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.

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.

Bush Terminal Building ca. 1938 Erected in 1917 by Irving T. Bush, the businessman who created the massive Bush Terminal warehouse and factory complex in Brooklyn, the Bush Terminal Sales Building at 130 W. 42nd St. was one of the last of the tall towers to rise without the setbacks the 1916 zoning law required. Its architect Harvey Wiley Corbett was a leading advocate of the setback form, but he was happy to oblige his client with a slender tower of stacked showroom floors that imitated a Gothic spire.

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

Hotel Knickerbocker, 1913. Not to be outdone by his cousin and occasional real estate rival William Waldorf, who had funded the Hotel Astor, John Jacob Astor IV built the Hotel Knickerbocker just a few blocks away. The Knickerbocker, like the Astor, was a Beaux-Arts building. Designed by Marvin & Davis, the 1906 hotel had a prominent mansard roof and light colored terra cotta decoration on its red brick facade. The hotel had 556 rooms, a 2000 seat theatre, and a Maxfield Parrish mural "Old King Cole" in its bars. (That mural has been installed in the St. Regis Hotel bar since 1935.) Supposedly the martini was invented in the bar at the Knickerbocker, though evidence proves otherwise. Astor would die in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and the hotel was closed and converted into offices in 1920 under financial strain by Astor's son. In the next nearly 100 years the building functioned as offices, residences, showrooms and studios for garment companies, and finally as of 2015, a hotel once again.

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.

P.S. 28, 1920. Originally a public elementary school, this West 40th Street building was the original home of the School of Industrial Art, a public technical-vocational high school founded in 1936 with 128 male pupils (the school later expanded to a coeducational student body). SIA soon outgrew the 40th Street school house and moved into an annex of the Benjamin Franklin School on 79th Street. In 1960, the school, newly renamed the High School of Art and Design, moved to its long-term home at 1075 Second Avenue — adjacent to the present campus, which opened 56th Street in 2012. Notable alumni of SIA and Art and Design include performers (Tony Bennett, ‘54), visual artists (Art Spiegelman ‘65), and fashion designers (Calvin Klein, ‘60; Marc Jacobs, ‘81).

Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, large trade fairs such as the Crystal Palace Exposition provided new venues for American art and inventiveness.

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.

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.

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.

Crystal Palace ca. 1853 Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, large trade fairs such as the Crystal Palace Exposition provided new venues for American art and inventiveness. The "New-York Crystal Palace for the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations" was designed by Georg J.B. Carstensen and Charles Gildemeister, frankly modeled on the great hall of the same name that had opened in London's Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851. Both were cast iron and glass building of vast scale. New York's Crystal Palace stood on a site behind the Croton Distributing Reservoir, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues on 42nd Street (today's Bryant Park). President Franklin Pierce opened the New York version on July 4, 1853, inaugurating America's first World's Fair. The exhibition closed on November 1 of the following year, but the building continued to host trade shows until it was destroyed by fire on October 5, 1858. Advertised by the fair's promoters as a fireproof structure, the great glass and iron hall was destroyed by flame in fifteen minutes. According to the Sun, within the week of the calamity a certain industrious Mrs. Richardson set up an outdoor stand in the adjoining Palace Garden and sold relics of the conflagration, including "vitrified masses of glass, metals, \&c., showing the intense heat which h prevailed at the time of the destruction."

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.

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.

Manhattan Opera House, ca. 1907. Opera fanatic and theater mogul Oscar Hammerstein I opened his second Manhattan Opera House as an answer to his dissatisfaction with the Metropolitan Opera. (His first 1893-built Manhattan Opera House was also on 34th Street and was an unmitigated financial disaster.) His second Manhattan Opera House was meant to be an opera "for opera-philes like himself." This would be unlike the Met Opera, where patrons treated the shows as a social affair. This was Hammerstein's eighth theater and proved majorly successful. It offered productions of the classics: Aida, Carmen, La Traviata, Otello, Tosca, Rigoletto, among others. The Met Opera had found a worthy rival - the competition of the Hammerstein's opera house had inflated the costs of producing opera and re-saturated the public's interests in the medium. Eventually, the Met won out, and Hammerstein went bankrupt. He could not compete with the high price of bringing in the biggest opera stars that the Met could. Oscar Hammerstein's son, Arthur, negotiated a contract with the Met that awarded his father $1.2 million if he refrained from producing grand opera in the United States for the next 10 years. Otto Kahn, president of the Metropolitan Opera, gained possession of the theater in 1911. The space was leased from 1911 to 1917 to The Shuberts. From 1927 to 1940 the space was a Warner Brother's sound stage, and then a meeting hall.

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🌳.

989 Sixth Avenue, unknown date.

National Theatre (far right), 1935. Opened September 1, 1921, as the National Theatre, this was (and still is) the southernmost theatre in the Broadway district. Common among New York theatres, the venue has gone through a number of name changes over its history. It has been the Billy Rose Theatre, Trafalgar Theatre, and finally the David T. Nederlander Theatre. Between 1996 and 2008 the Nederlander was the home of the long-running hit Rent. For that production, the facade of the theatre was made to look like a downtown club. (Rent is set in Alphabet City.) Today the theatre continues to host Broadway performances, though the facade has been returned to its original look of plain brick and metal details.

Engineer's Club ARCHITECT: Whitfield & King DATE: 1905-07 The Engineers’ Club Building is an early example of the high-rise clubhouse building. It featured 66 sleeping rooms, in addition to public and social spaces. The Engineers’ Club occupied the West 40th Street building until 1979, when the structure was successfully converted into residential apartments. Today the Engineers’ Club Building looks almost exactly as it did more than a century ago. It continues to stand as an architectural reminder of the emergence of New York State as the engineering center of the country and of the United States as an industrial and economic power. As the last remaining club building on a block which once had several, the Engineers’ Club Building is also a visual reminder of the prominence of the social club and of the bachelor apartment at the turn of the 20th century.

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.

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.

New Amsterdam Theatre, ca. 1910. The Art Nouveau New Amsterdam Theatre was constructed between 1902 and 1903 to the designs of the firm of Henry Hertz and Hugh Tallant. The architects created a highly ornamented building; the first three floors are lavish in decoration and sculpture. Its popular roof garden was added in 1904. The building incorporated two theatrical spaces and an office tower to be leased to theatrical interests. Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., creator of the Ziegfeld Follies maintained an office in the building between 1913 and 1927, and the Follies themselves were performed on a New Amsterdam stage between 1913 and 1920, 1922 and 1925, and 1927. The roof garden venue at that time was called Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic and was known for more racy and tantalizing productions. The theatre closed in 1936 and was converted into a movie house for much of the rest of the 20th century. During this era the roof garden space was used as a rehearsal area for Broadway shows. In the 1990s the building was purchased by the Disney Theatrical Productions and underwent a massive and costly renovation to return the building to original grandeur. The roof garden was unfortunately permanently closed at this time, due to modern building codes. Since 1997 the venue has been the home of Disney-produced musicals, including The Lion King, Mary Poppins, and Aladdin.

Metropolitan Opera House, 39th Street and Broadway, ca. 1905. The first home of the Metropolitan Opera, the J. Cleavland Cady-designed “old Met,” opened in October, 1883 with a performance of “Faust” (the same opera that opened the Brooklyn Academy of Music twenty-five years later). The Met held its closing gala in April, 1966 (though an additional Bolshoi Ballet performance would be staged in May), ahead of the company’s move to its current home at Lincoln Center. The “old Met” was demolished the next year, after attempts to win Landmarks designation were unsuccessful.

Empire State Building, ca. 1985.

Steam + Felt = Hats, March 1, 1938. The occupants of the upper floors of this building are hat manufacturers. The construction and finishing of felt hats (the material in style for hat making in the 1930s) involved massive amounts of steam to mold and shape the products. Surrounded by the garment district (then covering 34th to 40th Streets between Sixth and Ninth Avenue) and the fur district, the millinery district covered a smaller footprint than the others. In fact, in the early mid century more than 15% of the country's (not city, but the whole country's) output of hats was manufactured in this building captured by Berenice Abbott in 1938.

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.

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.

Metropolitan Opera, ca. 1905. It was here, at 39th and Broadway, where one of the greatest Gilded Age dramas played out. And it wasn't on stage! As new families made money from finance and industry, old-money New Yorkers tried to maintain their social standing by excluding the newcomers from events and institutions. But when the old guard denied William H. Vanderbilt one of the 18 private boxes at the New York Academy of Music on 14th Street—the city's premiere musical venue—Vanderbilt took a stand. He corralled a group of new-monied bankers and industrialists to create a performance space of their own. The Goulds, Morgans, Whitneys, and Rockefellers were among those who paid $10,000 each to begin a "social war of extermination." They hired the architect J.C. Cady to design the Metropolitan Opera House. The result was a yellow brick structure some called simple and dignified and others compared to a brewery: "Looked at from the street," wrote the New York World, "the building appears like an enormous malthouse. Inside it has the appearance of a Mississippi steamboat." But no one could dispute that is size was impressive. It had 122 boxes (versus the Academy's 18), the largest stage in the United States, and the capacity to fit more than 3,000 people. On opening night, according to the New York Dramatic Mirror, "all the nouveau riches were on hand. The Goulds and the Vanderbilts and people of that ilk perfumed the air with the odor of crisp greenbacks" and "the tiers looked like cages in a menagerie of monopolists." Ultimately, new money won the battle to take center stage in the city's social scene. A little more than two years after the Metropolitan Opera opened, the Academy of Music closed. Its owner told the press: "I simply could not fight a battle with all Wall Street." The Broadway building was torn down in 1967 after a failed attempt by political leaders and preservationists to designate it as a landmark. Since 1966, the Metropolitan Opera has made its home at Lincoln Center.

The New York Herald Building, ca. 1894.

1400 Broadway (at left) and Bricken-Casino Building (no. 1410, at right), December 5, 1935. These two neighboring building rise to nearly the same height and have similar setbacks and white brick facades. 1400 Broadway actually wraps around no. 1410. Both were designed by Ely Jacques Kahn, though the plans for no. 1400 were filed just before Kahn's partner Albert Buchman retired, so it is credited to both. The Bricken-Casino Building has been referred to as a wedding-cake-style office building. It (and its neighbor) were completed between 1930 and 1931. The base of the building (obscured here) is rendered in black granite and brass, while the upper levels have contrasting strips of white and black brick. This building was only one of a number of buildings constructed for developer Abraham Bricken. Bricken was Jewish immigrant who began his career in the garment industry. Turning from garment work to the real estate and construction industry, he was immensely successful. Between 1921 and 1929 his Bricken Construction Company built more than $50 million of real estate in the garment district alone.

Mills Hotel, 1907. Around the turn of the 20th century, banker and philanthropist Darius Ogden Mills had the idea to build residential hotels for single working men. The structure on 36th Street was the final of three hotels built and the largest. Completed in 1907, Ernest Flagg designed the 16-story, neo-Renaissance building. Flagg had written a landmark article in 1896 which decried the problems with the then-standard dumbbell layout of tenement housing. His plans for a "light-court tenement" involved less wall enclosure and greater room space, light, ventilation, and fire protection. After two successful Mills Hotels designed by Flagg, Mills commissioned a final one (though he hired the firm of Copeland & Dole, not Flagg). The building continued to serve as a home for single working men through the 1940s. In 1954 new owners renovated the building in a new, traditional hotel called the Keystone. Later in the 1980s, the building was retrofitted for offices and showrooms and parking lot on the first floor!

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.

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.

Lefcourt-Marlboro Building, 1925. The Lefcourt-Marlboro Building was constructed by George & Edward Blum for Abraham Lefcourt. Completed in 1925, the structure was originally designed as a garment manufacturing building. Its name comes from the site, on which formerly stood the Marlboro Hotel.

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

On February 11th, 1899, a blizzard known as the Great Arctic Outbreak moved across the United States, reaching as far as Florida, New Orleans, and even Cuba. In New York City, the average temperature was −6 °F and Central Park saw 16 inches of snow, with other areas measuring a record 2-3 feet.

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

Bush Terminal Building ARCHITECT: Helmle & Corbett DATE: 1916-21 STYLE: Neo-Gothic Combining historical neo-Gothic detailing with a modern, pronounced vertical emphasis, the building represents an important intermediate stage in the development of the skyscraper. Secondary elevations finished with an innovative treatment of trompe l’oeil colored brick piers, and the engineering solutions for the towerlike steel-frame building erected on a very narrow plot were features of interest.

Seventh Avenue facade of Louis Martin's, ca. 1912.

"... 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.

🥞 🍳 ☕... ✔️ 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.

Knickerbocker Hotel ARCHITECT: Marvin & Davis; Bruce Price DATE: 1901-06 STYLE: Beaux-Arts, French Renaissance The Knickerbocker Hotel is one of the very few grand hotels in the Beaux-Arts style surviving in the Times Square area. The building was financed by John Jacob Astor, the fourth namesake of the patriarch of one of America’s richest families. It is executed in red brick, richly ornamented with French Renaissance detail, and crowned by a prominent copper mansard roof with corner pavilions and cresting.

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.

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.

Brick Presbyterian Church, 1908. Founded as an offshoot of First Presbyterian Church, Brick Presbyterian Church dates to the 18th century. The first church structure opened on New Year's Day 1768 on the corner of Beekman and Nassau Streets. The parish's second church was this one with a soaring steeple on 37th Street and Fifth Avenue. The total cost of the building was about $140,000 and it sat 1200 parishioners. Completed in 1858 the church survived 80 years. Once again the congregation was on the move uptown. The church merged with Park Avenue Presbyterian Church in 1937 and built a new sanctuary on 91st Street. The 37th Street edifice was demolished and replaced by a low rise, Art Deco, commercial building that housed the Lerner Shop and A.S. Beck Shoes. That structure was replaced in 1990 with a contemporary 30-story office tower.

1450 Broadway ca. 1936 Garment lofts had to be flexible with floors easily subdivided, because space was leased to multiple businesses. Ely Jacques Kahn designed the 43-story Continental Building at the northern end of the Garment District in 1930. In 1931, he divided floors for the new tenants. On the 19th floor, four garment-related firms had their offices, while only one occupied the 25th floor, with its offices and two showrooms. Sign boards at the entries to factory lofts such as the Kaufman Building often listed the names of the multiple tenants renting space.

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!

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.”

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.

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.

The Casino Theatre was designed by Francis H. Kimball and Thomas Wisedel in a Gothic style. It was the home of musical comedies and housed the famous Gilbert and Sullivan attractions. The theater fell to the wreckers' ball in 1930.

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.

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

Built in 1882, the Casino Theatre signaled a number of firsts for New York's theaters. Since the days of the Astor Place riots, New Yorkers had proved themselves voracious theater fans, and the Casino Theatre, and others like it represented the next step in forming the theater district that would make Broadway famous.

American Radiator Building (at right), December 5, 1938 Designed by Raymond Hood, the American Radiator Building is a striking scene at the mid block of 40th Street. Rendered in black and gold, the 23-story building is largely a free-standing tower. While the bronze and marble entry and ornamentation is neo-Gothic in style, the sleek lines of the building nod towards an Art Deco style, which would not truly come into vogue for a few more years. Hood also included in the design purposeful uplighting for the top of the building, making it the first New York skyscraper with dramatic exterior lighting. (Its nighttime look is immortalized in Georgia O'Keeffe's 1927 “Radiator Building at Night - New York.”) Hood, who for some time in the early 1920s designed radiator covers for the American Radiator Company, would complete this headquarters for the company in 1924. The building remained headquarters for that American Radiator for 65 years (even after a name change to American Standard Company in 1967). Purchased by a Japanese firm in 1988, they intended to convert the building to a hotel. A decade and new owner later, the black and gold skyscraper was converted into The Bryant Park Hotel.

American Radiator Building ARCHITECT: Raymond Hood DATE: 1923-24 STYLE: Art Deco The American Radiator Building, a striking twenty-three story black and gold tower, is one of the finest and most significant skyscrapers in Manhattan. Designed by Raymond M. Hood and built in 1923-24, the American Radiator Building initiated a new trend in skyscraper design in New York City with its bold cubic massing of forms often associated with the Art Deco style and its freedom from the Beaux-Arts classical details that had previously encumbered New York City skyscrapers.

Bryant Park Studios ARCHITECT: Architect: Charles A. Rich DATE: 1900-01 STYLE: French Beaux-Arts The Bryant Park Studios constructed in 1900-01, is one of the earliest buildings in New York specifically designed to house artists’ studios. The building’s location across from Bryant Park and its generous windows with northern exposures make it aptly suited for this purpose. Designed by the prominent architect Charles A. Rich, the elegant building displays a complex program of ornamentation in an elaborate French Beaux Arts style. It was also known as the Beaux Arts Building and was commissioned by portraitist A. A. Anderson, an artist with French training and experience, who sought to address the shortage of appropriate artists’ working spaces in the city. Above the retail stores at the street level, prominent design features of the building include: rusticated terra-cotta, terra-cotta and brick banding, dramatic, multi-story stone window enframements with pediments or delicate metal-railed balconies highlighting the studio windows which themselves are elegantly proportioned and divided, and prominent cornices.

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.

Lefcourt Normandie Building, 1944. The Lefcourt Normandie Building was built by Abraham Lefcourt on the former site of Hotel Normandie, a landmark structure that once stood on this corner for more than 50 years. During its heyday, it was one of the most popular hotels in the city. According to a 1928 New York Times article, the Lefcourt Normandie "ranks as the finest in the history of the A.E. Lefcourt realty holdings." It was Lefcourt's twenty-first structure in New York and fourth on Broadway between 34th and 42nd streets. When the building opened in 1928, every square foot of space was leased. The second and third floors were occupied by the Lefcourt Normandie National Bank, a bank Lefcourt founded himself to finance new real estate developments.

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!

The Corduroy Club, located here from March 1967 to 1971, was a significant effort by the pre-Stonewall LGBT community in New York to have a social space that was outside of the control of the Mafia, New York State Liquor Authority regulations, and police arrests and entrapment. The club also hosted a number of early LGBT organizations. In 1986, black fashion designer Isaia moved his clothing label here just as he was becoming one of the most sought-after young designers in the city. He died from AIDS-related complications in 1989.

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.

Lefcourt-State Building, 1944. The Lefcourt-State was the third of four enormous office and showroom buildings in the Garment District that Abraham E. Lefcourt erected on Broadway and the first designed by Ely Jacques Kahn. Built specifically to house jobbers in the high-end dress trade, the building offered 450,000 square feet of rentable space, all of which was leased months before completion. In 1931, sixty-nine firms rented space in the building. The Times reported that "it is estimated that the annual shipments of wearing apparel from this building will reach a figure of over $75,000,000 the first year." Kahn was one of a circle of prominent architects who introduced Moderne, or Art Deco design to New York. For Lefcourt, he designed a powerful building with a four-story stone base, vertical massing, and evenly stacked setbacks, each ornamented with simple geometric detail. Intricate bas-relief brick spandrel panels beneath the windows ( gave additional interest to the façade. Typical of Kahn's buildings, the lobby was a lavish entry with inlaid marble floors, marble walls, complex molded plaster detail, bronze elevator doors, and other features, all now gone.

246 West 38th Street, ca. 1923.

American Radiator Building ca. 1978 One of the greatest problems that confronted our architects was how best to express skyscraper construction. Here there was no precedent, so that many interesting experiments were made, among which this was one one of the most notable. Raymond Hood, using a theme of black and gold, achieved the "new look" for the 1920s; and, although the setbacks above seem to us needlessly agitated, the general effect was original and fairly expressive of the underlying structure. The small, sculptured corbels just above street level are interesting as ornament although by no means original.

The Empire Theatre was built by Al Hayman and Frank W. Sanger for Charles Frogman, the architects were John B. McElfatrick and Son. Opening on January 25, 1893, the Empire remained one of New York's favorite theaters until the final performance on May 30, 1953, of The Time of the Cuckoo. An office building was alter erected on this site.

Lefcourt-Manhattan Building, 1928. The Lefcourt-Manhattan Building is one of four office buildings that Garment District developer Abraham E. Lefcourt erected on Broadway. Despite a sharp decline in clothing manufacturing in Manhattan in the late 1920s, Lefcourt's building demonstrated that there was still demand for high-class showrooms and loft space in the city. The structure, which stood on the site of the old Polter Building and Harrigan Theatre, was 90% leased before it was even ready occupancy.

A 1920s steeple of class-act Art Deco, the golden tips of the tower are supposed to mimic the hue of a radiator aflame, and symbolic figures at the base of the building represent states of heat such as “lust” and “labor” and “drunkenness.” The lower facade is also decorated with fire-breathing salamanders - a symbol of the court of King Francis I, under whose auspices in 1524 the Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed to the “New World” - allegedly the first European to blaze the waters of Lower New York Bay, and cast western eyes on the shores of Brooklyn and Staten Island. In 1926, Lynn Bomar of the New York Giants stood on the roof of the building and hail mary’d a football into Bryant Park, where Giants halfback Hickey Haines, wearing a waistcoat and tie, caught what the papers called the longest forward pass on record.

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.

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

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.

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.

Bryant Park Studios, ca. 1901. Built by artist, Abraham A. Anderson, the 12-story Studios (later called the Beaux Arts Building), was constructed in the first years of the 20th century. Designed by Charles A. Rich, who also designed Barnard College's first building, Milbank Hall, the apartment was specifically designed to house artists’ studios. The building included 24 north-facing double-height studios (north facing being the best for light). The artists often worked and lived in their studios. In the 1920s the building was called the Beaux Arts Building, for the cafe on the ground floor. Anderson remained in his studios, while leasing and then selling the building to a new owner. The building slowing became more of a loft and showroom space throughout the mid century. Today the building is almost exclusively occupied by women’s contemporary casual clothing showrooms.

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.

Seventh Avenue, at and adjoining the southwest corner of 42nd Street, 1929. The large brick building in the background is the Hotel Hermitage. Built in 1907, the 13-story structure was designed by Robert D. Kohn for Timothy F. Paddell, a liquor dealer. The building was a bachelor hotel designed to be "vigorous and modern" with no "conspicuous leanings toward any recognized style," according to a contemporary article in Architectural Review. The base of the building had four double story columns, the middle of the structure was a simple brick facade with subtle arts and crafts style inset decoration, and the top of the building was a mix of Gothic and Art Nouveau in style. In the 1930s what was once a bachelor hotel went the way other surrounding buildings and neighborhood, becoming a bit seedy. In 1943 the building's operator was convicted on charges of prostitution, owing to the fact that the eighth and ninth floors and a separate elevator were exclusively used by prostitutes and their clients. The building had its lower floor columns removed in the 1930s and replaced with a modern facade. In the early 1990s, the hotel (by then renamed the National) and the entire block front of Seventh Avenue between 41st and 42nd Streets was demolished for a 39-story building.

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.

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.

Greenwich Savings Bank ARCHITECT: York & Sawyer DATE: 1922-24 STYLE: Ancient Roman Philip Sawyer, one of the architects, displayed his knowledge of ancient Roman prototypes, and his appreciation for the organization which characterizes eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French planning, in the adaptation of the Greenwich Savings Bank’s great, elliptical banking room and its accessory spaces, entrance vestibules, foyer, and upper loggias to the bank’s irregular four-sided site. The Greenwich Savings Bank’s interior displays Sawyer’s consummate skill in manipulating the classical architectural idiom to create a spatial allegory, a veritable temple to thrift in limestone, sandstone, and steel.

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.

New Amsterdam Theater ARCHITECT: Herts & Tallant DATE: 1902-03 STYLE: Art Nouveau This interior is a rare example of Art Nouveau architecture in New York City. Working in conjunction with sculptors, painters, and other craftsmen, the architects used the Art Nouveau style to carry out a dual theme: the representation of the spirit of drama and the theater and the representation of New Amsterdam in its historical sense as the City of New York. The ornament, sculpture, murals and color scheme are intrinsic parts of the overall scheme. It was designed with innovative and extensive technical facilities to make the New Amsterdam the best possible theater. Many notable artists worked on various aspects of the interior.

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.

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.