Hotel Pennsylvania, ca. 1919 Upon its opening in 1919, the Hotel Pennsylvania was the world's largest hotel, with 2,200 rooms on 22 floors. Designed by William Symmes Richardson of the firm of McKim, Mead & White, the hotel was one of the first to have private baths in every room. This was one of the many factors that made the hotel one of the most luxurious in the city at the time. Every detail was meticulously seen to, every feature of the hotel catered to the possible needs of the guests. The hotel also debuted its signature "servidor." The door to each hotel room had a two-sided cabinet concealed within. This allowed the guest to place an order, and the hotel staff to fill the order without entering the room. This service was used for laundry, food, and mail delivery. The building remains a hotel today, despite various threats of demolition between 1997 and 2010.

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.

Southward view of Fourth Avenue, from East 29th Street, during the construction of the IRT Lexington Avenue Line, April 2, 1901. The crossing in the foreground is East 29th Street. The towers in the middle-distance at center-left are atop Madison Square Garden, between East 26th and 27th Streets.

Empire State Building, 1931. The Empire State Building was built on the site of a farm purchased by the wealthy Astor family in 1827. Seventy years later, the notable Waldorf-Astoria was built on the site, until it was razed and the Hotel moved north to Park Avenue. At this time, the land made its way to the hands of Empire State Inc., a group of wealthy investors. They hired architects Shreve, Lamb & Harmon Associates to build them a tower. The tower started as a modest design of 50-stories. Ten more stories were added, and then ten more. The final design approved for construction was a whooping 102 stories tall. Construction began in 1930. The Empire State Building was completed just a year later, with its opening day 45 days ahead of schedule on May 1st, 1931. To solidify that the tower would have unobstructed views of the city, height restrictions were placed on neighboring lots. Their greatest competitor in the so-called "race to the sky" was a whole eight blocks north: the Chrysler Building. Empire State Inc. feared that their building's initial leg-up on the Chrysler Building (a mere four feet) would not be enough. They speculated the designers of the other tower would hide an antenna to top-off the structure at the last minute. Luckily, the investors who developed the Empire State had hatched their own plan to reach great heights. The group claimed that a 200-foot mooring mast atop the 1,050-foot tall skyscraper would be a landing dock for dirigibles and Zeppelins from Germany, rather than landing across the river New Jersey. Passengers would then descend the rocket-ship like mast and the 102-stories, reaching the streets of New York in seven short minutes. It was just too shameful to admit that the 200-foot tall addition to the building was merely for bragging rights.

Farragut Monument ca. 1924 This monument represents the collaboration of the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and the architect Stanford White, who designed the base. We readily sense the stance of a seafarer braced on deck to withstand the rolling sea. The base, with its beautiful lettering, sea-drenched maidens, and dolphins, is a superb allegory unique in its style at that date and foreshadowing the Continental Art Nouveau.

A.T. Stewart Mansion, ca. 1870s. Alexander Turney Stewart was an Irish-born businessman, who, by 1850, owned the largest emporium in the world and was among the richest men in New York. And rich men in New York built themselves fancy houses. The A.T. Stewart Mansion, a white marble French Second Empire mansion was completed around 1870. (While most mansions were built with brownstone at this point, his white house stood out.) As ornate as the exterior was, the interior was equally so, described by a historian as, "an explosion of bric-a-brac, statuary, furniture, and art." Stewart died only six years after the home was finished, and his wife was subject to a prorogued legal battle over his fortune (this included the theft of his body for ransom)! After a decade of diminished mental health, that had her wandering the halls of the home talking to nonexistent people, Cornelia Mitchell Stewart died in 1886. The manse would only survive 15 more years before being razed in 1901, just 30 years after completion.

Vanderbilt Hotel Once the New York home of Enrico Caruso and other notables, this hotel, in its use of brick and terra cotta, evokes memories of the best of the new architecture of the early 'twenties which it inspired. The Adamesque detail of the windows and lanterns suggests an English precedent, while the glass sunburst marquee that once graced the entrance represented the epitome of elegance.

Gilsey House ca. 1975 After the Civil War, New York’s entertainment district began moving north of Madison Square. Numerous theaters, restaurants, and hotels opened in the newly fashionable neighborhood, and while the city’s architectural churn has erased much of what was built in that era, two important buildings remain on Broadway in the area now known as NoMad. The Grand Hotel, built in 1868 on the southeast corner of 31st Street, and Gilsey House, built in 1871 on the northeast corner of 29th Street, both reflect the opulent spirit of the Gilded Age. They were designed in the French Second Empire style, with characteristic mansard roofs. Gilsey House in particular features elaborate ornamentation. Located in the center of what was dubbed the Tenderloin, the hotels existed in an environment notorious for luxury and vice. However, as the entertainment scene continued moving northward to Times Square during the 20th century, the neighborhood’s fortunes declined considerably. Neither building continues to operate as a hotel, but both are designated New York City landmarks.

Gorham Building ARCHITECT: McKim, Mead & White; Stanford White DATE: 1904-06 Crowned by an impressive copper cornice that projects eight feet from the building, it features bronze friezes and balconies, designed by White and crafted by the Gorham company, and bas-relief sculpture by Andrew O’Connor. The Gorham Building, one of the early commercial palaces built on Fifth Avenue, north of 34th Street, early in the twentieth century, was widely praised for the beauty and artistry of its design.

Martha Washington Hotel ARCHITECT: Robert W. Gibson DATE: 1901-03 STYLE: Renaissance Revival Martha Washington Hotel was developed by the Women’s Hotel Company for the purpose of providing comfortable, independent living arrangements for middle-class working women. This company was formed by a group of people active in the Charity Organization Society to fill an unmet need for housing for working women. This building displays the popular Renaissance Revival style using classical elements such as rustication, columns, strong cornices with dentils and modillions, Palladian windows and quoins, to give a sense of dignity to this important structure. The hotel continued to provide women-only facilities until 1998, when it was converted to a co-ed hotel.

This interior is one of a series of modernistic interiors created for the midtown skyscrapers of the 1920s. It was designed in the same spirit as the building’s exterior: simplicity of detail, long unbroken lines, and beautiful materials. Because of its size the interior was divided into two portions: an entrance lobby at Fifth Avenue and long corridor lobbies encompassing the elevator banks. The Fifth Avenue lobby, arranged as a long hall focusing on a modernistic aluminum silhouette of the Empire State Building on the far wall, symbolically welcomes visitors, while the corridors, elevator banks, and inner store entrances and windows create a sense of a grand concourse, suggestive of the enormous office building housing a working population of many thousands. Among its striking details are the aluminum silhouettes in the Fifth Avenue entrance lobby, the aluminum mezzanine bridges in the corridors, the silhouetted elevator doors, the ribbed marble walls, and the zig-zag ribbed ceilings.

Tiffany and Company Building, ca. 1910.

On the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, there was a mansion so grand and expansive that it was dubbed "one of the wonders of the city." At the time of its completion in 1855, it was thought to be one of the costliest and largest private homes ever built in New York. However, this post is not about that mansion. That mansion (the Samuel P. Townsend Mansion) was bought and promptly razed by Alexander Turner Stewart. The fact that Stewart would buy and then raze one of the grandest houses in the city astonished New Yorkers. But Alexander Stewart was nothing if not astonishing. Born in Ulster, Ireland, Stewart came to New York in 1823. He used some money that his grandfather left him to open a dry goods store and quickly availed himself of a natural talent for business. His empire quickly expanded into wholesaling and real estate, building massive and spectacular stores. Moreover, his wholesale empire made him extraordinarily rich, in fact, it made him one of the wealthiest men in the country. Called "the Merchant Prince of America," a 2007 New York Times article argued that Stewart numbered amongst the wealthiest Americans ever to have lived (with an adjusted net worth that equaled 90 billion dollars.) Thus Alexander Turney Stewart was a man who wanted to build his own home, nor would he settle for something modest. Moreover, he had just the man for the job. Stewart had worked hired John Kellum to build his famous "marble palace" store on Broadway so it was only natural that "the Merchant Prince" would work with Kellum again. Kellum did not let Stewart down. Eschewing the typical brownstone mansions of New York, Kellum designed Stewart a stunning home built of Tuckahoe marble. Another marble palace, the home was in the French Empire style replete with paired Corinthian pilasters, a mansard roof, iron detailing, and a broad marble staircase leading to the entrance. The grand interiors with their high ceilings, ornate fixtures, marble railings were fittingly described as palatial. The Italian painter Mario Brigaldi, who just finished decorating the Petrópolis Imperial Palace in Brazil for Emperor Dom Pedro, painted ceiling frescos in the art gallery, dining room, and breakfast room. The home had a price tag worth of a palace. Completed in 1869, it cost 2 million dollars (a staggering cost at the time.) Four stories high, the mansion dominated the corner. It was so unmistakable that the Stewarts didn't bother with an address. The house became famous for its extensive and valuable art collection, which the Stewarts sourced from throughout Europe, as well as a grand library. Despite the palatial premises, the Stewarts were not grand entertainers. While they made exceptions for heads of state like President Grant (one of the guest rooms would be named after him) they largely enjoyed their home privately. In 1876, Stewart got ill and died in the house, leaving his massive fortune to his wife (as well as more than 10 million dollars to charity.) Upon her death, the mansion stood vacant for years until it was leased by the Manhattan Club. However, burdened by debt (a theme that would continue with its occupation of the Jerome Mansion) the Manhattan Club didn't finish its lease and in 1899 it moved out. While many schemes were proposed to save the home, none came to fruition and, in 1901, it was demolished.

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.

Grand Hotel, ca. 1914. An iconic example of French Second Empire architecture, the Grand Hotel was constructed in 1868. Designed by Henry Engelbert, the large white marble hotel with its soaring mansard roof was one of several luxury hotels that opened near Madison Square Park after the Civil War. The movement of hotels, theatres, and department store from lower Manhattan into this previously residential area, signaled the beginning of its history as a glitzy entertainment and shopping district (with a bit of seedy nightlife thriving in the area as well, earning it the name Tenderloin). In the late 19th century, when the theatre district moved further uptown, the Grand Hotel suffered from the loss of those patrons. In the 20th century it was surrounded by the garment district and became a second-rate residential hotel. Today most of the theatres and hotels built in the decade after the Civil War are long done. The Grand Hotel and its somewhat more ornate contemporary, Gilsey House (two blocks north), remain as a testament to that era.

The Madison Avenue Baptist Church once stood on the corner of 31st Street and Madison Avenue, just next door to this small structure. The building was replaced in 1930 with a 17-story residential hotel with space for the church in the first four stories. The previous church had been constructed in 1858 in the Romanesque Revival style, which informed the design of the much later Parish House, which itself replaced a chapel on this site. The Parish House retains an old sign with its previous namesake. On a much grander scale, just down the block, is an Eclectic loft building at number 36, which originally housed garment industry firms. The structure features double-height fluted columns at the first and second stories and the top two stories, as well as ornamental brickwork and carved stone accents.

Streetcar emerging from the Park Avenue tunnel, with the Church of the Messiah across 34th Street, ca. 1890. The Park Avenue Tunnel, then called the Murray Hill Tunnel, was built in 1834 as an open cut trench for New York and Harlem Railroad traffic, including both steam engine-powered trains and horse-drawn vehicles. In 1850, the tunnel was covered over. In 1871, tunnel traffic shifted to horse-drawn cars only, and three stations were added at the north and south ends, and at 38th Street, inside the tunnel. Electric streetcar service operated from 1898-1935, when the tunnel was closed for conversion to automobile traffic.

Tiffany and Company Building under construction, ca. 1905. The first Tiffany and Company location was a small shop established in 1837 near City Hall. The second Tiffany location was a cast iron-fronted building on Union Square (15 Union Square West), which the firm moved into in 1870. Charles Tiffany, the founder, died in 1902 at the age of 90, but prior to his death made plans for his now world renowned store to move uptown to a brand new building on Fifth Avenue at 37th Street. This move is said to have signaled the end of Broadway as a preeminent shopping district. The new building was designed by Standford White of the venerable firm of McKim, Mead and White. Inspired by a 16th century Venetian Palazzo, White created a gleaming white marble building in an Italian neo-Renasaiance style. (The writers of the book “Beaux-Arts Architecture in New York: A Photographic Guide,” suggested that perhaps this building is even MORE beautiful than its Italian model, owing to White's use of proportion.) From the outside it looks to be three large stories, but it is, in fact, seven stories. The facade spans five bays on the Fifth Avenue side and seven along East 37th Street. While housed in this building Tiffany's prominence as status symbol for the wealthy grew. In one year they regularly sold $6 million in diamonds and kept up to $40 million in jewels in their vault. The company remained in the building until 1940, when they moved further uptown to their best known, and current, location. After the firm vacated the building its ground floor was transformed by modern storefront infill. In 2003 a substantial restoration returned the lower levels of the facade's columns to their original state, though the new stonework is highly noticeable in its lighter tone.

\*“Tin Pan Alley had an indelible impact on the history of American popular music and paved the way for what would become “the Great American Songbook.” However, arising during the period following the Civil War and the failure of Reconstruction, when Jim Crow laws and other unjust, discriminatory practices were reversing newly won freedoms and rights for African Americans and entrenching systemic racism throughout American society, racist caricatures and stereotypes of African Americans were increasingly spread through mass media, including sheet music produced on Tin Pan Alley. At the same time, Tin Pan Alley’s music publishing brought ragtime to an international public, offered unprecedented opportunities for African American artists and publishers to create mainstream American music, and saw many gain acclaim and prominence. The proposed designation of this row of five buildings, which represent the history of Tin Pan Alley, recognizes the significant contributions and achievements of African Americans here, and acknowledges the harsh realities they faced.” \*Tin Pan Alley Designation Report

Church of the Transfiguration, ca. 1912. This Neo-Gothic Episcopal Church, completed in 1849, is the earliest house of worship still extant in the neighborhood of Madison Square. The sanctuary, also known as the Little Church Around the Corner, sits a few yards back from East 29th Street, leaving room for an entrance walkway and small front garden. The entrance to the church grounds is marked by a lich-gate designed by Frederick C. Withers and installed in 1896 as a gift of Mrs. Franklin Hughes Delano.

Macy's Herald Square, ca. 1975. In 1900, Macy's, whose original store had been on West 14th Street since 1858, began buying plots of land near Broadway and 34th Street for a new massive store. The story goes that an agent of a rival department store, Siegel-Cooper, purchased the plot. Siegel-Cooper wanted Macy's to sell them the building on 14th Street in exchange for this single corner plot at 34th Street. Macy's refused and instead built their flagship store around the lot. Perhaps the first instance of a real estate hold out in New York City. In 1903 Siegel-Cooper, defeated after Macy's had opened the year before, demolished the small structure that occupied the corner and constructed a five-story building, designed by William Hume. Since the 1920s, Macy's has used the little building for billboards and signage, so much so that slowly nearly the entire building has been obscured. Today only parts of the lower two stories are visible and the huge Macy's 'shopping bag' that covers the building is in place as part of a lease agreement.

Tiffany and Company, interior, 1903-1906.

SERBIAN ORTHODOX CATHEDRAL OF SAINT SAVA & PARISH HOUSE, FORMER ARLINGTON HOTEL 15 West 25th Street, Richard Upjohn, Cathedral: 1850-55; Parish House: 1860 18 West 25th Street, Israels & Harder, 1901 Across from one another on this block are two formidable structures. On the north side is the brownstone-clad Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Sava, designed in the English Gothic Revival style by Richard Upjohn, one of the most prominent church architects of his day, as an uptown branch chapel of Trinity Church. The West 25th Street façade features a steeply pitched gable with an impressive rose window and a pointed arch entry with slender columns. Next door to the east is the Parish House, also designed in the English Gothic Revival style, which features a charming arched belfry at its crown. The Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Sava & Parish House was designated a New York City Individual Landmark in 1968. Across the street is the Renaissance Revival style former Arlington Hotel, a much later structure than the church. It is richly decorated with sculpted limestone quoins, bandcourses, window surrounds and a dentilled cornice.

The Empire State Building, viewed across the partially-dismantled tracks of the Third Avenue El, 1955.

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF DRAMATIC ARTS/COLONY CLUB 120 Madison Avenue McKim, Mead & White, 1905 Like Madison Square Park, Madison Avenue was named after James Madison, the fourth President of the United States. The Avenue begins at 23rd Street and extends to the Madison Avenue Bridge at 138th Street. When the Manhattan street grid was mandated in 1811, there was no avenue between Fourth (now Park) and Fifth Avenues. Madison Avenue was carved out in the 1840s due to the wide distance between Fourth and Fifth Avenues and in order to create more building lots with avenue frontage. This southern section of Madison Avenue is characterized by its fine assortment of large-scale hotels, lofts and office buildings. The Federal Eclectic style American Academy of Dramatic Arts/Colony Club is a graceful six-story structure of red brick with limestone trim. This Individual Landmark features a shallow balcony supported by pilasters at the ground level, five arched window openings at the second story, a perforated stone cornice and five dormer windows at its crown. The Colony Club was the first women’s organization in the city to build itself a club house for social and recreational activities.

Morgan Library & Museum, 1938. Built expressly to house the famous J. Pierpont Morgan Collection of books and manuscripts, the Morgan Library was designed by McKim, Mead & White to provide a beautiful setting for the treasures within. As in the construction of Greek temples, the stones were perfectly fitted, obviating the use of a full bed of mortar- an expensive but enduring method of constructing masonry walls and today practically a lost art.

Explore Lower Midtown. Observe skyscrapers vying for height 🏙️ and glimpse the grandeur of historic hotels, theatres, and public buildings. Join the hustle and bustle of NoMad and wander the quiet, quaint blocks of Gramercy Park🌳.

Martha Washington Hotel ca. 1907 Designed by Robert Gibson and completed in 1903, the twelve-story Martha Washington was designed to house 400-500 “business women” and to provide specifically for this groups’ needs, at 30 East 30th Street. From the start, the hotel was conceived as a profit-making venture, organized and executed by the Women’s Hotel Company (incorporated in 1897), and funded by investments from New Yorkers such as William Schermerhorn, John D. Rockefeller, Helen Gould, and Olivia Sage (the wife of Russell Sage and founder of the Russell Sage Foundation). In practice, women were responsible for the success of the project. By the time the hotel opened, much of the stock was owned by individual women backing the idea of a women’s hotel. An early promotional brochure describes the Martha Washington as a “world-famous and interesting hostelry … well appointed, thoroughly modern, strictly fireproof and equipped with every facility for the comfort of its guests.” These included a drug store, ladies tailor shop, millinery, manicurist, and newspaper stand. The staff was entirely female, down to the elevator operators. The brochure also highlights the role of women in planning the interior design of the hotel: “woman’s wit has been used to provide the little necessities and comforts so much appreciated by her…” Promotional materials emphasized a unique aspect of the Martha Washington Hotel: Not only was it was intended for professional women, but it was planned without “paternalism or philanthropic idea,” and had “no harassing restrictions…imposed on the hotel guests other than those prevailing in the best hotels.” At the Martha Washington, female residents were afforded the same freedoms allowed their male counterparts. In contrast to the supervisory homes, this women’s hotel was explicitly linked with feminist ideals of independence, the ability to earn one’s own living, and the conscious presentation of white-collar working women as “business women.” It was a success: The building was fully occupied immediately with both permanent and transient guests and 200 more women on a waiting list. The hotel’s philosophy was met with approval by important feminist groups, including the Interurban Women’s Suffrage Council, who made the hotel their headquarters beginning in 1907. The novel hotel caught the public’s eye, so much so that residents complained it had become a tourist attraction, complete with “lectures on megaphones” given atop tour buses.

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.

Pierpont Morgan Library and Annex ARCHITECT: McKim, Mead & White; Charles F. McKim DATE: 1902-07 STYLE: Italian Renaissance Eclectic The Pierpont Morgan Library and Annex are outstanding examples of Italian Renaissance Eclectic design incorporating the talents of architect, sculptor and painter. They represent the finest available both in use of materials and craftsmanship. Their architectural details are both refined and delicate and that the classical purity of the Library exerted a marked influence on the general development of architecture in this country at the time it was built. The Pierpont Morgan Library is one of the finest neo-Italian Renaissance buildings in New York City. It was designed to house the extensive book, manuscript, and art collection of J. Pierpont Morgan. The interior and exterior harmoniously work together to create a splendid showcase for Morgan’s collection. The interior is particularly distinguished by the extensive ceiling murals, and the rich array of wood and marbled surfaces. The murals , which are based on Renaissance prototypes, depict themes that allude to Morgan and his collection.

East side of Fifth Avenue between 30th and 31st Streets, ca. 1907. 291 Fifth Avenue, which sat in the middle of the depicted block, was the location of Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz's Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession. Originally painter and photographer Steichen's studio, in 1905, the space initially developed into a gallery for exhibiting work by Photo-Secessionist photographers. (They held the somewhat unpopular idea that the significance of a photograph was not the subject but the manipulation of the image by the artist/photographer to achieve his or her subjective vision). The space was later a preeminent center for the exhibition of modern European and American artists. Known as "291," it was a pioneer, being the first American gallery to exhibit works by Rodin, Matisse, Cézanne, and Picasso. The Armory Show of 1913 introduced these modern artists to a large audience. (Stieglitz served as an honorary vice-president for the event.) In the years following the Armory Show, he focused on new American artists, most notably, Georgia O'Keeffe. O'Keeffe's one-woman show at 291 in 1917 was its final exhibition. 291 closed in 1917 amid Stieglitz's financial troubles prompted by the war and his doubts about his role in the promotion of modern art.

Wealthy painter and philanthropist Ellen Dunlap Hopkins founded the New York School of Applied Design for Women in 1892. Its mission was to "afford \[...] women inspiration which may enable them to earn a livelihood by the employment of their taste and manual dexterity in the application of ornamental design to manufacture and the arts." This meant illustration, book cover design, interior design, wallpaper, and textile design and architecture. The school also helped the students and graduate sell their pieces. The school moved into a brand new building in 1909. Designed by Harvey Wiley Corbett, the five-story neo-Classical building was funded largely by J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller. Despite its classical temple look and Greek details, a contemporary architecture journal derided it as "drastically modern." The New York Times' Christopher Gray was kinder if more expressive when he noted in a 2008 article that "the steeply sloping roof provides a pungent termination." Following a brief partnership with Columbia University between 1910 and 1912, the school continued as originally organized until 1944. A merger with the Phoenix Art Institute turned the school into a co-educational facility. A further merger in 1974 with Pratt. The now-named Pratt-New York Phoenix School of Design operated until the 1980s. Today the building, whose facade has not been seriously altered since its construction, is home to a high-end fashion showroom.

Stewart & Company Building ARCHITECT: Warren & Wetmore DATE: 1914 STYLE: British Neo-Classical The 1914 building reflects the unusual combination of diverse influences such as the 18th century British neo-Classical movement and the late 19th century Chicago School of Architecture style. The blue and white ornament of the terra-cotta cladding is reminiscent of the 18th century neo-Classical movement in England. The color combination of blue and white in the architectural terra-cotta is rarely used in architecture. The building is an early example of boldly polychromatic terra-cotta. The delicate classically inspired decoration is a striking example of ornamentation covering the structural frame of a building.

The Holland House was designed by George Edward Harding and William T. Gooch in 1892. The Indiana limestone building was ten stories tall. The royal structure boasted 350 guest's suites, a restaurant with capacity for 300 patrons, second-floor promenade, a foyer lit by electric "torcheres," and a drawing-room in the style of Louis XVI. Notably, the design is a careful copy of the Holland House in London. The main staircase, called the "handsomest in America" by a London magazine, was carved of Siena marble and bronze. Each guest room was equipped with a "Herzog Teleseme," a dial sunk into the wall that allowed quests to communicate directly with the offices downstairs. The quest would move a pointer to a desired item, such as "towel," or "newspaper," and the item would be relayed up to the room.

"Egyptomania," a kind of feverish obsession with ancient Egypt, had spread throughout Europe and America after Napoleon's campaign in Egypt ended in 1802. By 1922, this craze was renewed after the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. Take a tour of some of New York's own artifacts that reference both Egyptian and Assyrian art.

Empire State Building, ca. 1985.

New York School of Applied Design for Women ARCHITECT: Harvey Wiley Corbett DATE: 1908-09 STYLE: Neo-Classical This building was built in neo-Classical institutional design, and it long housed the New York School of Applied Design for Women. It is a five-story building and stone neo-Classical institutional building. Harvey Wiley Corbett designed this building as a school of art, and it has been used exclusively for that purpose since its completion in 1909

2 Park Avenue ARCHITECT: Ely Jacques Kahn; Buchman and Kahn DATE: 1926-28 STYLE: Art Deco This building is one of the most important examples in New York of Art Deco or Modern style architecture, a popular architectural style for commercial structures at the time of its construction. Ely Jacques Kahn’s ornamental vocabulary was representative of the period’s concern with movement and technology and included brick and terra cotta in abstract geometric patterns, sometimes inspired by native designs or suggestions of the warp and weft of fabric, and emphasized the surface tension inherent in steel-framed commercial buildings.

MARBLE COLLEGIATE CHURCH 272 Fifth Ave Samuel Warner 1851-54 Marble Collegiate Church contains components of several architectural styles, resembling a Colonial wood frame church in its form, but with Gothic and Romanesque Revival style details. The symmetrical marble edifice, which gives the church its name, features an impressive central tower with a belfry, clock and octagonal spire, as well as Romanesque arches, molded cornices and octagonal turrets on its façades. Marble Collegiate Church was designated a New York City Landmark in 1967.

Hotel Governor Clinton The Governor Clinton Hotel was built by Murgatroyd and Ogden, designers of the Barbizon Hotel, Jolly Madison, Towers Hotel and Allerton, with George B. Post in x on the southeast corner of 7th Ave and 31st streets, the first new hotel built near Penn Station since 1919. The hotel had an asymmetrical mass more in accord with 12th century Italian Romanesque then with the Imperial Classicism of nearby Pennsylvania Railroad Station and Hotel Pennsylvania.

Roof Tree Inn, 1913. Combination curio shop and cozy eatery, this 28th Street locale was one of New York's more eclectic and atmospheric venues for natives and tourists alike in the 1910s. The former stable building was converted into an antique store by Edward Elmore, a passionate collector of relics. Elmore was less inclined to sell his treasures than most shopkeepers, so the scene was a bit more gallery than traditional store. Wishing to drawn more visitors to his courtyard of Grecian stones and Egyptian sarcophagi, he rented the loft space, shaded by a large elm tree, to a Ms. Millar, who established a tea room called the Roof Tree Inn. In the winter diners ate up in the loft with open stoves for heating, while in the summer tables were set up in the courtyard for open-air dining under the shade of the tree that gave the spot its name and among the stone and iron-work curiosities of the past. Popular among tourists looking to experience one of New York's more "queer" (here meaning the traditional definition of odd or peculiar) destinations, it was also popular among the city's literary set. Ms. Millar, the inn's proprietor, held Sunday morning breakfast for authors, after which the poets, dramatists, and novelists would read from their works, followed by an open forum discussion. In 1921 Ms. Millar also opened a second Roof Tree Inn location further uptown at 25 West 51st Street, complete with equally picturesque antique furnishings and dimly lit by candlelight. References to both locations can be seen in newspapers through 1934, though the later history and dates of closure are unknown.

Tallest building in the world when it was completed in April 1931, the EMPIRE STATE broke every record in the book. At 1250 feet, it topped the Chrysler Building by 200 feet and the third tallest, the Manhattan Company Building at 40 Wall Street, by more than 300 feet. Gargantuan in SCALE, its five-story base covered two acres and its eighty-five floors of offices boasted more rentable space -- 2.1 million square feet -- than the Chrysler Building and 40 Wall Street combined. The most astounding statistic of the Empire State, though, was the extraordinary SPEED with which it was planned and constructed. Within just twenty months from the first signed contracts with the architects in September 1929, the Empire State was designed, engineered, erected, and ready for tenants. Six months after the first structural columns were set in April 1930, the steel frame topped out on the eighty-sixth floor. The fully enclosed building, including the mooring mast that raised its height to the equivalent of 102 stories, was finished within eleven months, in March 1931. At peak activity, 3,500 workers were employed on site, and the tower rose A STORY A DAY. During this twenty months, architectural and engineering drawings were prepared, the massive Waldorf-Astoria Hotel was demolished, the foundations and grillages were dug and set, 57,000 tons of structural steel was fabricated and milled to precise specifications. Ten million common bricks were laid, 62,000 cubic yards of concrete were poured, 6400 windows were set, and 67 elevators were installed in 7 miles of shafts. Interiors were equipped with 6,700 radiators, 2,500 toilets and sinks, and 51 miles of plumbing pipe, and were finished with 10,000 tons of plaster and 328,000 square feet of marble.

The New York Herald Building, ca. 1894.

"Designed by Robert Gibson and completed in 1903, the twelve-story Martha Washington was designed to house 400-500 'business women' and to provide specifically for this groups’ needs, at 30 East 30th Street... By the time the hotel opened, much of the stock was owned by individual women backing the idea of a women’s hotel… At the Martha Washington, female residents were afforded the same freedoms allowed their male counterparts. In contrast to the supervisory homes, this women’s hotel was explicitly linked with feminist ideals of independence, the ability to earn one’s own living, and the conscious presentation of white-collar working women as 'business women.' It was a success: the building was fully occupied immediately with both permanent and transient guests and 200 more women on a waiting list. The hotel’s philosophy was met with approval by important feminist groups, including the Interurban Women’s Suffrage Council, who made the hotel their headquarters beginning in 1907." For more on the Martha Washington and other Industrial Era female-only housing, check out this article by Nina E. Harkrader in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History

The growth of manufacturing and industry in Northeastern cities during the early to mid-19th century increased demand for female labor in the United States. The newly arrived women workers were expected to find their own lodging, but there was no precedent for housing single women in cities. So, hotels like the Martha Washington were planned to provide women with safe places to stay.

Lioness statue at the Morgan Library, ca. 1976.

Although it is often forgotten, Chelsea played a significant role in New York's African American community and its history, particularly in the second half of the 19th Century. As early as the 1840’s Pierre Toussaint a freed Haitian slave, now in the process of canonization, played a significant role in establishing St Vincent DePauls Roman Catholic on W 23 St for French speaking New Yorkers. This Church started an early school for African Americans in the city. On Lamartine Place, the block of West 29th St between 8th and 9th Aves, the Hopper-Gibbons a Quaker family that played a crucial role in Abolitionism and many progressive and charitable causes, used their house as a stop in the Underground Railroad. The house, still stands is to date the only verifiable Underground Railroad safe House in Manhattan. Particularly from the 1880s to 1900's (and lingering onto WWI), New York's African American community having been displaced from southern Greenwich Village settled in the West 20s and 30s. Thus the areas “Negro Tenderloin” was to the citys largest African-American settlement by the 1890s until once again the community was forced to move because of a brutal race riot in 1900 and displacement due to the demolition of a core area to build Penn Station. Faced with the prospects of bad living conditions, a violent and dangerous environment and displacement, St. Philips Episcopal Church, the city's oldest African American congregation which at the time was located on West 25th St played a central role in fomenting the move to Harlem by a significant portion of the cities African population. Several other of the cities older and most prominent black churches and institutions were in the neighborhood in the latter 19th Century including Bethel AME Church on W25 St and Mt Oliver and Shiloh on West 26th Street and the Colored Mission and the Sons of New York Club on West 30th St.

Koster & Bial's, located at 34th Street and Broadway, on the current site of Macy's department store, was New York's other major vaudeville house in 1898. Built by Oscar Hammerstein in 1892, this was the first theater to bear the name Manhattan Opera House. Hammerstein offered Koster and Bial a partnership if they would take over this theater. The partnership was not a success and, after a succession of managers, the theater was closed in 1901. Offering more of a stag atmosphere, with drinking available on the premises, it attracted many of the top names in variety.

Herman's Gaiety Theatre was originally known as The San Francisco Music Hall, and later the Shubert Princess. Originally a minstrel hall, it had an unbelievably long list of official names and managers. It was known only briefly as the Gaiety Theatre in 1890s.

Church of the Incarnation ARCHITECT: Emlen T. Little DATE: 1864 STYLE: Gothic Revival The Church of the Incarnation and Parish House form a striking complex in the Murray Hill area. The church, designed by Emlen T. Littell and built in 1864, is a significant example of Gothic Revival architecture, and among its notable features are the corner tower, the entrance porch, the carefully executed pointed-arch openings with stained glass, and the beautifully-laid brownstone facing.

Herald Square, viewed from the McAlpin Hotel at the southeast corner of Broadway and 34th Street, August 16, 1936. The New York City Omnibus Corporation was incorporated in 1926. It ran bus service in the city between that year and 1962, when the company (having been renamed the Fifth Avenue Coach Lines in 1956) went bankrupt. In 1935 and 1936 the New York City Omnibus Corporation replaced the entire fleet of New York Railway streetcars (more than 14 lines traveling on avenues and crosstown streets all over Manhattan) with 700 brand new single deck buses. The buses of both this company and the Fifth Avenue Coach Company constituted the majority of surface rolling stock in Manhattan at this point. Buses from both companies (owned by the same holding corporation) were painted the same green and cream color scheme and bore the tagline "Go The Motor Coach Way" on the front and back. Two such buses can be seen in this busy 1936 Herald Square photograph.

FORMER HOTEL SEVILLE 90 Madison Avenue Harry Allen Jacobs, 1901-03; annex: c. 1905 Like Madison Square Park, Madison Avenue was named after James Madison, the fourth President of the United States. The Avenue begins at 23rd Street and extends to the Madison Avenue Bridge at 138th Street. When the Manhattan street grid was mandated in 1811, there was no avenue between Fourth (now Park) and Fifth Avenues. Madison Avenue was carved out in the 1840s due to the wide distance between Fourth and Fifth Avenues and in order to create more building lots with avenue frontage. This southern section of Madison Avenue is characterized by its fine assortment of large-scale hotels, lofts and office buildings. The Former Hotel Seville (currently the Carlton Hotel) replaced the former Scottish Rite Hall. The elegant Beaux-Arts hotel features red brick and limestone façades with a rusticated base, alternating bandcourses at the second and third stories, decorative cornices and projecting bays from the fourth to the tenth stories. One of these bays is located at the building’s chamfered corner, which is clad in limestone along with the building’s full height. An annex between 28th and 29th Streets was added a few years after its construction.

The former Aberdeen Hotel. The Aberdeen Hotel features red brick with a rusticated limestone base and projecting bay windows, as well as richly decorated balconettes and cornices. The Aberdeen had originally been built as an apartment hotel, but began accepting transient guests in 1912 and was one of the first hotels to accept unaccompanied women in the 1920s.

Mattachine Society & Daughters of Bilitis Offices, 1133 Broadway. From at least December 1958 to July 1968, this building near Madison Square was the location of the offices of the New York Area Council of the Mattachine Society, Inc., and its successor after 1961, the Mattachine Society Inc. of New York. Mattachine was one of New York’s most important early homophile groups, predominantly for men. Another pioneering homophile group, the Daughters of Bilitis, New York Chapter, shared office space with Mattachine until September 1961.

Steam-cleaning the exterior of the Equitable Life building at Seventh Avenue and 31st Street, ca. 1940.

"... there was not one New York hotel called the Waldorf Astoria but two, and some might say even three. The first Waldorf-Astoria (its name properly hyphenated) resulted from the union of two separate hotels, the Waldorf and the Astoria, built next door to each other on Fifth Avenue during the Gilded Age of the 1890s. Conceived as a civic palace embodying the wealth and position New York City had achieved by the end of the nineteenth century, it revolutionized America’s idea of what a hotel could be and stimulated the building of scores of palatial hotels in cities across the nation emulating its regal ambitions. This first Waldorf-Astoria was demolished in 1929. The second Waldorf Astoria (without the hyphen) is the present one located at Park Avenue and East 49th Street. Opened in 1931, it was the largest, the tallest and the most expensive hotel ever built, not just succeeding its illustrious predecessor, but surpassing it in every way imaginable. Today, more than eighty years after its completion, the Waldorf Astoria remains the epitome of the grand hotel..." For more on the hotel, check out this article by William Alan Morrison in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.

105 MADISON AVENUE Buchman & Fox 1912-13 Like Madison Square Park, Madison Avenue was named after James Madison, the fourth President of the United States. The Avenue begins at 23rd Street and extends to the Madison Avenue Bridge at 138th Street. When the Manhattan street grid was mandated in 1811, there was no avenue between Fourth (now Park) and Fifth Avenues. Madison Avenue was carved out in the 1840s due to the wide distance between Fourth and Fifth Avenues and in order to create more building lots with avenue frontage. This southern section of Madison Avenue is characterized by its fine assortment of large-scale hotels, lofts and office buildings. The imposing store and loft building is clad entirely in terra-cotta, much like Cass Gilbert’s famed Woolworth Building, which was constructed at the same time. At 20 stories tall, it has a strong presence on Madison Avenue. The structure features Gothic Revival style ornament, with grand arches at the ground level and at the crown.

10 East 34th Street, ca. 1908. Charles H. Ditson was a very wealthy music-seller and publisher, whose company had offices Cincinnati, Philadelphia and New York by the late 1860s. At the start of the 20th century, Ditson's son who ran the New York headquarters of music publications and instruments business decided to build a new 10-story structure. Designed by Townsend, Steinle & Haskell, the Beaux Arts building was completed in less than six months in 1907. The building included large showroom spaces on the first and second floors for the Ditson musical empire, while the upper floors were meant to be rental income for the firm. Ditson remained in the building until 1946 when they went out of business in 1946 after decade of declining sales (supposedly due to the Depression and the influx of household radios). The building remains today though its light-colored Indiana limestone facade has been darkened by grime and the passage of time.

The Madison Belmont Building, 181 Madison Avenue (also variously known as 183 Madison Avenue, 40 East 34th Street, 44-46 East 34th Street), ca. 1990. Built in 1924 “as an office and showroom space for silk companies in the developing Silk District of mid-town Manhattan,” per the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the Madison Belmont was among the first buildings in the city to incorporate Art Deco design elements. Architects Warren & Wetmore, along with the Cheney Silk Company, the first major tenant, hired Edgar Brandt to design the entrances and display windows — areas where Art Deco influences are most clearly pronounced. Here, Brandt’s iron and gilded bronze and gold transom design employs a “frozen fountain” effect, a common Art Deco motif.

The Madison Avenue entrance to the J.P. Morgan Jr. house, January 27, 1937. The freestanding Italianate brownstone mansion was built in 1852-3 for Isaac Newton Phelps, whose family’s copper mining fortune funded the construction of three such mansions on Madison Avenue, between 36th and 37th Streets. Isaac Phelps, himself, was a wealthy merchant and banker. Having purchased the southernmost house in 1882, J.P. Morgan Sr. acquired Phelps’ home at No. 231 and the remaining mansion in between in 1903. Morgan demolished the middle house, using its lot for a private garden, and gave the No. 231 to his son, J.P. Morgan, Jr. In 1928, Morgan Sr.’s house was razed for the construction of the Morgan Library. When J.P. Morgan Jr. died in 1943, the Lutheran Church acquired the building, setting off a long-running preservation saga. In 1965, the Church signaled its intent to build an office building on the site, which was subsequently declared a New York City Landmark, protecting the property. The Church appealed the ruling successfully, and in 1974, the Landmark status was reversed. However, the Lutherans no longer had the funds to pursue their planned construction. With the mansion’s status uncertain, the Landmarks Preservation Commission re-designated the building that year. This time, there was no appeal. The Landmark limbo ended in 1988, when the Morgan Library purchased the property, securing its future and tying its legacy to the collection of its most prominent owner. Today, it’s home to the museum offices, store, and cafe.

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.

"Whoop-dee-doo," 1904. As the Weber and Fields Music Hall the venue present vaudeville, of course. But they were also known for shows written as parodies of contemporary Broadway hits. "Whoop-Dee-Doo" was billed as a musical extravaganza set in Paris. It ran for 151 performances in 1903 and 1904. The review in the New York Times noted: "There were times when the convulsions of laughter drowned out every second joke for all those behind the first few rows."

The images in our collection don’t show dirigibles actually docking at the Empire State Building, because no dirigible successfully docked there. In fact, Christopher Grey in The New York Times gently hints that the idea for a mooring mast may have been a ruse to add a few extra feet to the building. The tower is 200 feet tall, greatly widening the height difference between the Empire State Building and the second tallest building in the world at that time, the Chrysler Building.

Vanderbilt Hotel, February 27, 1931.

In the spring of 1883, the solemnity of Lent didn’t stand a chance against the social event on the mind of all of New York’s elite society: Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt’s fancy dress ball. The invitations had been hand-delivered by servants in livery, young socialites had been practicing quadrilles (dances performed with four couples in a rectangular formation) for weeks, and “amid the rush and excitement of business, men have found their minds haunted by uncontrollable thoughts as to whether they should appear as Robert Le Diable, Cardinal Richelieu, Otho the Barbarian, or the Count of Monte Cristo, while the ladies have been driven to the verge of distraction in the effort to settle the comparative advantages of ancient, medieval, and modern costumes” (New York Times). The best dressmakers and cobblers had spent months poring over old books making costumes — which were already being breathlessly described by the New York Times — as historically accurate as possible.

57 West 28th Street, ca. 1980. From the 1880s through the 1920s a small section of West 28th Street was the center of composing, lyric writing, and sheet music publishing. Known as Tin Pan Alley, some of the most well-known compositions in the American songbook, by the likes of Irving Berlin and George Gershwin, were written in a series of row houses between Broadway and Sixth Avenue. The advent of phonographs and the radio in the 1920s sounded the death knell for Tin Pan Alley. Today the buildings remain, though in poor condition, with ground and second floor retail. They do not have landmark protection despite preservation efforts.

Terry & Tench Building, ca. 1918. This Edwardian loft building by J.B. Snook Sons was built in 1910 for Terry & Tench, a steelmaking firm responsible for materials used in the Manhattan Bridge, Grand Central Terminal, among many New York infrastructure and construction projects.

Stewart & Co. Building (left) and Brick Presbyterian Church (right), Fifth Avenue, 1914.

Greely Square, ca. 1898. Greely Square Park was named after the celebrated editor and political leader Horace Greeley (1811-1872). Greely launched the New York Tribune in 1841 as a rival to the Herald’s newspaper. The two papers eventually merged to form the New York Herald Tribune. From its pages, he had an enormous influence on American popular opinion. Greeley’s famous advice, “Go West, young man, go West,” inspired generations of Americans to find their fortunes beyond the Mississippi. He advocated protectionism, abolitionism, labor rights, and political reform. Greeley later ran for President in 1872.

Tiffany and Company Building detail, ca.1903-1906.

THE MANICE BUILDING 159 Madison Avenue Wallis & Goodwillie, 1911-12 Like Madison Square Park, Madison Avenue was named after James Madison, the fourth President of the United States. The Avenue begins at 23rd Street and extends to the Madison Avenue Bridge at 138th Street. When the Manhattan street grid was mandated in 1811, there was no avenue between Fourth (now Park) and Fifth Avenues. Madison Avenue was carved out in the 1840s due to the wide distance between Fourth and Fifth Avenues and in order to create more building lots with avenue frontage. This southern section of Madison Avenue is characterized by its fine assortment of large-scale hotels, lofts and office buildings. The Manice Building is a 12-story, Renaissance Revival style loft building, with arched openings at the ground level and a large, bracketed, overhanging cornice.

No single building better symbolized the Gilded Age than the home of William K. Vanderbilt, completed in 1883. While the rich had been flaunting their wealth in costumes and jewels, Vanderbilt displayed his dollars in limestone. And then other society men and women followed suit.

71st Regiment Armory, ca. 1955. The Armory, although basically Romanesque in design, flaunts a very high medieval Italian tower complete with machicolations and American flags built into the masonry at the top as a decorative element. The architect reputedly asked his little son what he thought ought to go at the top of the tower, to which he replied, "Flags, Daddy."

Croisic Building, 1912. Designed by Frederick C. Browne in a neo-Gothic style, the 21-story Croisic Building completed in 1912. While the lower section of the building rises plainly, the six-story crown is richly decorated with stone eagles, seated figures dressed in armor, and projecting gargoyles. While this drew its inspiration from Cass Gilbert's neo-Gothic West Street Building, this building in turn, influenced two other nearby buildings (212-216 Fifth Avenue and 228-232 Fifth Avenue), both designed by Schwartz & Gross.

Johnston Building, ca. 1905. This corner Beaux-Arts building was completed between 1902 and 1903 to plans by the firm of Schickel & Ditmars, for a female owner named Caroline Johnston. The limestone building's most noticeable feature is rounded corner bay topped by an ornate tempietto. Though the ground floor has been significantly altered, the building above the first floor remains remarkably intact. In 2012 the building was converted into the NoMad Hotel, a fancy lodging venue, one of the many office buildings converted into hotels in the first decade of the 21st century.

Macy's Entrance on the original 34th Street facade, ca. 1975. Macy’s claims to be the first department store in New York City to display festive holiday windows. In 1862, it featured an in-store Santa for children to visit, and several years later, in 1874, the first major holiday window displays. The windows showcased a collection of porcelain dolls from around the world and scenes from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

Fifth Avenue Theatre, November 2, 1938. The Fifth Avenue Theatre had a long history even prior to the pictured building being constructed in 1892. The original Fifth Avenue Opera House was actually on Fifth Avenue at 24th Street and opened in 1865. That structure was destroyed by fire in 1873. The company was moved a few blocks north into a 1868 theatre building on 28th Street. The 28th Street theatre was constructed in 1868 as Gilsey's Apollo Hall, later the St. James Theatre. Early on it had public lectures and musical entertainment. The New Fifth Avenue Theatre was the world's first air-conditioned theatre, when a ventilation system was installed in 1877 that blew air over blocks of ice. Unfortunately that 1868 structure was also lost to a fire in 1891. The rebuilt Fifth Avenue Theatre was designed by architect Francis Hatch Kimball. It was an ornate structure inside and out. The original front facade at 31 West 28th Street had heavy terra-cotta decoration (what became the main entrance on Broadway was more subdued). In the 20th century the theatre presented vaudeville, films, and burlesque. The theatre closed in the mid 1930s and was sold at foreclosure in 1936. The auditorium was demolished and the buildings razed in 1939. Berenice Abbott took a series of very detailed interior and exterior photos a few months before the theatre was demolished.

Macy's, ca. 1928.

Trinity Chapel ca. 1926 Designed by Richard Upjohn, the architect of Trinity Church on Broadway, this chapel is one of the finer evocations of the Gothic Revival. The straightforward design utilizes wood trusses instead of simulated rib vaulting. The handsome yet simple apse provides a fine setting for the altar and closes the long nave of the chapel most effectively.

Opened originally as the Eagle Variety Theatre, this hall became a variety house in and was later renamed the Standard theatre. Achieving its greatest success as the Manhattan Theatre, the venue hosted some of the most famous actors and companies of the day. In 1906, it was one of the first legitimate theaters to be taken over by movies.

SW corner of 32nd & 5th Ave, New York City, 1905. Lot is now vacant.

Empire State Building, viewed from the south. Samuel H. Gottscho, January 8, 1934.

Stairs and elevator inside the Tiffany and Company Building, ca. 1903-1906.

Waldorf-Astoria ca. 1899 The Waldorf Astoria Hotel was built in two phases, the first completed in 1894, and the second in 1897. Beginning as an 11-story structure on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street, the hotel was expanded to occupy the full block to 34th Street, creating a monumental 16-story edifice that, with 1,300 rooms, was one of the largest and most luxurious hotels in the world. The first Waldorf rose on the site of the Astor mansion, where Mrs. Caroline Astor famously entertained New York’s exclusive “Four Hundred” social set. The massive hotel offered 530 rooms: 350 of the 450 bedrooms had adjoining bathrooms. A suite of state apartments, reserved “for the proper reception of very great personages,” occupied the second floor, and an immense ballroom could be closed off for lavish private events. Like many high-class “palace hotels” of the period, the Waldorf housed both permanent and transient patrons, and, as the New York Times explained, was designed “to provide a series of magnificent homes for wealthy New Yorkers as an economical alternative to maintaining private mansions.” The addition of the Astoria in 1897 cemented the hotel’s reputation as the “last word in luxury.” The opening of the hotel was celebrated with a charity ball attended by New York’s finest families, and the New York Times opined that “the entire Astoria building seems to be as complete and magnificent as modern workmen and modern art can make it.” Henry J. Hardenbergh, architect of other grand residential buildings such as the Dakota Apartments designed the Waldorf and the Astoria to seamlessly complement each other despite having different structural systems: mixed masonry bearing walls and steel skeleton, respectively. Illustrating the cycle of Manhattan’s rising land values, the great hotel was demolished in 1929 and replaced by the Empire State Building.

Leased to Weber & Fields in 1896, this hall became one of New York's most popular places of entertainment. When the comedians temporarily dissolved their partnership in 1906, it was renamed Weber's theater. In 1912, it became a motion picture theater and was razed in 1917. An office building was erected on the site.

(c. 1854, Amnon Macvey, Superintendent of School Buildings) The New York City Board of Education was established in 1842, and in 1853 it merged with the older Public School Society to create Manhattan’s first true municipal public school system. Under it, schools were overseen by the local ward trustees who had considerable oversight over the construction and operation of school buildings. This building was completed during the long tenure of Macvey, who served from the 1830’s (under the Public School Society) through the 1870’s. One of the three oldest public school buildings in Manhattan, its Italianate design is characteristic of the period, with a symmetrical facade featuring a slightly projecting central section with shallow pediment.

Marble Collegiate Church ca. 1900 Designed by its architect, Samuel A. Warner, as a Romanesque church, this is an early example of the first phase of the Romanesque Revival- a style which, in the hands of Henry Hobson Richardson, was destined to become more powerful and original in expression.

Listen to the Gotham Center and Sharon Zukin's podcast on the history on the B. Altman Department Store, once a premier department store of New York, while examining these related archival images!

Empire State Building CLIENT: Empire State Company ARCHITECT: Shreve, Lamb & Harmon DATE: 1931 STYLE: Art Deco The Empire State Building is a symbol of New York City and the building boom of the affluent 1920’s. It was built as a speculative office building by the Empire State Company which was led by former General Motors executive John J. Raskob and former Governor Al Smith. With an average construction rate of four and a half floors per week it only took thirteen and a half months to complete. Many of the workers were Irish and Italian immigrants, with a sizable minority of Mohawk ironworkers from the Kahnawake reserve near Montreal. The building’s large antenna was originally designed to be a dirigible mast and the observation deck was for passengers boarding and exiting. Although it was never used for its intended function the observation deck helped make the Empire State Building one of the most famous and visited buildings in the world, and the antenna helped to make it the tallest building in the world from 1931-1972. In a ceremony held in Washington D.C., President Herbert Hoover officially opened the Empire State Building to the public, remotely pressing a button that illuminated the building’s iconic lights on May 1, 1931. Both the exterior and the ground floor interior are designated New York City Landmarks and it was named a National Historic Landmark in 1986.

It's hard to imagine that in the spot now occupied by the Empire State Building, something else almost as impressive could have stood. However, this was once the site of the largest hotel in the world: The first Waldorf-Astoria!

If you opened the New York Times on a November morning in 1903, you might have glanced at an article on the front page that quoted a curious ad that had appeared in newspapers throughout the east coast. "$5000 will be paid for right ear, 2 1/2 inches long, 1 1/4 inches wide. with perfect curves and full lobe; the ear may be from either male or female, and must be from a person in perfect health; offers by mail considered."

105 MADISON AVENUE Buchman & Fox 1912-13 Like Madison Square Park, Madison Avenue was named after James Madison, the fourth President of the United States. The Avenue begins at 23rd Street and extends to the Madison Avenue Bridge at 138th Street. When the Manhattan street grid was mandated in 1811, there was no avenue between Fourth (now Park) and Fifth Avenues. Madison Avenue was carved out in the 1840s due to the wide distance between Fourth and Fifth Avenues and in order to create more building lots with avenue frontage. This southern section of Madison Avenue is characterized by its fine assortment of large-scale hotels, lofts and office buildings. The imposing store and loft building is clad entirely in terra-cotta, much like Cass Gilbert’s famed Woolworth Building, which was constructed at the same time. At 20 stories tall, it has a strong presence on Madison Avenue. The structure features Gothic Revival style ornament, with grand arches at the ground level and at the crown.

CHURCH OF THE TRANSFIGURATION 1 East 29th Street (church: 1849; guildhall, transept and tower: 1852; lich-gate: Frederick C. Withers, 1896; Lady Chapel: 1906; Mortuary Chapel: 1908; rectory: c. 1849-50) Church of the Transfiguration, known since the 1870s as “The Little Church Around the Corner,” is made up of several Gothic Revival style buildings, all of red brick with brownstone trim. The church is accessible through a small lich-gate, one of the site’s most striking features, and a gift from Mrs. Franklin Hughes Delano (great aunt of Franklin Delano Roosevelt) in 1896. The lich-gate, a common feature of English churches, was originally meant to provide a covered place for pallbearers to rest coffins while waiting for the priest to arrive for funeral services (“lich” is an Anglo-Saxon word meaning body or corpse). The church’s main entrance is within the tower, which features Gothic arches and a peaked roof with dormer windows and a cross at its crown. To the west of the tower is the rectory building, a five-story, Gothic Revival structure with a mansard roof and an octagonal extension with a full-height, projecting, wooden window bay, an ornate cast-iron balcony and Gothic panels on the third floor.

Mrs. Astor's House, 1893. In 1862 the Astor's, William and Caroline, commissioned a four-bay brownstone at 34th Street and Fifth Avenue. Their neighbors were William's older brother, John Jacob Astor III. Despite the blood relation, the families did not get along. The family feuding is best depicted in the story of the two mansions and later two hotels that occupied this corner. In the early 1890s, William Waldorf Astor, William and Caroline's nephew, sold his father's home and commissioned the 13-story, Waldorf Hotel (seen here in the background). The hotel loomed over her house and fanned the flames of the familial quarrel. Caroline's son J.J. Astor IV eventually convinced his mother to move uptown, razed her corner mansion, and built a second hotel, to be called the Astor Hotel. The two hotels were connected by Peacock Alley and together became the largest hotel in the world. The Astor family sold the largely out-dated hotel to the developers of the Empire State Building. The hotel closed on May 3, 1929, and it was demolished soon after.

Mrs. Stewart's Hotel for Working Women ca. 1901 In 1869, mercantile magnate Alexander T. Stewart—whose stores employed many young women as “shop girls”—proposed the Hotel for Working Women, the first of its kind. At the time, single women were never admitted to hotels; to be a guest, a woman had to be accompanied by a husband, or check-in as part of a family with a male head of household. Stewart stated his hotel would be for “industrious young women…to foster individuality and self-dependence…in which lodging, food, and warmth, with other essentials, may be furnished at the lowest possible rates.” Located on Park Avenue between 32nd and 33rd Streets, the Hotel for Working Women stood in startling contrast to the small size and austerity of the moral homes: It was a grand structure, seven stories tall, and built of iron with a mansard roof, interior courtyard with flowers and a large fountain, and an elegant marble-columned lobby. Inside, it boasted five elevators, marble floors with carpets, more than 1,700 gaslights throughout the building, speaking tubes to communicate with the staff, and hot and cold running water throughout. The upper floors had single and double rooms, while the lower floors featured a dining-room, parlors for entertaining guests, reading rooms fully stocked with books and periodicals, and other amenities. At the time of its completion in 1878, press coverage of the hotel’s opening was extensive and largely laudatory. It was compared favorably to contemporary hotels, and on the opening day, the hotel manager reported 1,000 applications for rooms. Sadly, this novel experiment was curtailed almost immediately: Stewart died before the Hotel’s completion, and within a year, it was sold and converted into the Park Avenue Hotel, a market rate hostelry that catered to a well-heeled and largely male clientele. This conversion was controversial. The executor of Stewart’s estate maintained that the hotel had never been fully occupied and thus was a financial failure. Women’s groups countered that the hotel had a long waiting list, and that the executor stood to profit personally from its conversion to a luxury hotel

Between 1954 and 1957, the Municipal Art Society surveyed historic buildings in all five boroughs to create a database of potential landmarks to preserve. Local residents and MAS staff compiled individual sheets devoted to about 200 buildings. Each sheet outlined the building’s date, location, and style and provided a description and a small photograph. This is the list of Manhattan buildings.

View looking east on West 31st Street toward the Clinton Hotel, ca. 1975. This wide red brick and limestone structure, designed by Carrère and Hastings, was completed in 1895 as the headquarters of Life Magazine. The highbrow humor publication's presence is still marked by gilded lettering beneath the lintels of the second story windows and Philip Martiny's "Winged Life" sculpture above the main entrance. The magazine was forced from the building by the financial pressures of the Great Depression, and the interior was converted to an apartment hotel in 1936. That later became the Clinton Hotel, an inexpensive single room hotel. After a three-year renovation, the once-proud Life building reopened as the Herald Square Hotel in 1991.

Church of the Transfiguration ca. 1910 Built in neo-Gothic style, Transfiguration has 14th-century stained glass, elegant chapels, and a picturesque garden oasis. The church provided sanctuary to African-Americans during the Civil War and has a long-time association with the acting community; a world-famous actor gave it the nickname "The Little Church Around the Corner" when Transfiguration agreed to perform the funeral of an actor friend when other churches would not. Thousands of couples were married at the church during World War II. In addition to guided tours and musical performances, historic church vestments will be on display throughout OHNY Weekend. Transfiguration is an Anglo-Catholic parish with a beautiful and formal liturgy, and a 180-year reputation for welcoming those marginalized by society. The church will be offering the following tours and events during OHNY Weekend, with music on the hour and tours on the half-hour.

THE TERRY & TENCH BUILDING 135 Madison Avenue J. B. Snook’s sons, 1910 The Terry & Tench Building was named for the iron company that erected the building. Terry & Tench was also responsible for the steel construction of the Manhattan Bridge and Grand Central Terminal. This loft building was designed in the Edwardian style, a late Victorian style popular between 1901 and 1914 characterized by understated Classical influences.

Homecoming of the 71st Regiment from the Spanish-American War, August 29, 1898.

GILSEY HOUSE 1200 Broadway Stephen Decatur Hatch 1869-71 The Second Empire style Gilsey House commands the corner of Broadway with its white, cast-iron façades and chamfered corner. The building was designed to recall the Second Empire penchant for pavilions, created by the use of columns and convex mansard towers. The structure had been a hotel until 1911, for roughly 40 years during the neighborhood’s reign as an entertainment district. When the theaters moved uptown to Times Square, the building found itself standing in the new garment district and was converted to loft space. In 1980, the building was restored and converted into cooperative apartments. The Gilsey House was designated a New York City Landmark in 1979, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

You're standing across from one of three brownstones that J.P. Morgan owned on this block. Next to it is the addition to the Morgan Library designed by Renzo Piano in 2006. Around the corner is Morgan's original library, built in 1912. The photographer Edward Steichen once said that looking into Morgan's "black eyes was like confronting the headlights of an express train bearing down on you." That unrelenting ambition drove his art acquisition as much as it had his business strategy. In 1901, he formed the country's first billion-dollar company- U.S. Steel- and following the Panics of 1893 and 1907 helped to save the country and then the city from financial ruin. It was not until Morgan was in his 50s-after amassing his great wealth- that he turned buying art, rare books, and manuscripts into a second job. In 1901, one of Morgan's partner wrote: "We never see him and it is difficult to get hold of him. He spends his time lunching with Kings or Kaisers or buying Raphaels." By 1890, more than 50% of Morgan's money went towards art, and by 1912, he had put $60 million (more than $1.5 billion today) into objects that ranged widely beyond Old Masters. There were Gutenberg Bibles, Roman frescoes, Assyrian reliefs, 17th century, German metalwork, tapestries, ivories, enamels, and furniture. Morgan hired Charles McKim, of the architectural firm McKim, Mead, and White, to build him a library in which to put it all. The design was inspired by Rome's 16th-century palaces and churches. Once inside the bronze doors, visitors entered a rotunda with a vaulted ceiling covered in scenes inspired by Raphael's ceiling the Vatican. One of the three rooms you can visit today is Morgan's private study. This room- with its 16th-century Italian wood ceiling, red damask walls, stained glass window panels, and oversized glass window panels, and oversized Italianate desk became a haven for Morgan in the last years of his life. And when he died, in 1913, it was here that the family held the viewing. Morgan's son, Jack, turned his father's library into a public institution.

Gorham Building One of the outstanding masterpieces of New York architecture, this Italian Renaissance building by McKim, Mead, & White ingeniously adapts the first floor arcade to show windows, screens, balconies, and cornice leaves one with a sense of accomplished finality all too rarely achieved. This photograph was taken before the building was altered, but the changes cannot completely destroy the dignity of this old aristocrat.

B. Altman ARCHITECT: Trowbridge & Livingston DATE: 1905-13 STYLE: Italian Renaissance The B. Altman & Company Department Store Building was the first and one of the most handsome of the flagship department stores on Fifth Avenue. Its construction in 1905-13 acted as a catalyst in the transformation of Fifth Avenue north of 34th Street into a grand boulevard lined with large, high-class department stores. The architects, Trowbridge & Livingston, created an elegant ltalian Renaissance palazzo type design, reserved and stately in character, which was designed to blend with the then residential appearance of the area.

Madison Belmont Building, First Floor Interior ARCHITECT: Warren & Wetmore DATE: 1924-25 STYLE: Eclectic Revival The Madison Belmont Building was constructed for the Cheney Brothers Silk Company, the country’s largest silk mill at the time, when this area was briefly known as the Silk District. Its overall Renaissance Revival style is accented by prominent Art Deco elements, and was one of the first buildings in the United States to incorporate such motifs. Its elegant iron and bronze framing at the lower three floors and entrances was designed by Edgar Brandt, a pioneer of the Art Deco style in Paris. The building was designated both an Individual and Interior Landmark in 2011. This interior was designed in the Eclectic Revival style. The exterior of the building combines traditional, classically inspired designs with modernist elements, and the interior lobby was designed using traditional motifs inspired by ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt that include figures of gods and goddesses, mythological beasts and wall frames with lotus leaves suggesting Egyptian antecedents. The lobby has a large amount of metalwork, including applied ornamental figures, wall frames, light fixtures, doors and mail and fireboxes, and it has a very strong sense of luxury and elegance, contributed by the richness of the marble walls, the travertine floors, the decorative bronze figures and doors and the painted, vaulted ceiling.

Crowds gather to watch workers dismantling the Sixth Avenue El, as crews continue work on the IND Sixth Avenue subway line (lower right), ca. 1939.

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

Bijou Theatre ca. 1895 The Bijou started out as a sporting saloon popular with Wall Street men and members of the theatrical profession during the mid-1870s. The saloon was remodeled in 1878 and became a playhouse for variety and minstrel performances. In 1883, a new theater was erected on the site of the old playhouse and became a successful venue for light opera. It was razed and replaced by an office building in 1915.

Louis W. Hill was a railroad tycoon, entrepreneur, and the son of James J. Hill, the founder of the Great Northern Railway. Seeking the business opportunity to bring more tourists aboard his line, he lobbied for the establishment of Glacier National Park. His rail line would bring tourists directly to the park in Montana. This portion of the line also went through the Blackfoot Confederacy's Reservation, which Hill understood as a unique business opportunity. At the opening of the Travel and Vacation Show in 1913, Hill organized for ten members of the Blackfoot Confederacy to travel to New York to be part of the Glacier National Park Exhibit.

Tiffany and Company Building, May 2, 1907.

Gimbel's ca. 1910 When Gimbel Brothers opened in 1910 one block from R.H. Macy's, it represented stiff competition. Its 390 departments, if lined up next to each other as individual specialty shops, would have stretched forty blocks dramatically illustrating the store's motto "You can buy anything at Gimbel's." Aside from the usual store goods, one could purchase theater tickets, send telegrams and complete banking transactions. It also offered such amenities as a beauty salon and an art gallery where the paintings of Anna Mary Robertson ("Grandma") Moses were first exhibited at Thanksgiving 1940. Gimbel's closed in 1965.

Vanderbilt Hotel (at right), date unknown. Built by the great-grandson of railroad magnate, Cornelius Vanderbilt, in 1912, the Hotel Vanderbilt was designed by Warren and Wetmore, one of the firms involved in the creation of Grand Central Terminal. At 22-stories, the facade was largely restrained, though with fanciful terra cotta ornamentation at the top. The interiors were grand and packed with new modern technologies: a Gustavino ceiling graced the basement Della Robbia Room and pneumatic tubes carried messages between floors. Vanderbilt, who lived in a lavish two-story apartment on the top floors died saving a fellow passenger when the Lusitania sank in 1915. His family sold the hotel in 1925 and in 1967 it was converted into office and residential spaces. During and after this conversion the lower floors were stripped and reclad with a modern facade and much of the terra cotta was removed (some of it has ended up in the garden at the Brooklyn Museum). Today the building looks as it has since the 1970s. The Della Robbia Room was designated an interior landmark in 1985, though the building's exterior remains unprotected.

The benevolent home was not the only model proposed to house single, working women in New York City. In 1869, mercantile magnate Alexander T. Stewart—whose stores employed many young women as “shop girls”—proposed the Hotel for Working Women, the first of its kind.

Hotel Martinique, ca. 1910. Constructed in three phases between 1897 and 1910 in a French Renaissance style for the developer William R. H. Martin, the 16-story Hotel Martinique was originally a classy apartment house in what was then the theatre district. The architect, Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, a well-known planner of luxury hotel and apartment housing, also designed the Dakota (1880-1884) and the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel (1893-1897). The hotel's prestige waned after the mid century, and by 1970 the building, though still privately owned, was being used by the City and the Red Cross as emergency housing for the homeless. Over the next twenty years the Hotel Martinique was a notorious welfare hotel, known for shoddy facilities and bug infestations. Activist, journalist, and author, Jonathan Kozol, set his study of homelessness, called 'Rachel and Her Children,' here. The last family was moved out in 1989, the building was landmarked in 1998, and today it is the sensitively renovated Radisson Martinique.

Where you now see Temple Emanu-El, Mrs. Astor's French chateau once stood, with a ballroom large enough for 1200 guests. Mrs. Astor— the only name she went by—was the gatekeeper of Gilded Age society. And a ticket to her annual ball told you whether you had made it in.

Gimbels Store, ca. 1912. Gimbels was a general store established in 1842 in the small town of Vincennes, Indiana. The first Gimbels department store opened in Milwaukee in 1889 before expanding to Danville, Illinois, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and eventually New York City. Opening its flagship near Herald Square at Sixth Avenue and 32nd Street, just across from Macy's in 1910, this sparked a 50 year rivalry immortalized in film 'Miracle on 34th Street.' Successful in its early decades, Gimbels marketed to the middle classes, but had trouble playing in the same league as Macy's. The store would eventually try selling at a lower price point, offering NYC's first department store bargain basement, in completion with the city's more discount emporiums. The Gimbel family sold their stores to a British-owned subsidiary in 1973 and the locations were all closed or sold to other department stores by 1986. Today the Gimbels building still stands, though with new larger windows on the lower levels. It is the site of the Manhattan Mall, with JC Penney as its anchor store and office space on the upper floors.

The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, ca. 1901. The 450-room Waldorf Hotel (smaller building, left), designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, opened in March 1893. Four years later, the Astoria Hotel (center and right) opened on the same block. The two hotels were connected by a set of corridors, together forming the world’s largest hotel building. In 1929, the hotel was demolished ahead of the construction of the Empire State Building, with a new Waldorf Astoria constructed on Park Avenue, between 49th and 50th Streets.

Wolcott Apartments, ca. 1905. Constructed between 1902 and 1904 in an ornate Beaux-Arts style, the Wolcott was a popular residence given its proximity to transportation hubs as well as centers of entertainment, business, and shopping. Designed by John H. Duncan (who also created Grant's Tomb and Soldiers’ and Sailor’s Memorial Arch in Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza) the 12-story H-plan building is faced in pink brick and limestone and topped by a deep copper-covered mansard. Housing both temporary and more long term residents, the hotel's guests included Isadora Duncan, Doris Duke, Edith Wharton, Henry Miller, and Buddy Holly. It also hosted a number of prominent cultural and political events: the 1914 purchase of the NY Yankees and the 1938 inaugural ball of Mayor La Guardia.

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.

Built by Ned Harrigan in 1890 and named the Harrigan Theatre, the venue was taken over in 1895 by Richard Mansfield, who changed its name to the Garrick. Mansfield leased it to Charles Frogman, who managed it until his death in 1915, when it was sold at auction. It became the home of the Theatre Guild, and after the Guild relocated it became a burlesque house. Severely damaged by fire in 12932, it was demolished as a safety hazard.

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.

Built in 1883 as the New Park Theatre, and containing most of the interior fittings from the Booth Theatre, this playhouse was not successful until 1894 when it booked the Richard Mansfield Company and changed its name to the Herald Square Theatre. It turned to movies in 1912, was sold in 1914, and was torn down to make way for a garment industry building.

Phelps Stokes-J. P. Morgan, Jr., House ARCHITECT: R. H. Robertson DATE: 1852-53 STYLE: Neo-Renaissance Robertson’s designs harmonized with the original while adding neo-Renaissance characteristics. When J. Pierpont Morgan purchased the house for his son J.P. Morgan, Jr., in late 1904, it was subsequently further renovated, and much of the exterior character it assumed then still survives today. When the Pierpont Morgan Library purchased the house in 1988, it was incorporated into the museum forming a vital part of its ongoing program.

The Roger Williams Hotel/Madison Avenue Baptist Church replaced the 1858 Madison Avenue Baptist Church structure that originally stood on this site. In 1930, this residential hotel was constructed with the church incorporated into its first four stories. The building’s Romanesque Revival style recalls the architecture of the original church.

Trinity Chapel, ca. 1914. Dedicated in 1855 as the uptown (25th Street was uptown at that point) chapel of Trinity Church, the structure was designed by the same architect as the mother church, Richard Upjohn. The brownstone edifice was the venue of the1885 marriage of Edith Jones and Edward Wharton. Edith Wharton later used the church as a setting in her novel 'Age of Innocence." The church suffered in the early 20th century from the same action that had created it, the movement of parishioners uptown. In 1942, the Episcopal Diocese sold the complex to the growing Serbian community. Rechristened the Cathedral of St. Sava, it became the first Serbian Orthodox church on the east coast. The later 20th century saw some of the Protestant ornamentation replaced with Byzantine-style stained glass and Serbia iconography. On the evening of May 1, 2016, the day of Orthodox Easter celebrations, the church suffered a devastating fire. While the roof and most of the interior was completely destroyed, the stone walls of the church remained. As of December of 2017 the work was being completed on the church to clear out some of the damaged interior and erect scaffolding for the eventual reconstruction of the building.

The opulent Waldorf-Astoria hotel stood here, where the Empire State Building is now, from 1897 until 1929. the hotel was actually two separate buildings, joined by a 300-foot long hallway called Peacock Alley, where tourists and local New Yorkers used to gather to gaze at the tycoons, theatrical stars and dignitaries walking by. New York City and its share of hotels prior to the Waldorf-Astoria's opening, but this was the first to bring Gilded Age social life out into the wide open. It not only provided large and lavish spaces for the wealthy to entertain but also the opportunity for the rest of New York to observe and covet their lifestyle. The hotel grew out of a rivalry among the Astors- one of New York's oldest and wealthiest families thanks to John Jacob Astor's early and large investments in Manhattan real estate. The site had been occupied by two brownstones. One belonged to William Waldorf Astor, and the other to his aunt, Caroline Schermerhorn Astor- the gatekeeper of New York Society. William tore down his family's house to make way for the 11-story Waldorf. Not only did the new property quickly tower over his aunt's, but the construction din and debris forced her and her son John Jacob "Jack" Astor IV to move. As retribution, Jack first considered building a stable next to the Waldorf. But after it opened in 1893, the hotel was so profitable that Jack decided to hitch himself to his cousin's venture. At a cost of $3 million, he put up the Astoria, which of course had to be several stories taller than its neighbor. Connected by Peacock Alley, and a hyphen in its new name, the Waldorf-Astoria became the largest hotel in the world. The architect was Henry Janeway Hardenbargh, who had designed the Dakota Apartments in 1882 and would design the Plaza a decade later. The style was German Renaissance-dominated by red-tiled gables and turrets.

Kabo Corset Company ca. 1915 The Chicago-based Kabo Corset Company had its New York offices at 800 Sixth Avenue near West 45th Street. In Bowman's Corset and Brassiere Trade directory of 1920, Kabo was listed as "manufacturers of back lace, front lace, maternity and sport corsets, also corsets waists, brassieres, all types, garters and sanitary specialities."