a group of Gilded Age industrialists who hired architect Stanford White to design a new Garden on the same site.

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.

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower ca. 1909. New York boasts few campaniles, yet here, the architects arrived at the ingenious scheme of combining skyscraper offices, a commercial symbol ("The Light that Never Fails"), and a large office building into one structure. In 1908 it was the tallest building in New York, and the clock faces are larger than those of Big Ben in London.

Madison Square Presbyterian Church, ca. 1903-1906.

The Vanderbilt Restaurant at Broadway and 21st Street, February 26, 1920. The rear of the Flatiron Building is visible in the background, at left.

Provident Loan Society of New York, 1917. The Provident Loan Society was established in response to the panic of 1893, with Gilded Age industrialists providing its initial capital, and expanded its operations in the early years of the 20th century. In 1908, the organization moved into its new headquarters at Fourth Avenue (now Park Avenue South) and 25th Street, an Italianate palazzo designed by J. Lawrence Aspinwall. Today, the building is unaltered, despite the development of skyscrapers on all sides.

Madison Square Presbyterian Church, interior dome, ca. 1905.

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.

“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.

New York Life Insurance, 1929. Between 1879 and 1925 this plot at Madison Avenue and 26th Street was home to the first two incarnations of Madison Square Garden. MSG II (by famed architect Stanford White) was never a great financial success. In 1925, the New York Life Insurance Company who owned the land decided to demolish the Garden for their new headquarters. Completed in 1928, the New York Life Building stands 40-stories-tall and is topped by a gleaming gilded pyramidal roof. While its ornament is solidly Gothic Revival, its massing and shape are distinctly more Moderne.

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.

This house, which attempted to re-create the glories of Second Empire Paris, was built by Leonard W. Jerome as the American Jockey Club, complete with stables and a small private theatre. It later became the University Club and then the Manhattan Club after that. Though it was given landmark status, it was torn down in 1967 when a buyer couldn't be found. Jerome's grandson, child of his daughter and her husband Lord Randolph Churchill, was the famed Winston Churchill.

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.

Saint Stephen’s Church ARCHITECT: James Renwick, Jr. DATE: 1853-54 STYLE: Romanesque Revival James Renwick used the Romanesque Revival style for St. Stephen’s, early use of this style and an unusual choice for a Catholic church at this time. The deeply-set round-arched openings, the corbel tables, and blind arcades create a lively façade on this densely developed street. St. Stephen’s Church was established at a time of great expansion by the Catholic Church due to the huge numbers of immigrants to New York from such heavily Catholic countries as Ireland and Germany.

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.

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.

Madison Square Presbyterian Church, ca. 1906. Designed by Standford White and completed in 1906 (just a few months after White was killed), the Madison Square Presbyterian Church was a High Renaissance style building. It replaced the 1853 Gothic church building that occupied the lot across the street at the southeast corner. The main entrance was reached through a portico supported by six light green granite columns, which were 30 feet tall. The building had a huge central dome, which was decorated in the interior with mosaics and Guastavino tiles. It also featured a number of Tiffany windows. The final feature of the church to be completed was the pediment (the triangle over the portico) which only had its heavenly themed terra cotta sculpture installed in 1910 (after this photograph was taken).

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.

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

Madison Square Garden (second iteration), 1903. This building on the corner of Madison Avenue and 26th Street was the second on the site to bear the name Madison Square Garden. The first, built by William K. Vanderbilt in 1879, was a drafty structure that presented athletic attractions, most notably boxing matches featuring John L. Sullivan. Unable to make a profit, Vanderbilt razed the building in 1889, after which the Horse Show Association gained control of the site and hired Stanford White of the renowned firm McKim, Mead, and White to design a new structure. White's Madison Square Garden was a Moorish fantasy that cost three million dollars, was the second-tallest building in New York, and boasted an 8,000-seat auditorium that was the largest in the United States. (It also featured a roof garden where White would meet his end in 1906, shot by Harry Thaw on suspicion of having seduced Thaw's young wife, Evelyn Nesbit.) The second Madison Square Garden, which presented horse shows, dog shows, bicycle races, boxing matches, and the Democratic National Convention of 1924, became profitable once promoter Tex Rickard leased the building, but it, too, was razed in 1925 to make way for the new headquarters of New York Life Insurance Company. Rickard kept the name Madison Square Garden but moved the sporting and entertainment facility across town and uptown to Eighth Avenue, first at 50th Street and then to its current location at 32nd Street.

In the 1880s, the Lyceum Theatre sat here on Fourth Avenue between 23rd and 24th Streets. The theatre was eventually acquired by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company as it looked to expand. The theatre owner, Daniel Frohman, moved his theatre to 45th Street and Broadway at a time when that area was only beginning to emerge as the New York City Theatre District. Frohman's new Lyceum opened in November 1903 with a few bricks from the old Lyceum in its cornerstone.

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.

Cadillac Cafeteria, ca. 1922. Despite extensive research, little can be discovered about the history of the Cadillac Cafeteria, a dining establishment on 23rd Street just east of Broadway. But upon closer inspection this photograph taken circa 1920 happily captures the cafeteria's architect, Louis Abramson (second from right) and three unnamed companions. The dining spot was no longer operating in 1966 when a fire tore through the basement of the building behind this one on 22nd Street. Unaware that the two structures shared a basement and a supporting wall had recently been removed, the firefighters attempted to approach the blaze through the drug store now occupying 6 East 23rd Street. The fire weakened the flooring, causing a collapse that killed 12 firemen. Prior to September 11, 2001, this disaster claimed the lives of more fire personnel than any other disaster in the city.

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.

Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace ARCHITECT: Theodate Pope Riddle DATE: 1923 STYLE: Gothic Revival An unusual note of elegance is shown in the drawing room windows at first-floor level which are full length and open upon a handsome cast-iron balcony. All windows and the front door have special drip moldings above them which were the hallmark of the Gothic Revival house. All the windows, with the exception of those in the basement, are shuttered. The cornice at the top of the front wall is carried on a continuous series of small arches, a concession to its having been designed in the Gothic style.

3-4 Gramercy Park West, 1935.

Construction of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, 1906.

United Charities Building ca. 1928 The United Charities Building was built (as the name suggests) to assist the Charity Organization Society. Founded in England in 1869, the Charity Organization Society was aimed at uniting protestant charities to combat social problems. A wealthy new yorker banker, John Stewart Kennedy wanted to provide the charities under its umbrella (which represented thousands of prominent families and hundreds of churches) with a headquarters from which to conduct their work. Similarly, Kennedy wished to include other New York Charities that weren't strictly protestant such as the Children's Aid Society or the New York Mission and Tract Society. The remaining space could be rented by charities at rates significantly below what they would be paying elsewhere. Kennedy selected the architect Robert Henderson Robertson due to Robertson’s previous experience working with charities. Built in 1893, the building housed charities for more than a century until it was sold in 2014 to developers. It was made a national historic landmark in 1991 due to the work of its inhabitants.

The graceful Metropolitan Life Tower overlooks Madison Square Park. This story is of its beginnings, as adapted from the Skyscraper Museum's "Ten Tops" exhibition.

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.

28 East 20th Street, south side, between Fourth Avenue and Broadway, 1925. This brownstone was built in 1848 and purchased by Theodore Roosevelt's grandfather, Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt, in 1850. He would go on to gift the home to his son and new daughter-in-law as a wedding present in 1854. Theodore Roosevelt was born here on October 27, 1858. The Roosevelt's moved uptown (as was the trend) in 1873, as the area surrounding his birthplace evolved into a primarily commercial district. After the family left, the home (and its neighbor at no. 26, which was also gifted to Roosevelt's uncle) went through a number of drastic alterations before being totally demolished in 1916. In 1919, after Roosevelt's death, the family repurchased nos. 26 and 28 and restored the structures to their 1865 state, complete with period rooms. Initially a private venture, the site became part of the National Park Service in 1962.

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.

Appellate Division Courthouse of the Supreme Court of New York ca. 1900 Extremely rich in its use of materials, this small courthouse seems almost overburdened by its pediment and balustrade crowned with statues. Yet it is significant as a building in which the arts, including sculpture and mural painting were liberally represented through the efforts of the Municipal Art Society.

"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.

Church of All Souls, ca. 1908. The bold, polychrome Byzantine Revival church was designed by Jacob Wrey Mould and completed in 1855. Mould used red and yellow stone, from Philadelphia and Italy, respectively, to create a distinctive — and divisive — visual effect. The church earned nicknames, including “Church of the Holy Zebra” and “Beefsteak Church.” By the early 20th century, the building was somewhat worse for wear and was sold for development in 1929. Two years later, it was destroyed in a fire.

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."

Roscoe Conkling Statue, ca. 1976. Mayor of Utica, New York, New York State Congressman and Senator, Roscoe Conkling was a well-established and popular politician until an 1881 dispute with President Garfield over patronage dispensation and federal appointments caused him to resign his Senate seat. He is perhaps best known as the most famous victim of the Great Blizzard of 1888. After leaving his law office, Conkling was walking to the New York Club on 25th Street. He ended up caught for some time in a nearly chest-high drift in Union Square. Though he made it to the club, his health soon began to decline, starting with an ear infection. He died April 18, 1888. In the early 1890s friends advocated for a statue of Conkling in Union Square. Park officials declined the proposed site, supposedly they did not feel he was an appropriate fit with Lincoln and Washington in Union Square. The statue, created by John Quincy Adams Ward, depicts the man while delivering a speech before the United States Senate. Installed in early December 1893, the eight-foot-tall statue did not have a dedication ceremony. The statue was moved 20 feet to its current location during the renovation and redesign of Madison Square Park in 2000.

New York Yacht Club ca. 1893 The New York Yacht Club, the oldest such organization in the country, was founded in 1844 and incorporated in 1865. In 1901 the club moved from its headquarters at 27 Madison Avenue to its current Beaux-Art clubhouse on West 44th Street. The New York Yacht Club is most famous for its founding of the famed Americas Cup competition.

Cedar Creek, once visible, still flows west to the East River under Madison Square Park. It was buried as the city industrialized during the 19th century.

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.

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.

Wood-frame farm house and carriage house, East 29th Street, ca. 1965. The history of this odd, sideways-oriented farmhouse is subject to speculation among researchers and preservationists among who there are two major theories: first, the house dates to the 18th century and may have been moved from its original location; or this house built on this site after the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 laid out the street grid, as late as 1840. In a 2006 “Streetscapes” column, the New York Times’ Christopher Gray examines the first theory: the house was built during the 18th century, on the grounds of John Watts’ Rose Hill Estate. When the Commissioners’ Plan was adopted, the lots on 29th Street included a small, peculiar parcel at No. 203. Gray suggests a hypothesis: the small lot was set aside, “perhaps to receive an outbuilding relocated from the Rose Hill estate because it lay in the path of new roadways?” Tax and property records make the picture even murkier: 1830 records note a building, but don’t describe it; 1840 documents refer to a three-story structure; and the 1880 tax inventory definitively refers to the four-story structure standing today. It’s possible that these records all describe the same building — but just as likely that they don’t. And then come the experts. Gray’s column references the assessment of Alan Burnham, a former executive director of the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Burnham initially believed the gambrel roof indicated an old farmhouse of Dutch construction, but eventually dated the building at ca. 1845. However, a preservation consultant hired by the building’s 1980s owners dates the house’s frame elements to 1790. While its early history may be uncertain, recent events are relatively clear. By 1900, the house had been subdivided into apartments. For many years, it was a junk shop, likely with residences upstairs, and was later abandoned and boarded up. The house was purchased in 1979 for $80,000, gutted, and converted to single-floor apartments with a faithful exterior restoration.

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.

PRESIDENT CHESTER A. ARTHUR HOUSE, MANHATTAN Address: 123 Lexington Avenue Built: c.1860s 123 Lexington Avenue is the former residence of President Chester A. Arthur and his wife, Ellen. Arthur served a short term as Vice President of the United States, and became president after taking the Oath of Office in this house in 1881 after President Garfield was assassinated. Arthur left Lexington Avenue during his presidency in Washington, and returned after his term and lived in the house until he died there in 1886. The entire block of once-elegant brownstone townhomes remains along this stretch of Lexington. All of the buildings have converted storefronts, speaking to the evolution of Lexington Avenue from upper-class residential to a commercial corridor. The President Chester A. Arthur house was originally one of nine similarly designed five storied structures completed in 1855 on the east side of Lexington Avenue between 28th and 29th Streets. Today, only their upper three floors are the same, the first and second having been altered to such an extent, that the row house architectural character of the group has been all but destroyed. The Arthur house and adjacent number 121 remain the least altered, particularly number 121 which still retains its outside steps and trim iron railings leading from the sidewalk level to the second, or parlor floor. The high entrance doors and transom at the second floor, of greater height than the others, is framed by a wide molded stone band, segmental head, and a horizontal series of moldings above supported on a row of brackets. Although extremely simple, the proportions of the whole register dignity and scale. On the Arthur house, no doubt originally a facsimile of Number 121 the doorway motive has been altered to provide a street level entrance leaving only the segmental head and cornice with the frame terminating at the second floor level. The upper floors each have three segmental headed double hung windows with molded stone sills and cap molded lintels. A metal cornice on brackets, typical of so many brownstone fronts, crowns each building at the roof level. The buildings, of native brownstone color originally, are now painted white. It was in this house on September 20, 1882, that Chester Arthur took the oath of office President of the United States following the assassination of President Garfield. The house had been purchased by his wife Ellen Herndon Arthur in 1858 and remained their home when he left office in March 1885 until his death the following year. The report that William Randolph Hearst who occupied Number 119, the southern corner building of this historically distinguished row of houses, bought the Arthur house later for his own residential use has been disproved.

The 1913 Armory Show The Armory Show took place from February 17 to March 15, 1913 at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue and 25th Street, and in just less than a month it changed the way Americans thought about modern art. It has been called the most important exhibition ever held in the United States. The International Exhibition of Modern Art took place in the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue between 25th and 26th Streets. Its enormous drill hall provided over 30,000 square feet of display space for the estimated 1,400 works on view. The hall was divided into eighteen octagonal galleries with burlap covered panels. The space was decorated with greenery, pine trees, flags and bunting, and yellow streamers that formed a tent-like cap to the exhibition space. The Armory Show was a stunning exhibition of nearly 1,400 objects that included both American and European works, but it is best known for introducing the American public to the new in art: European avant-garde paintings and sculpture. One hundred years later it is hard to imagine what it would have been like to see works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, and Vincent Van Gogh, all together for the very first time. The exhibition created a huge sensation in New York. It traveled to Chicago and Boston, and was even more controversial in Chicago, where students burned paintings by Matisse in effigy. The exhibition’s travel turned it into a national event, and the polemical responses to the show have come to represent a turning point in the history of American art.

27th Street at N. E. corner of Lexington Avenue, ca. 1931. In the 1930s, this storefront was home to the Armenian bookstore of H. Mamasian.

Sixty-Ninth Regiment Armory ARCHITECT: Hunt & Hunt DATE: 1904-06 STYLE: Beaux-Arts, Military Among its important qualities, the Sixty-Ninth Regiment Armory is an outstanding example of military architecture, notable for its unique synthesis of Beaux-Arts design principles and clear expression of military function. It is an important work of the firm of Hunt & Hunt. The vast drill hall is an outstanding example of innovative engineering technology.

"“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."

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.

Institute for the Protection of Lesbian and Gay Youth (IPLGY), 112 East 23rd Street. Between the fall of 1983 and early 1986, the full third floor of this building was the first office of the Institute for the Protection of Lesbian and Gay Youth (IPLGY), which in 1988 was renamed the Hetrick-Martin Institute (HMI) after its founders. During the period at this address, IPLGY established the Harvey Milk High School, the first high school in the nation for LGBT youth. Today, HMI is the nation’s largest agency serving LGBT youth, with a dual focus on providing services and shaping policy.

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.

Madison Square Presbyterian Church, ca. 1910. The church was often referred to as the "Parkhurst Church" after its pastor, Reverend Charles Henry Parkhurst. It was the place of worship for a number of prominent early 20th century New Yorkers, including Tiffany, who as a parishioner, was given near complete artist freedom in the creation of the church's stained glass. By 1918, only 12 years after the new church was constructed, the congregation merged with the First Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue. Its wealthy community was moving further uptown. The demolition of the church began in October of 1918 and the plot was sold to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, who erected a 29-story annex to their main building between 1928 and 1950. An interesting fact about this short-lived church is the number of architectural details that survive today, elsewhere. The iron scrollwork light fixtures, carved pews, and a glass cross were moved to the church where the congregation relocated. Some small bits ended up with the family of Stanford White. The Tiffany stained glass windows (which Tiffany demanded be returned to him should the church ever close) are now in a wedding chapel at a hotel in Riverside, California. A doorway is in the collection at the Brooklyn Museum, a terra cotta block that topped one of the columns is at Ohio State University, and Hartford Times building in Connecticut has the 30-foot-tall green columns and portions of the cornice. One of the directors of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Robert DeForest, was also the President of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He had the pediment with its terra cotta sculpture moved to the museum. It was on display for some time until the building was expanded in the 1960s. No one wanted to fund the removal and re-installation of the 44-foor-long piece, so it was demolished.

Appellate Division Courthouse of New York State ARCHITECT: James Brown Lord DATE: 1896-99 The courthouse with its interior is a major manifestation of the turn-of-the-century movement which called for an integration of architecture, sculpture, and painting. It was the first in New York to carry out the ideals of this movement. The interior and exterior harmoniously work together to depict aspects of the theme of Justice and the Law and create a sense of architectural magnificence. The interior is both lavish and elegant in its materials and furnishings, and it displays the work of some of America’s foremost artists and craftsmen.

Calvary Church, ca. 1900. Designed by famed church architect James Renwick Jr. and completed in 1848, the Calvary Church building has been shrinking in size since the 1860s. The original church has two tall wooden spires. Renwick had modeled the structure on the many twin-towered French cathedrals. The spires were removed in 1860 (less than 20 years after construction) when they were no longer structurally stable. This photograph depicts the church with the bases two octagonal bases intact. They too were dismantled in 1929 due deterioration. Today the church is one of two sanctuaries of the combined (since 1976) Calvary-St. George's Parish.

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.

View north from 7th Street and Fourth Avenue (today Park Avenue South), August 2, 1902. During the cut and cover process of construction of the IRT East Side line, the busy streets of the city needed to maintain their necessary uses. Here a fully loaded trolley rolls over the tracks of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company. The tracks have been raised above the large excavation pit and shored up with thick timbers.

69th Regiment Armory building, ca. 1905. Completed in 1906, the armory remains the headquarters for New York Army National Guard's 1st Battalion, 69th Infantry Regiment. However, the space is likely best known for hosting the International Exhibition of Modern Art in 1913; the “Armory Show” was the first presentation of Modern art in the United States.

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.

11 Madison Avenue, ca. 1937.

Though many may not know it, the current Madison Square Garden is, in fact, the fourth Madison Square Garden!

The famed Armory Show took place from February 17 to March 15, 1913, at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Ave. and 25th St., and in just less than a month, it changed the way Americans thought about modern art. It has been called the most important exhibition ever held in the United States.

ca. 1966 The Jerome Mansion (pictured here in itself final days) was once home to Leonard Jerome, a millionaire speculator, and financier. Jerome was one of the wealthiest men in New York, making and losing several fortunes over the years. A dashing figure, he yachted with William Vanderbilt, went on hunting trips with Buffalo Bill, and defended the New York Times with a Gatling gun during the Draft Riots. A society man, Jerome founded the famous Coney Island Jockey Club and funded many of the city's early opera houses. It was fitting then that he would have a mansion to match his verve. Jerome had no interest in building a modest home, hiring the English architect Thomas Jackson to build what would be, upon its completion in 1859, one of the biggest and most expensive residences in the city. Designed in the Second Empire style, the Jerome Mansion was six stories high with a mansard roof. While the old money built subtle brownstone mansions, the Jerome Mansion was built to dazzle. Its first two stories were clad in limestone, with the upper stories made of brick and contrasting stone. The interiors were lavishly decorated to impress all that entered. The amenities of the house included: a bowling alley, a library, a trophy room, an art gallery, a billiard room, and a bar (to name but a few!) Decorated in white and gold, the ballroom was unconventionally located over adjoining stables. However, it was still quite a sight, boasting two fountains: one that spouted champagne and another that spouted cologne! In between the stables and the main house, Jerome built a theater that could reportedly hold six hundred people. Even the stables were fitted with stained glass windows. The Jeromes were fervent entertainers with the height of society passing through their doors. All manner of fetes, buisness meetings, and celebrations occurred under Jerome's roof. One such gathering affects us to this day, on November 23, 1869, a meeting took place here that founded the Metropolitan Museum of Art. However, the Jerome family would move to Brooklyn less than ten years after it was built and the Jerome Mansion was leased to the Union League Club. A prestigious blue blood club born out of the civil war, the Union League began expensive renovations and added a seventh floor. It would be the first of a series of clubs to call the mansion home. Following the Union League, the University Club and Manhattan Club would both inhabit the Jerome Mansion in 1883 and 1899 respectively. It was during the Manhattan Club's tenure in the Jerome Mansion that the Manhattan Cocktail was invented at its bar. Having leased it for years, The Manhattan Club eventually purchased the mansion from the Jerome Estate in 1964, a year before it would be landmarked. However, with membership declining, the Manhattan Club wished to sell the mansion to pay down its debts. Filing suit, the Manhattan Club was able to prove they didn't have buyers and, in 1967, it was tragically demolished.

Burning of the Second Avenue Armory, July 1863.

In 1907, the president of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, John Rogers Hegeman, commissioned the firm Napoleon LeBrun and Sons to design a campanile-style tower for the expansion of the company headquarters. Construction began later that same year, and in 1909, the building opened, advertising the company's status as s the largest insurer in the world. With its slender shaft, high-pitched roof and lantern, the tower of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company evokes the famed bell-tower of San Marco in Venice. First planned to be 658 feet, the final height stretched to 700 feet. Sheathed in white Tuckahoe Marble, the tower rises above Madison Square at 23rd Street and Madison Avenue where at night the "light that never fails" glows from its lantern, flashing the hour and quarter-hour. In 1960-61, the tower was subjected to an aggressive remodeling campaign in which most of the classical detail was stripped off, including balconies and a prominent cornice. The marble facade was replaced with sheer limestone panels so the Tower would match the modernized base. Today, the four clock-faces remain the only memory of the ornate facade, though, the proud tower still remains a defining element of the midtown skyline.

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.

The gilded statue of Diana, Goddess of the Hunt, adorned the tower of Madison Square Garden and held watch over New York City for over three decades. She is arguably the most famous and recognizable work by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

Peter Cooper residence, Fourth Avenue, 1888. Cooper originally built this two-story frame house at Fourth Avenue and 8th Street, later the site of Cooper Union. The house was later moved to Fourth Avenue and 28th Street, closer to Cooper’s Kips Bay glue factory.

Broadway, north from 21st Street, ca. 1909. The entire two blocks in the foreground, from 21st to 23rd Streets, will be unchanged some twenty-seven years later, in 1936, except for a 12story loft building, which will occupy the clearing shown here in the block between 21st and 22nd Streets. This clearing is the result of the demolition of three four-story houses. In 1936 the Bancroft House will be the Hotel Courte; and the Hotel Bartholdi, on the S.E. corner of 23rd Street, will be the Bartholdi Building, remodeled into an office building. But during this period of twenty-seven years there will be no demolitions and, with the exception noted, no construction work -- a long period in New York

"A town isn't a town without a bookstore," -Neil Gaiman 📚📚📚

Metropolitan Life Tower ca. 1916 Completed in 1909, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company tower, on the east side of Madison Square at 24th Street, at 657 feet, was the tallest building in the world for four years. The four-faced clock on the tower is 26-1/2 feet in diameter and the dials are two stories high. Before the tower's completion, during the 1908 presidential election, a large searchlight was placed on top of it that displayed the election results for miles around.