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.

Pennsylvania Depot Excavations ca. 1906 The construction of the monumental Pennsylvania Station required the demolition of 500 buildings and the digging of tunnels under the East and Hudson Rivers. Construction took more than fifteen years, but the result was a magnificent gateway to New York City, connecting Long Island and cities all along the Eastern Seaboard to the metropolis.

Proctor's 23rd Street Theater ca. 1895 When the church that originally occupied this site was torn down. F.F. Proctor purchased the land and erected his theater. It was here that he began his career as the foremost producer of vaudeville and popular melodramas. Proctor's was the first vaudeville house in New York City to offer "continuous vaudeville," with shows running from 11 in the morning to 11 at night. Advertisements for Proctor's read "After Breakfast, Go to Proctor's, After Proctor's Go To Bed." Located in the Flatiron district, Proctor's made a special appeal to women shoppers, who could catch a show any time during the day. With the coming of movies, the theater began to offer a mix of movies and vaudeville, and then movies alone.

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.

My Archive Spring 2019 "The concert crowd exiting after the New Years Eve show, I had 3rd-row seats on the floor. Phish... we partied like it was 1999." —Kevin Young

339 West 29th Street (1846-47) NYC HD Lamartine Place Inspired by the terraced houses of England, the north side of this block was developed as a continuous row of Greek Revival residences by William Torrey and Cyrus Mason, who gave it the vanity address Lamartine Place. It soon attracted a respectable group of homeowners including Abby Hopper Gibbons and James Sloan Gibbons, who purchased no. 339 in 1852. Well-regarded philanthropists and abolitionists, their house became a nexus for anti- slavery activity in pre-Civil War New York, and is the only documented stop on the Underground Railroad in Manhattan. During the Draft Riots of 1863, the Gibbons residence was targeted by a mob that set it afire. Family members fled across the roofs of the adjacent houses. The family later returned to their houses and made repairs. Though somewhat altered since, it is one of the few surviving sites directly associated with the Draft Riots.

48-54 West 25th Street, ca. 1923. Architects George and Edward Blum erected this 12-story building in 1910 for Abraham E. Lefcourt, who at the time was a cloak and suit manufacturer. While Lefcourt eventually came to be a prolific real estate developer, erecting more than 20 buildings in Manhattan in under a decade, this lofted-structure was his first construction in the city. Before his commissioning career took off, Lefcourt designated the bottom two floors of this building as a space for his own clothing factory.

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.

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.

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.

\*“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

Eighth avenue, east side, from West 25th (right, not seen) to 26th Streets, showing at No. 312 the Chelsea Theatre. This structure, prior to 1913 was formerly Miner's Theatre which opened here in 1881. It burned in 1903 and was rebuilt in 1904. A photograph of 1910 closely compared, will indicate the present building minus the marquee. June 25, 1928.

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.

314 Eight Avenue, ca. 1910. This structure, originally built in 1881, was rebuilt in 1904 after a fire the proceeding year. In 1913 it closed, to be later reopened as the Chelsea Movie Theatre.

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.

Lefcourt Clothing Center, 1929. This 1929 building, commissioned by Garment District developer Abraham E. Lefcourt, was originally designed to house garment shops. The building was erected by the architect firm of Buchman & Kahn at a time when clothing manufacturers were beginning to relocate from Manhattan and into the boroughs. Upon its completion, the building became a magnet that started the relocation of what remained of New York's declining men's clothing industry.

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🌳.

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.

St. John the Baptist School, September 5, 1919. The school connected to the church of St. John the Baptist began in 1870 with 50 children educated in a space in a hotel on Sixth Avenue. The building seen here, which housed the monastery and school, was constructed in 1872 in the Collegiate Gothic style. It served as the church school through the mid 20th century. In 1974 the building was replaced by the brown brick, Brutalist Capuchin Monastery of St. John the Baptist, which currently still stands, though has been defunct since 2014.

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.

Empire State Building, ca. 1985.

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.

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.

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.

My Archive Spring 2019 "A photo of my mother, her siblings, and their mother taken in 1942 or so, no later than 1945. my mother, her siblings, and their mother." —Jill Melamed

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.

"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."

🥞 🍳 ☕... ✔️ Perhaps more than any other eatery, diners are the quintessential American restaurant. And for decades, starting in the 1920s, the railcar diners were a special breed of this iconic American venue. Whether actual refurbished rail dining cars (a very small %) or purpose-built, pre-fab diners made to look like railroad rolling stock, these venues provided a unique business model. In New York City, they often sat at narrow corner lots, hugged larger structures on leftover acreage, or occupied empty plots for the time between the razing of old buildings and the construction of new ones. With increased development, more advanced construction technologies, and the rising cost of land, most of these diners have been lost to time (and new construction). Here are some of the railcar diners that once fed New Yorkers.

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.

Madison Square Garden, ca. 1970. The fourth iteration of Madison Square Garden was made possible by the demolition of the former Beaux-Arts Pennsylvania Station at Eighth Avenue and 34th Street, an event which catalyzed the city’s nascent preservation movement and led to the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission. The cylindrical multi-purpose stadium opened in 1968, atop the below-ground portion of the train station, after five years of construction.

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.

St. Vincent de Paul ca. 1932 French-speaking Catholics from both France and its New World colonies were among the earliest Catholic settlers in New York and were some of the first parishioners of St. Peter's, New York's original parish. The French population tended to assimilate quickly into the larger society; however, bolstered by continued immigration, in 1841, they organized their own parish, St. Vincent de Paul, on Canal Street, in lower Manhattan, which later relocated to West 23rd Street.

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.

Here at Urban Archive, we often focus our stories on the city streets and the public-facing architecture of the city. However, being stuck inside our apartments has given us a new appreciation of interior so we thought we'd take a look at some of New York's finest interiors over the years. This story looks at the portals by which millions of people have entered and exited New York. These transportation hubs were (and in some cases still are) the first sight many have had of New York.

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.

Pennsylvania Station, 1912. The grand, Beaux-Arts terminal of the Pennsylvania Railroad became a casualty of development — and a galvanizing symbol for the city's preservation movement — upon its demolition in 1963. The station was the brainchild of Penn. Railroad President Alexander Johnston Cassatt, who envisioned a New York City terminal as a competitive advantage over other railroad lines, whose eastern termini sat west of the Hudson River, in New Jersey. For the grand New York City station, Cassatt commissioned architect Charles McKim, of McKim, Mead & White, the celebrated firm responsible for much of Manhattan's City Beautiful-era civic architecture. McKim's ambitious design drew on a wide range of Classical and Continental antecedents: Rome's St. Peter's Cathedral and the Baths of Caracalla, the Gare D'Orsay in Paris, and Berlin's Brandenburg gate, among others. Construction took all of six years, and was completed in 1910. Cassatt's bet on a station east of the Hudson proved astute; Pennsylvania Station would soon become both a hub for both regional commuters and long distance travelers. However, post-WWII shifts in mass transportation put a dent in rail travel. Declining ridership combined with significant maintenance costs led to the sale of the station's air rights, the first step toward eventual demolition. Despite protests from preservationists, including Action Group for Better Architecture in New York (AGBANY), demolition proceeded in 1963, two years after plans were first announced. Pennsylvania Station was best eulogized in a withering editorial by New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, published October 30, 1963: "Until the first blow fell no one was convinced that Penn Station really would be demolished or that New York would permit this monumental act of vandalism against one of the largest and finest landmarks of its age of Roman elegance. Somehow someone would surely find a way to prevent it at the last minute—not-so-little Nell rescued by the hero—even while the promoters displayed the flashy renderings of the new sports arena and somewhat less than imperial commercial buildings to take its place. It's not easy to knock down nine acres of travertine and granite, 84 Doric columns, a vaulted concourse of extravagant, weighty grandeur, classical splendor modeled after royal Roman baths, rich detail in solid stone, architectural quality in precious materials that set the stamp of excellence on a city But it can be done. It can be done if the motivation is great enough, and it has been demonstrated that the profit motivation in this instance was great enough. Monumental problems almost as big as the building itself stood in the way of preservation; but it is the shame of New York, of its financial and cultural communities, its politicians, philanthropists and planners, and of the public as well, that no serious effort was made. A rich and powerful city, noted for its resources of brains, imagination and money, could not rise to the occasion. The final indictment is of the values of our society. Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn't afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tin-horn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed."

With so many of us staying indoors these days, it is helpful to remember the glories of New York City’s public landscape, past and present. Here are a few examples to remind you of treasured sites we look forward to visiting again, appreciating in person, and sharing with others!

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.

Pennsylvania Station interior New York’s original Penn Station, whose 1963 demolition rallied the nascent preservation movement in America, contained a series of Guastavino vaults supported by curving steel trusses and columns. George Collins, the Columbia University professor and architectural historian who later single-handedly saved the Guastavino Company archives from destruction, noted that this combination of thin tile vaults and metal trusses was probably unique—not just in New York, but in the world.

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.

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.

Seventh Avenue Looking South from 35th Street, December 5, 1935.

(1886-87, Schwarzmann & Buchman)) The late 19th-century commercial takeover of Sixth Avenue wasn’t limited to just high-end department stores. The area surrounding 23rd Street was once a nexus of theatrical productions, of both vaudeville and legitimate persuasions alike. In 1879, Koster & Bial took over Bryant’s Opera House (established 1870, infamously one of the last minstrel theaters in the city). The partners soon expanded to a 1,200-seat theater on 23rd Street and eventually took up the entire Sixth Avenue frontage as well with a beer garden and a corner annex, which served as a saloon and beer store. The latter’s pediment and corner plaque still proudly advertise “The Corner” and “Koster & Bial.” In 1893, the partners were forced to close their Chelsea operations on charges of “encouraging prostitution.” A few days later they had opened a new venue on 34th Street (later famous for hosting the city’s first motion picture exhibition in 1896).

(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.

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!

(1927, Abraham Fisher) This six-story commercial building is notable for its striking façade and unusual name, a reference to the “Traffic Cafeteria” that occupied the lower two stories in the late 1920s. “Traffic” referred to the trucking industry in its nascent years. Cafeteria-style restaurants catering to budget-conscious urbanites became popular in the 1920s. Designed by little-known architect Fisher, the building is a wonder of patterned brickwork and rich, Celtic-inspired terra cotta ornament. Rather than bearing weight, this façade is a “curtain wall” held up floor-by-floor by the building’s concealed steel frame. Fisher’s treatment of the Traffic Building’s façade as a tapestry and use of diagonally-laid brick acknowledge this up-to-date reality. At the same time, traditional elements make it seem anachronistic. It is one of those buildings which, when noticed, rivet and reward.

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.

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.

Pennsylvania Station ca. 1940 This great concourse of steel and glass is one of the few reminders we have of a once practical and expressive design for railroad architecture. The precedent for such an enclosure is found in the trains sheds which were located over the tracks in many of the older terminals. Here, in this great station, it was particularly well suited to its use as a pedestrian concourse, giving a wonderful sense of openness and light. It may soon be demolished to make way for a remodeled station.

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.

Seventh Avenue Looking North from 35th Street, December 5, 1935

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.

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.

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.

Greyhound Bus Terminal ca. 1936 In the 1930s, bus travel was a new industry, providing cheaper and more flexible passenger service than the railroads. Built in 1935 across the street from the monumental Pennsylvania Station, the streamlined Greyhound Bus Terminal was the perfect symbol for this new mode of travel. Abbott photographed the bus terminal from the Pennsylvania Building at 225 West 34th Street. That mundane office building still stands, but the terminal was replaced in 1972 by the undistinguished 1 Penn Plaza.

Jews’ Hospital in the City of New York (later Mount Sinai), sketch ca. 1866. The hospital that would become Mount Sinai opened on June 5, 1855, in a townhouse on West 28th Street. As its original name suggests, Jews’ Hospital served the needs of Jewish patients — and employed Jewish doctors — at a time when other hospitals in the city refused service. Non-Jewish patients were admitted in cases of emergency, as were Union soldiers wounded in the Civil War. In 1866, hospital directors adopted the new name Mount Sinai, signaling that patients of all backgrounds were welcome. In the early 1870s, the hospital moved to a new and larger facility at Lexington Avenue and 66th Street.

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.

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.

From the 1870's-90's, approximately 20,000 French immigrants lived in South Village and SoHo area. By the end of the 19th century, most of that colony had relocated to the Chelsea area.

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."

Revillon Frères fur storage warehouse, 1925. Built in 1924 by the firm Cross & Cross, the building was both a storage facility and retail location for Revillon Frères, the French luxury furrier. After the company left the building, the upper cold storage floors were substantially altered, with the diaper-pattern brickwork replaced by rows of windows.