Waterside Generating Plant, November 9, 1938. Constructed between 1896 and 1900 in a Beaux Arts style by architect C. Wellesley Smith, the Waterside Generating Plant (later Con Edison) was the first generating facility in New York City to produce alternating current. This section of the East River waterfront was once lined with industrial businesses. Starting in the mid century the area was slowly deindustrialized and redeveloped due to the construction and functioning of the nearby United Nations and high-rise residential development. Con Ed sold a number of adjacent plots in the late 1990s, and in 2005 took this facility offline (moving the additional functions to the east 14th Street facility). The building was demolished soon thereafter.

St. Gabriel's Park Branch, June 26, 1928. Designed by McKim, Mead & White and completed in 1908, this Carnegie library is no longer is extant. The St. Gabriel's Park Branch (which replaced a small, earlier, non-Carnegie library on 34th Street) was demolished for the construction of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel in the 1930s. Ironically the earlier library building at 215 East 34th Street was also demolished for the tunnel. The St. Gabriel's Park branch was torn down in the 1930s to make way for the Queens Midtown Tunnel. The library building had a similar look to other McKim, Mead & White designed Carnegie libraries, though it also included one of the few open air reading room. These open air gardens were often on the roof with glass coverings. This branch was particular in that the open air section constituted a whole fourth floor, surrounded by classic loggia (columned portico) and covered by full peaked roof.

34th Street, viewed from the exit of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, ca. 1985. This is the view that greeted motorists entering Manhattan via the Queens-Midtown tunnel: the dilapidated remains of No. 214 East 34th Street, the former “Furniture Exhibition Building.” Today, a new building has replaced No. 214, but the 34th Street sign (upper right) remains.

The Bellevue Psychopathic Hospital, as it was called at the time, was built in 1931 by Charles B. Meyers in the Italian Renaissance style. The building is still standing alongside the East River on First Avenue between 29th and 30th Streets, occupying an entire city block. When constructed, it joined the growing Bellevue hospital complex, and was intended to match the existing buildings, which were designed by architects McKim, Mead & White – same color brick, embellished with granite base course, limestone and terra cotta trimmings. By then, McKim, Mead & White was barely active; Meyers had just designed the Tammany Hall building and was a favorite of then-Mayor Jimmy Walker.

Kips Bay Brewing Company Building, ca. 1978. The brewery, built in 1895 and shuttered in 1947, retains its twin mansard-covered cupolas over the corners of 37th and 38th Streets. In this late 70s photo by Edmund Vincent Gillon, the southern half of the block-long structure is occupied by The Florentine Craftsmen, a garden supply and furniture depot. The smokestacks belong to the Consolidated Edison Waterside Generating plant, a massive Beaux-Arts structure demolished in 2006.

The New York Association for the Blind, today known as the Lighthouse Guild, was founded to provide "Light through Work." The association, which still operates today, is dedicated to advocacy and vision rehabilitation for the blind. The foundation was established in 1903 by sisters Winifred and Edith Holt. It began at first as the "Lighthouse Free Ticket Bureau," which gave free concert tickets to blind children. The Holts were inspired by a similar project while visiting Italy. Looking to establish a program in their hometown, Winifred and Edith Holt started their own project. An article in the New York Times, dated January 13, 1907, wrote that: "When Misses Winifred and Edith Holt established a ticket bureau for the blind four years ago their sole thought was that they might relieve the somber lives of these sufferers," however, "it seemed that something more thoroughgoing should be attempted." Thus, the "Lighthouse Free Ticket Bureau" was transformed into the New York Association for the Blind, which offered education, vocational training, job placement, and recreation. The Association was modeled after a settlement house, which Winifred Holt was familiar with: she had been a regular volunteer at houses on the Bowery before dedicating her life to aiding the visually impaired. The Holt's charitable organization was formally incorporated as The New York Association for the Blind in 1906. In addition to founding the Association, Winifred also campaigned for the first census of blind residents in New York. The census counted over nine-thousand New York residents who were visually impaired. She also helped found the New York State Commission for the Blind and Visually Handicapped. In 1914, Holt was recognized for her ceaseless social welfare work and awarded a gold model by the National Institute of Social Sciences. Within the Association for the Blind, Winifred and Edith served as the secretary and recording secretary of the Association, respectively. The poet Richard Watson Gilder served as president with vice-president Helen Keller. The Association started, at first, in the Brownstone home of the Holts, at 44 East 78th Street. They employed teachers who were visually impaired and therefore had a greater understanding of what it meant to instruct those who were also blind. Edith and Winifred came to a quick understanding that many of those who were blind needed steady employment in addition to educational services. In response, they converted their family Brownstone into a space for women to work and opened a workshop for men at East 42nd Street. In these spaces, men and women produced sellable wares, such as brooms, brushes, furniture, and mats, all of which would be sold on their behalf. According to the Times, "the home of the Misses Holt is a hive of workers engaged in advancing the interests of the blind in many ways." Additionally, adults were trained in the realm of clerical, sales, and business work. The program grew so quickly that an expansion known as the Bourne Workshop was opened at East 35th Street in 1912. While providing employment, training, and education for adults, the New York Association for the Blind also took care of children. Various outdoor summer camps for children were opened around the state. Winifred also lobbied the New York Department of Education to allow visually impaired children to be admitted into public schools for the first time. With the onset of World War I, and, seeing the success of the program in New York City, Winifred Holt worked to expand the Association onto the world's stage. Le Phare de Bordeaux was opened in France in 1915, as were offices, or "Lighthouses," in Paris, Rome, Warsaw, China, Japan, the Middle East, India, and South America, thus making the Association an international foundation. The New York Association for the Blind took on the name Lighthouse Incorporated in 1989 and was later re-named Lighthouse International. In 2005, the Guild celebrated its 100th anniversary. The offices of the Lighthouse Guild are now located at 250 West 64th Street.

This streetscape of the north side of East 38th Street, east of Third Avenue looks very different today. While the two-story brick building at no. 215 still stands, the rest of these buildings are long gone. In their place, the northbound Queens Midtown Tunnel exit street cuts through from 37th Street to 41st Street.

People's Baths Milbank Memorial, 1904. In 1902, Elizabeth Milbank Anderson, heiress to the Borden Condensed Milk Company fortune, pledged to donate funds to the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (AICP) for the construction of a public bath. The resulting facility was completed in early 1904 at the cost of $140, 000. The facility was large enough to service more than 3000 bathers in one day. Today the building is occupied by the Republic of Indonesia's mission to the United Nations.

Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, ca. 1978. New York’s most infamous hospital, the Renaissance Revival Bellevue Psychiatric Ward was built in 1931 to treat a broad swath of the city’s often-indigent mentally ill population. Prominent inpatients included Norman Mailer, Edie Sedgwick, and Mark David Chapman (John Lennon’s Assassin). The Bellevue Psychiatric Ward closed in 1984. Today, the facility is partially occupied by a men’s shelter.

Contrasting 331 East 39th Street with Chrysler and Daily News Buildings ca. 1938 Standing near an abandoned tenement between First and Second Avenues, Abbott looked northeast toward two glamorous corporate headquarters on East 42nd Street. The campaign posters for Congress affixed to the tenement, for incumbent Republican John J. Connor and his opponent the Communist Israel Amter, speak to the neighborhood’s Irish and Jewish working-class constituents. Today, a garage and parking lot for Con Edison occupy 331 East 39th Street, and apartment buildings block the view of the famous skyscrapers.

📚In 1901 after selling his corporation for $500 million, steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie announced a $5.2 million donation to the City of New York for the construction of public library buildings. With this gift, 67 branch libraries were constructed in the five boroughs between 1903 and 1929. 📚

The names of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick are well known in New York City and beyond for Carnegie Hall and for the Frick Collection. Though the institutions built by these two steel magnates are important to the city’s cultural identity, the organization built by their lesser known (but just as wealthy) associate, Henry Phipps, has had and continues to have, a more material effect on the lives of New Yorkers. His legacy, Phipps Houses, is the oldest non-profit developer of affordable housing, erecting its first buildings in 1906 and actively developing and managing properties today.

Phipps Houses, ca. 1905. In the early part of the twentieth century, the entire block span between First and Second Avenues on East 31st Street was the site of the Phipps Houses. Completed in 1906 and designed by Grosvenor Atterbury, the building was commissioned by steel magnate Henry Phipps. Also a philanthropist, the building was Phipps' first attempt to curb the rising tuberculosis epidemic in the city by improving living conditions for paying tenement tenants. Home to 142 apartments, each unit at the Phipps Houses included two to five rooms, individual bathrooms, and a finished courtyard. Although rent was $14 monthly, which was $4 more expensive than usual tenement rent at the time, the building was designed to maximize the wellbeing of those who would live there. An early brochure said: "This enterprise is not a charity. Tenants are not asked to accept anything free. All that they pay for in their rent they will receive." Atterbury's design for the Phipps Houses was the first of its kind in the city. The complex was grand and constructed with varied brickwork to maximize airflow. Unlike other tenement buildings, Phipps also designated the bottom floor of his development as space for tenants to receive social services and counsel.

Carriage houses on Sniffen Court, a private mews off East 36th Street, ca. 1980. This set of ten carriage houses dates to the 1860s. The building at left (with oriel window) is No. 156 East 36th Street, also 2 Sniffen Court. Preservation documents state that the mews was named for John Sniffen, the builder purportedly responsible for the mews layout and the construction of the houses. However, Christopher Gray, in a 1991 “Streetscapes” column for the New York Times, disputes this claim, finding no evidence to connect John Sniffen to the property or its developers. In the early 20th century, the service buildings were converted to private residences, and in 1966, Sniffen Court received Landmark designation, forever cementing the Sniffen name, whether it arose from fact or tradition.

Buildings on East 32nd Street. At far right (No. 207) is the former Tammany Central Association, ca. 1965. In 1901, the Tammany Central Association, at the time an influential faction of the political machine, broke ground on this ostentatious Beaux-Arts clubhouse. However, internecine conflicts soon saw the district’s patron, Richard Croker, out of power. The clubhouse was completed all the same, but reform efforts and the financial strain of upkeep saw the facility rented out a soon as 1911. Later tenants included the City of New York, itself. In 1965, the old Tammany clubhouse became the headquarters of New York Magazine, when Milton Glaser, New York’s founder, purchased the building. When the magazine moved to new offices in 1974, Glaser remained; he maintains his studio there to this day. The buildings at left have since been demolished.

Kips Bay Towers, 1966. The two towers of the Kips Bay Plaza Apartments were completed between 1960 and 1963. Designed by I.M. Pei and S. J. Kessler, the Brutalist style complex was erected on what had been the first Phipps Houses, a series of tenements created as working class housing just after the turn of the century. The two towers are massive 21-stories of glass and raw concrete facades. They were conceived as a middle-income rental project, but just 20 years later were converted to condominium apartments over the objections of a substantial number of residents.

Adams Memorial Church, 1942. Architect J.Cleaveland Cady designed this church with the double spires as the Adams-Parkhurst Memorial Presbyterian Church. It was a mission church of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, just a few blocks away. Dedicated in 1875 over the next decades it was home not only the Adams-Parkhurst church but also a German Lutheran congregation and an Armenian Evangelical Church. Left empty and abandoned after a stint as a radio station, the church became the CBS 30th Street Studio from 1948 to 1981. The Columbia Records studio was the location of thousands of recordings, including Miles Davis' Kind of Blue (1959), Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (Original Broadway Cast recording, 1957), and Pink Floyd's The Wall (1979). It was aptly nicknamed "the Church." Columbia Records moved out in 1981, and after changing hands a few times, the building was razed and replaced with a 10-story apartment building called "The Wilshire," completed in 1985.

The Civic Club ARCHITECT: Thomas A. Gray DATE: 1898-99 STYLE: French Beaux-Art The elegant building of the Civic Club, now known as Estonian House, was designed in the French Beaux-Arts style by Thomas A. Gray. Erected in 1898-99, the Civic Club building was commissioned by Frederick Norton Goddard (1861-1905), the founder of the club and a leading social reformer in the city.