As the population of New York City swelled in the 19th century, the city's reservoirs were built to supply a growing population with a safe and reliable water supply.

For six months in 1936, this “House of the Modern Age” — a prefabricated, modernist, all-steel, one-family home — stood on a Park Avenue “million-dollar lot.” The house, advertised as “fireproof, cyclone-proof, termite- and lightning-proof,” was designed by Chrysler Building architect William Van Alen and assembled by National Houses, Inc., at a cost of $10,000. One of many experimental houses built during the Depression, it attracted 110,000 visitors who paid ten cents a tour. Abbott photographed the house the day before it was torn down, showing it surrounded by relics of Victorian Murray Hill, including the Murray Hill Hotel, which in turn were encircled by new skyscrapers. Today the “million-dollar lot” is occupied by an office building.."

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.

In honor of #nyfw (New York Fashion Week), we present the city's hottest #ootd's (outfit of the day) from our partner's collections. New York has hosted NYFW, first known as "Press Week," since 1943. It was created to pivot the spotlight from Paris fashion designers and showcase New York's homegrown talent.

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.

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.

124-126 West 43rd Street, formerly Henry Miller's Theatre, ca. 1919.

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.

Looking north on Fifth Avenue from 40th Street to 500 Fifth Avenue, ca. 1995. This slab-style Art Deco skyscraper was constructed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon from 1929-32, concurrently to the firm's most celebrated skyscraper, the Empire State Building.

Feeding birds by the fountain in Bryant Park, ca. 1930s. Bryant Park was laid out as a potter's field in 1823. The area became a public park in 1847, when it was named Reservoir Square after the adjacent reservoir. The Crystal Palace exhibition hall occupied the site from 1853 until it burned to the ground in 1858. In 1884, the park was given its present name in honor of William Cullen Bryant, the poet and newspaper editor who was also an advocate of public parks. After the main branch of the New York Public Library rose on the former site of the reservoir in 1899, Bryant Park was redesigned, and in the early years of this century became an active meeting place. During the Depression, it served as a warm-weather "dormitory" for the indigent, and in the 1970s, became a refuge for the homeless and an open market for drug dealers. Subsequent restoration and the opening of upscale restaurants have restored to its early state.

Hotel Mansfield ARCHITECT: Renwick, Aspinwall & Owen DATE: 1901-02 STYLE: Beaux-Arts BEAUX-ARTS MANHATTAN MIDTOWN WEST The Hotel Mansfield is a 12-story, red-brick and limestone Beaux-Arts style hotel located on the same prestigious Midtown block as the New York Yacht Club, the former Yale Club, the Harvard Club, the former Mechanics’ and Tradesmen’s Institute, the New York Bar Association, and the Algonquin Hotel. The Hotel Mansfield was an early example of the apartment hotel type that catered to well-to-do single men and childless couples, who resided in these buildings on a semi-permanent or even permanent basis, taking advantage of the services on offer such as common dining rooms, maid and laundry services, valets, and even private physicians. The architects Renwick, Aspinwall & Owen designed the Hotel Mansfield in the Beaux-Arts architectural style, in part, because of the style’s residential associations and flamboyance, which helped to set the hotel apart from other building types, such as office or commercial buildings.

COLUMBIA CLUB/RENAISSANCE HOTEL, MANHATTAN Address: 510 Fifth Avenue Constructed:1890-91 The Columbia Club was formed in 1901, and membership increased vastly by 1915 that the organization left the then-club district of Gramercy and purchased 4 West 43rd Street. Many other clubs followed suit and eventually this area centered around West 43rd and 44th Streets between Fifth and Sixth Avenues emerged as the “Clubhouse District”. Originally the Renaissance Hotel, the building was designed by architect Clarence Luce and was constructed in 1890-91 originally as an apartment hotel for young men.

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

Fred F. French Building ARCHITECT: H. Douglas Ives and Sloan & Robertson DATE: 1926-27 STYLE: Near Eastern, Egyptian, Ancient Greek, Proto-Art Deco The design of this interior represents the stylistic compromise between lingering historicism and the modernistic trends which typified the architecture of the late 1920s. The interior continues the architectural historicism of the building’s exterior and is exceptional for the eclectic blend of Near Eastern, Egyptian, ancient Greek and proto-Art Deco influences. The lavish marble walls and floors, polychromatic vaults and gilt bronze wall fixtures of the public areas of the first-floor interior render the French Building among the finest commercial palaces of the late 1920s.

New York Public Library (Main Lobby, North and South Staircases from first to third floor and Central Hall, third floor) STATUS Designated Interior Landmark ARCHITECT: Carrere and Hastings DATE: 1898-1911 The interiors of the New York Public Library display some of the finest stonework and vaulting in the City. The ornamental plaster ceilings are of great elegance. These rooms and staircases provide a grand approach to the facilities of one of the finest libraries in the world. Three paired, pedimented entrance doors, set beneath high arched transoms of glass, are embellished by ornamental wrought-iron borders. The great interior space of the entrance lobby is over seventy feet long and forty-four feet wide. This space is all of stone, including the two grand Staircases leading to the upper floors.

Replica of Federal Hall in Bryant Park, ca. 1932. While today there is a building in lower Manhattan called Federal Hall, the first building given that name in New York City was constructed in 1703 to serve as the city hall. The original Greek Revival structure was extensively renovated in 1788 by Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the architect of Washington, D.C. This work created what is considered the first example of Federal style architecture in the United States. The building became the Capitol of the newly formed country in 1789. Here, George Washinton was sworn in as President. The building was razed in 1812. But! it made a comeback (sort of). In 1932 the George Washington Bicentennial Planning Committee (established to honor the 200th anniversary of Washington's birth) and Sears, Roebuck, and Company erected a replica of the famous building, made out of wood and plaster. Situated in Bryant Park, near the terrace, the true-to-size building necessitated the temporary removal of a couple of statues. To further celebrate a reenactment of the inauguration was presented. Though master planner Moses had hoped that the display would boost visitation to the park (which had been largely neglected for decades), the replica was not hugely successful. That fact, and some shady financial dealings that depleted the committee's funds resulted in the razing the replica in 1933.

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.

Though it has been a couple of hundred years since New York was seized by the British, New Yorkers have always contributed to the defense of their country. Here are a series of photos from our partners' archives of New Yorkers during wartime.

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

Tiffany and Company Building, ca. 1910.

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

Grand Central Station (as Grand Central Terminal was known between 1900 and its 1913 expansion), January 27, 1901. Grand Central Station included a stop on the city's first subway line. The IRT's inaugural line provided service from City Hall to Grand Central along today's Lexington Avenue Line (4/5/6), with the present-day 42nd Street Shuttle tracks connecting to the west side tracks of the Broadway—Seventh Avenue Line.

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."

A minister straight out of the midwest by way of New York's Union Theological Seminary and East Harlem's Presbyterian church, socialist leader who fought against union corruption, and candidate for office for three decades, Norman Thomas, was a favorite of The Forward newspaper.

Kress and Company Building, 1935. Designed by Brooklyn architect Edward Sibbert, the seven-story flagship Kress and Co. store on Fifth Avenue was the crowing glory of Sibbert 's career as the chief architect for Kress. He created more than 50 stores for the dime store chain. The marble Art Deco structure included Mayan motifs in the interior. This Kress store survived until 1977, though it was no longer the flagship and was only using the basement and first two floors of the building in the last few years. Kress & Co. went entirely out of business in 1980. The lot at the corner of 39th Street and Fifth Avenue is currently part of the HSBC Tower.

The former Lincoln Safe Deposit Company Building, 42nd Street, ca. 1910. Built on the eve of the twentieth century, the Lincoln Safe Deposit Company building stood diagonally across 42nd Street from the old Grand Central Depot. The transition to electric trains, and the erection of the new Grand Central Terminal with covered tunnels and state-of-the-art engineering that shielded tall buildings from railroad vibrations, brought on rapid changes in this area that would would through the 19120s, culminating in an explosion of Art Deco skyscrapers and apartment buildings. The Lincoln Safe Deposit Company building- which had a branch of the Lincoln National Bank within, was replaced by the 54-story Lincoln Building.

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

Hotel Metropole, not dated. 147 West 43rd Street has been the site of a hotel for more than a century. Now the Casablanca Hotel, in the early part of the 20th-century, the lot was home to Hotel Metropole. While celebrated as the first hotel in New York City to have running water in every room, Hotel Metropole was one of the most storied gangland hotels in all of Manhattan. A pair of professional gamblers, known as the Consindine Brothers, ran the hotel on behalf of Tammany Hall boss Big Tim Sullivan. The hotel, a crucial part of Big Tim's hustle, was also connected to the small-time gambler, Herman Rosenthal, who ran a lavish gambling den just a few blocks north. In the summer of 1912, Herman Rosenthal, a small-time gambler, was murdered at the Metropole at the behest of Charles Becker, a New York Polic detective who had been on the take. Rosenthal was a well-hated man after talking to the press, giving up information about a gambling ring aided in large part by a cabal of corrupt police. Both Becker, who was considered the mastermind and the gunmen, Harry “Gyp the Blood” Horrowitz and Lefty Louie Rosenburg, were executed for the crime.

Murray Hill Hotel ca. 1935 Built in 1884, the 600-room Murray Hill Hotel offered its guests the ultimate in modern convenience, including a steam elevator and electric lights on the first two floors. During its glory years, Mark Twain, Grover Cleveland, Jay Gould, and J.P. Morgan were among its regular clientele. By the time Abbott photographed it in 1935, the “Old Lady” stood as an eloquent reminder of a bygone era. Rather than show the huge brownstone bulk of the building, Abbott chose two salient details: the hotel’s entrance, bedecked with enormous American flags; and its “spiraling” fire escapes. Sold in 1943, the Murray Hill Hotel survived until 1947, when it was demolished to make way for 100 Park Avenue, a 36-story office building.

Middleton S. and Emilie Neilson Burrill House ARCHITECT: Hoppin & Koen DATE: 1902-03 This house features a two-story limestone base with arched openings at the parlor level that is surmounted by a balustrade resting on massive console brackets. The Philadelphia brick and limestone-trimmed upper stories display ornate molded window enframements, with the second story having pedimented window frames enriched with console brackets, dentils, and guttae, and the third story having eared surrounds with prominent keystones and projecting sills.

Sherry's Hotel, ca. 1905. Sherry's was a restaurant established in 1880 by Louis Sherry. Popular among New York's elite society, the restaurant moved locations a few times in its first two decades (from 38th Street and Sixth Avenue to 37th Street and Fifth Avenue). Just before the turn of the century the society mainstay moved in to a new hotel building at Fifth Avenue and 44th Street (seen here). The ballroom at the hotel was well-known for catering lavish dinner parties. The most extravagant event might have been the party thrown by industrialist C.K.G. Billings in 1903. As the guests drank champagne and dined on a fine meal, they did so all while seated on a horse! Billings was a passionate horseman who built a 25,000 square foot horse stable and accompanying mansion uptown. Originally the dinner was to be at the stables but instead, he switched venues to the hotel. The "horseback dinner" was called by the New York Times “one of the most novel that has ever been given in the city.” The Sherry Hotel and Restaurant moved out of this building in 1919 and Sherry's restaurant moved into the Hotel Netherland on Fifth Avenue and 59th Street (where its name lives in the 1927-completed Sherry Netherland Hotel). The building at 44th Street became offices for the Guaranty Trust Company building in 1919. Undergoing a major renovation in the 1960s, the building had 12 more stories added and had its intricate facade replaced with limestone. Today the building still stands with a modern two-story commercial base.

Tiffany and Company, interior, 1903-1906.

The Chrysler Building, the Empire State, 30 Rock, and other skyscrapers adorn the skyline. At street level the solitude of the Public Library, and the glitz of Fifth Avenue. And underground, Grand Central Terminal ushers commuters in and out of the city. Take a walk amongst the sights of Midtown East.

10 East 40th Street ca. 1943 This building formerly known as the Chase Tower is located across from the New York Public Library at 40th street between Madison and 5th avenue. Ludlow and Peabody the architects who designed the NY Times Building and Peoples Trust Co. in Brooklyn designed 10 East 40th street, a massive 44 story office building in x. The entire width of the block, a 75x 200 ft site is extruded and setback gradually with no light courts. The elements and details are classical but reveal a modern essence

Belasco Theatre, September 1936. Originally called the Stuyvesant Theatre, the theatre building was completed in 1907 by architect George Keister for impresario David Belasco. Belasco lived and worked in a large duplex apartment above the auditorium. The theatre had both a spectacularly designed interior, with Tiffany lighting and ceiling panels and ornamental woodwork, and new advanced technology, with modern lighting rigs and a hydraulic fly system. Belasco renamed the building for himself in 1910 and it continued to produce theatrical performances. Purchased in 1949 by the Shuberts, they leased it for use as an NBC studio for three years. In 1952 it returned to its original function and remains a Broadway house today.

Pershing Square Building ARCHITECT: York and Sawyer, John Sloan DATE: 1921-23 STYLE: Lombard Revival The Lombard Revival-style Pershing Square Building anchors a prominent corner directly across 42nd Street from Grand Central Terminal at Park Avenue. Designed by John Sloan, working with staff of York & Sawyer, the building is remarkable for the important role it played in the development of the city’s mass transit system, its transitional role in the history of the city’s building development, and its exceptional terra-cotta cladding. The Pershing Square Building is also noteworthy as an integral element of the redevelopment of the Grand Central Terminal area.

"In the final analysis, the New York Chamber Music Society would possibly not have existed if Aeolian Hall was not built. It was a perfect hall for an ensemble of their size, thus the appropriate music could be programmed, knowing that any performance would be the best sounding acoustically, the most accessible to the public, and a great showcase for the critics to opine on the performances and the music. Additionally, the New York composers she commissioned not only took into consideration who they were writing for but also the acoustical space — having a premiere at Aeolian Hall was a great honor... NYCMS had established itself in New York City at Aeolian Hall and, were now able to move to another location knowing they would have an audience to follow. " For more on Aeolian Hall and the New York Chamber Music Society, check out this article by Lisa Kozenko in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.

William Cullen Bryant, a 19th century poet and namesake of the library’s backyard park, edited the New York Evening Post, advocated for the emergence of the Republican Party in the 1850s, espoused ending slavery and supported the founding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Here he sits in commanding intellectual posture, embodying the western liberal mind and spirit. Across from Bryant - not pictured here - sits the statue of another American poet, Gertrude Stein, sculpted in the 1920s but not installed in the park until the 1990s - the first statue of a real female (versus a personification or symbol, like Audrey Munson) in NYC since Joan of Arc in Riverside Park in 1915; Gertrude sits in the lotus position, in meditative repose, zenlike, at one with the universal void. These two statues anchor the soul and central nervous system of the library and the midtown park.

The Elk's Club found its humble beginnings as the "Jolly Corks," a fraternal social club founded to skirt city mandate that set the closing time of the nearby taverns. A member of the Jolly Cork's death inspired his fellow club goers to rebrand as the "Elk's Club," a social institution with aims to benefit society at large. Their location in Manhattan was conveniently located near Times Square - and, as you would guess, most of its members were men working in the theater industry. Women interested in the club were part of an order of "Does" until the club officially admitted women in the 1990s. The club also only admitted white members until 1970. Prior to this, a black fraternal club shared the name the "Elks," until they were sued and forced to differentiate themselves as, the "Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World." The club has expanded to include chapters in American cities of all sizes across the country and is still an important charitable organization. It is now headquartered in Chicago.

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

Grand Central Terminal, 1914.

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🌳.

Few restaurants have a better claim on being an integral part of New York Restaurant History than Delmonico's. From its beginnings on Wall Street to its expansion uptown, Delmonico's was the first and last word on Gilded Age fine dining.

989 Sixth Avenue, unknown date.

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

New York Yacht Club, 1908. Founded in 1844, the New York Yacht Club has long been the home of New Yorkers' most prestigious yachtsmen. From the beginning the New Yorkers distinguished themselves. Winning America’s Cup in 1857, the New York Yacht Club successfully defended it twenty-four times in a row before losing in 1983, the longest winning streak measured in years in the history of sports. Its current (and primary clubhouse) was built in 1901 following a series of lesser homes throughout the city. The NYYC commissioned the architecture firm Warren & Wetmore to design them a permanent home in 1898. The resulting Beaux-Art design established Warren & Wetmore’s reputation and in 1987 was designated at National Historic Landmark.

Main Branch, New York Public Library, 1908. Perhaps one of the most recognizable buildings in the city, the Main Branch of the New York Public Library was built on land that had served as the Croton Reservoir since the early 1840s. In the late 1890s, the newly established library announced an open competition for the creation of a new building. The commission was awarded to the (then largely unknown) firm of Carrère & Hastings. After two years of dismantling the reservoir, the cornerstone for the new structure was laid on November 10, 1902. The resulting edifice, which was then the largest marble structure constructed in the United States, was designed to the wishes of the library's director. Dr. Billing envisioned a grand reading room constructed on top of seven floors of stacks and a complex system for book retrieval and dissemination. Dedicated on May 23, 1911 (the 16th anniversary of the merger that created the new centralized institution) the new library installed 75 miles of shelving for its one million books. The library was immediately an overwhelming success, with between 30,000 and 50,000 visitors on the very first day. The iconic stone lions that grace the entrance to the library had a bit of an identity crisis in their early years. First named "Leo Astor" and "Leo Lenox" (for the library's founders), they were then referred to as Lord Astor and Lady Lenox (though, obviously, both lions are male) before being christened "Patience" and "Fortitude" by Mayor La Guardia during the Depression. His nicknames nodded towards virtues that he felt New Yorkers would need to possess during the difficult financial times.

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.

Interborough Subway sign on Park Avenue, just south of 42nd Street, ca. 1980.

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.

Murray Hill Hotel fire escapes, November 19, 1935. Berenice Abbott's photo captures the intricate ironwork of the Murray Hill Hotel fire escapes. The building in the background is located at 22 East 40th Street (now 275 Madison Avenue), a 43-story Art Deco skyscraper by Kenneth Franzheim.

The New York Hippodrome, view across the tracks of the Sixth Avenue El, ca. 1905. The Hippodrome, a massive Midtown entertainment venue, opened in 1905, two blocks north of Bryant Park. During its heyday, Hippodrome acts included leading vaudeville performers, musical acts, circus animals, and the celebrated illusionist Harry Houdini. As entertainment tastes shifted alongside the proliferation of motion picture halls, the Hippodrome struggled to stay afloat. The venue closed for good in 1939 an was demolished shortly thereafter. A modern skyscraper known as "The Hippodrome Building" was built in the site during the 1950s.

Constructed in 1913, the Biltmore Hotel was the first post-Grand Central Terminal commission for Warren and Wetmore (who had used some seriously underhanded methods to secure Terminal City work)

Madison Avenue skyscrapers, surrounding a brownstone mansion at 39th Street, July 2, 1936. The brownstone building once belonged to Moses Taylor Pyne, the financier and philanthropist who was a benefactor of Princeton University. After Pyne’s death in 1921, his widow Margaretta S. Pyne continued to live there. In a 1927 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article detailing the sale of Madison Avenue dwellings, Mrs. Pyne “is reported to have confided to her friends, ‘I will never give up this house.’” Eventually, the house was sold and demolished. The current yellow-brick structure on the site was built in 1949.

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.

Street Clock at 522 Fifth Avenue, May 13, 1938. The double-faced cast-iron clock at 522 Fifth Avenue was manufactured in 1907 by the Seth Thomas Company. Originally installed one block south on Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street in front of the American Trust Company, the clock was relocated in the 1930s when the American Trust Company merged with the Guaranty Trust Company. It was just one of a proliferation of large clocks installed on New York City streets, beginning in the 1860s. The clocks, which provided a unique advertising space for businesses, were also used by those on the streets for convenient time keeping. Most of the late 19th and early 20th-century street clocks did not make it passed the mid 20th century, but a few did. In 1981 the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated eight of the sidewalk clocks still standing as landmarks.

Originally installed in 1894 in Bryant Park (seen in situ here), the bronze statue of Dr. Marion Sims was moved to Central Park, opposite the New York Academy of Medicine at Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street, in 1934. Sims, who is often referred to as the "father of modern gynecology" is a contention historical figure. A medical doctor who practiced in Pennsylvania, Alabama and New York, Sims owned slaves while living in the South. Though his research into fistulas and new surgical methods was groundbreaking and renowned, he experimented on enslaved women, repeatedly and without anesthesia. After nearly a decade of protests led by a black activist named Viola Plummer, East Harlem Preservation, and others, the city removed the statue from the park in April 2018. It was shipped to Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery where the doctor is buried. The cemetery plans to re-install the statue near the burial site with a historical display to contextualize Sim's life and work.

503 Fifth Avenue, ca. 1918. The first structure on this corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street was a four-story residence completed in 1860. The brick and brownstone mansion with arched windows and a mansard roof became the home of Montagnie Ward, a drug merchant. The next owner, Levi P. Morton, a banker who would go on to national and international political notoriety, purchased the home in 1871. Morton proposed demolishing the house for a seven-story commercial building in the late 1870s. While that was not to come to pass, the home did have its mansard lopped off, two floors added, and was doubled in size by an extension to the full depth of the lot on 42nd Street. (Prior to conversion into a commercial building, a young Edith Jones, later Wharton, was introduced into society at the Morton Mansion.) By the late 19th century the top floors of the building functioned as a hotel, while the ground level housed a showroom for one of the premier carriage makers in the city. Despite out-of-town positions such as Ambassador to France and American Vice President, Morton held on to the building. (It was quite the income generator for Morton, with considerable rents and money generated from the billboards that covered the exterior by the 1910s.) Morton died in 1920 but his heirs retained ownership through 1980. The building changed hands between large commercial development firms a few times in the 1980s while being emptied of tenants. A history-cum-eulogy of the building in 1988 by NY Time writer Christoper Gray suggested an unknown yet imminent timeline for the building's disappearance. The building and a few of its neighbors came down in 1990, but the lot remained empty for more than a decade. In 2004 a 27-story glass and concrete commercial structure was erected.

National-Lefcourt Building, 1993. This boxy-tower, formerly known as the National Lefcourt Building, was erected in 1929 by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon Associates. 40-stories high, the building was completed for Abraham E. Lefcourt, one of New York’s leading real estate developers in the 1920s.

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.

John Williams Campbell was born in Brooklyn in 1880 into a well-to-do family. His father was treasurer of the Credit Clearing House, a credit bureau for merchandise wholesalers. At the age of 18, Campbell joined his father at the firm and moved up the ranks, becoming a senior executive seven years later. By the 1920s Campbell was making millions as president of the Credit Clearing House and served on the board of the New York Central Railroad. This story is adapted from a Museum of the City of New York blog, which can be viewed here.

Association of the Bar of the City of New York ARCHITECT: Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz DATE: 1895-96 STYLE: Classic Eclectic Although severe in its Classic Eclectic design, the limestone facade of this building has great strength and dignity as befits a structure housing distinguished members of the legal profession. With two entrances, one on 43rd Street and the other on 44th Street, the latter is the most important. This consists of a recessed porch with two magnificent fluted Doric columns. A strong horizontal stone band separates the base from the second floor and extends the entire width of the building. Rising above and extending through the third and fourth stories are four pairs of well proportioned Corinthian pilasters forming three distinct bays of which the center one is wider than those on either side. The windows of the third floor are small, but those on the fourth are wide with small Ionic columns at each window.

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.

Lord & Taylor Building ARCHITECT: Starrett & Van Vleck DATE: 1913-14 STYLE: Italian Renaissance Revival The Lord & Taylor Building’s Italian Renaissance Revival design began the trend toward more evidently commercial appearances for retail buildings in the Fifth Avenue shopping district above 34th Street. The building and its site wrap around what was historically a separate parcel at the corner of Fifth Avenue and West 39th Street; the ten-story building with its main façade on Fifth Avenue and two developed facades on West 38th and 39th Streets owes its dignified sense of scale to the subtle treatment of its tripartite façade consisting of a two-story limestone and granite base with elegant double-height, vaulted Fifth Avenue entrance and two stories of display windows, a six-story center section of subtly modulated gray face-brick with terra-cotta and patterned brick detailing and multi-light windows, and a two-story limestone colonnade in the Corinthian order supporting a deep copper cornice.

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.

Church of Our Saviour, ca. 1975. A mid-century take on Romanesque ecclesiastical architecture, Our Saviour was designed by the architect Paul C. Reilly and completed in 1959, for a Roman Catholic parish established in 1955.

Lioness statue at the Morgan Library, ca. 1976.

Mechanics Institute, ca. 1915. The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen was founded as an institution in 1785 to provide cultural, educational and social services to families of skilled craftsmen. In 1820 the General Society opened one of the city’s first free schools. Following the city getting its act together regarding public education, the Society converted their free public school in the Mechanics Institute in 1859. The Mechanics Institute provided adult education, particularly in technical subjects, and library was thought to be an alternative venue for adults (to keep the working classes from gambling and drinking). In 1899 the General Society moved into the Renaissance-style building on 44th Street. The building had been constructed in 1891 as the Berkeley School, a private boy's prep school. Designed by Lamb & Rich, the building had the look of a library or professional association, with large banks of windows on the second and third floors. The school founder sold the building to the General Society after some financial issues, and the large drill hall on the first floor was converted into the library. In 1905 the General Society also had architect Ralph Townsend add three stories to the top of the building and remove the the stoop to create a ground-floor entrance. Today the building continues to provide free educational programming. And in a contentious deal in 2008 the institution sold their unused air rights, which allowed a developer to add additional stories to an already planned new building around the corner.

Entrance to 275 Madison Avenue, ca. 1990.

Behind the majestic design and décor of Grand Central Terminal is a triumph of engineering and ingenuity. Grand Central didn’t just do things better than other train terminals. It did them differently. It pioneered new approaches to organizing space. It invented new technologies. And it overcame the daunting challenge of building a vast, durable, efficient train station—much of it buried deep underground—in the bustling center of the nation’s busiest city. More and more people were riding more and more trains. Grand Central needed additional tracks…and efficient ways for passengers to reach those tracks. With little space to spread out, the station dug down. Engineers created a vast underground structure: four tracks in the Park Avenue tunnel and a 123-track train shed designed to support heavy locomotives plus the weight of the buildings overhead. A series of crossovers let trains reach any platform from any track. Inside the station, meanwhile, pedestrian ramps took passengers swiftly from level to level. The design also included a centralized hot water heating system—the largest of its kind at the time—with four miles of pipe serving the station and surrounding buildings.

Leopold Eidlitz designed this parish as a hybrid of the High Victorian and German Romanesque style in 1873. The new building for the Church of the Holy Trinity replaced a low Victorian "cottage ornee" at this very site. Colloquially, this church was known as Dr. Tyng's Church, which endearingly referred to the congregation's organizer - a young Dr. Stephen H. Tyng who was regarded as one of the most notable religious figures of his time. Unfortunately, this beautiful structure did not survive for long. It was razed after the parish merged with St. James in 1895.

Town Hall ARCHITECT: McKim, Mead & White; Teunis J. van der Bent DATE: 1919-21 STYLE: Auditorium This auditorium has achieved international renown for its excellent acoustics, a reflection of the architectural design which was based on the scientific analysis of acoustics. For solo performances and small music groups, the auditorium has provided an unrivaled intimate and acoustically fine atmosphere. The architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White was asked by the League for Political Education to design a structure to accommodate the organization’s needs for a speaker’s auditorium, a concert hall, a movie theater, and clubhouse.

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

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.

Harvard Club Originally designed by McKim as a discreet Georgian building of a modest scale, it stands on a block where it once enjoyed as neighbors the Racquet Club, the Academy of Medicine, and the Berkeley School. Two wings were added behind it at a later date. Harvard Hall is probably one of the largest rooms in any club in New York, extending three stories in height, and in length the depth of a normal townhouse lot. The Florentine quality of the design, the two great fireplaces, and the tapestries all lend an air of subdued richness and warmth to this fine room.

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.

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.

Residence of Mr. Blakely Hall, 1896. Blakely Hall was a reporter who wrote for the New York Sun. Of his most notable projects is his chronicling of Evander Berry Wall, the proclaimed "King of Dudes." Wall was an extravagant dresser who owned around 500 complete outfits that earned him the title of a "dude." In the late 19th century, "dude" referred to "a man extremely fastidious in dress and manner," similar to the word "dandy." Wall embraced this term and made it his mission to become the "King of Dudes." Hall awarded Wall the title of "King of Dudes" during the Blizzard of 1888 when he walked into a bar wearing thigh-high patent leather boots. From then on, Hall made it his weekly practice to publish articles concerning Wall's outings and adventures.

"... 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.

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

Polish Consulate General (Joseph Raphael De Lamar House), ca. 1975. At the turn of the 20th century, Murray Hill was a fashionable district for the city’s wealthiest residents, trailing only Fifth Avenue in terms of prestige. Across the neighborhood, the existing housing stock of mid-19th century brownstones were quickly being replaced by extravagant new mansions, including this Madison Avenue gem. Joseph Raphael De Lamar was a Dutch-born merchant and entrepreneur, who became wealthy investing in mining operations in the American West — new money, by New York standards. To establish his place in city society, De Lamar commissioned famed architect C.P.H. Gilbert to design an opulent Beaux-Arts mansion, the largest in Murray Hill. De Lamar’s ostentatious residence took three years to build and ultimately rose to a height of six stories, surmounted by a massive mansard roof. After De Lamar’s death in 1918, the mansion passed to the American Bible Society, and later, the National Democratic Club. Since 1973, it has housed the Polish Consulate General.

Adelaide L.T. Douglas Residence (right), ca. 1911. The buildings at left were later razed for the construction of the Roman Catholic Church of Our Saviour. By 1908, Adelaide L.T. Douglas, a prominent socialite, was separated from her husband William Proctor Douglas — and widely believed to be carrying on an affair with J.P. Morgan. In 1909, with her husband living at a separate residence uptown, Mrs. Douglas commissioned the architect Horace Trumbauer to build a new Louis XVI-style mansion on Park Avenue (the previous building on this site had been damaged during subway construction in 1902). Trumbauer’s opulent design was befitting of a client of Adelaide Douglas’s status — though it’s rumored that J.P. Morgan underwrote construction. The six-story mansion, completed in 1911, includes a rusticated limestone base, intricate relief carvings, a fourth floor colonnade, mansard roof, and wrought iron detail at every level. After Douglas’s death in 1935, the mansion was converted to apartments. In 1959, it was acquired by the United States Olympic Association. Nineteen years later, it was sold to the government of Guatemala, which established its United Nations mission there.

Woolworth Store at 33 West 42nd Street, ca. 1940. The Humane Society mobile adoption display (or maybe they are just using the cute kitten to ask for donations) sits on the sidewalk on the north side of 42nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. The Woolworth Store in the background is in the Aeolian Building at no. 33. The building directly behind the kitten display is the flagship location of Stern's Department Store. These stores made this block a major destination for shoppers, who might have been induced to donate by the cuteness!

500 Fifth Avenue ARCHITECT: Shreve, Lamb & Harmon DATE: 1929-31 STYLE: Art Deco This is a soaring 59-story Art Deco skyscraper, located at the northwest corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. The building was constructed concurrently with the Empire State Building. Located in two zoning districts with differing setback requirements, it is asymmetrically massed with setbacks at the 18th, 22nd, and 25th stories on Fifth Avenue and a recessed light court beginning at the eighth story and setbacks at the 23rd, 28th, and 34th stories on West 42nd Street. Sheathed in limestone, terra cotta, and buff brick, the facades are enriched with carefully scaled Art Deco motifs, which accentuate the building’s sculptural massing and emphasize its verticality.

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.

"White Wings" on Parade, ca. 1896. Pictured here are the White Wings: a brigade of street cleaners who were established by Street Commissioner Colonel George E. Waring Jr. in 1895. Waring treated the sanitation department as an army, mandating his workers to wear all white uniforms and caps. He believed that their white attire portrayed a sense of cleanliness, as much as they helped keep workers conspicuous while on the job, discouraging slacking off at the local saloon. These "White Wings" kept streets cleaner than at any previous time in the city's history. Regulation whites remained in effect until the 1930s (when someone finally decided that whites were not appropriate for street sweeping).

New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundation ARCHITECT: Carrère and Hastings DATE: 1898-1911 STYLE: Beaux-Arts The Central Building of the New York Public Library occupies a fabulous site, that has often been referred to as “the crossroads of the world”. This majestic marble building, one of the masterpieces of the Beaux-Arts style of architecture, is a magnificent civic monument and fully justifies the pride of its generation and of ours. It sits regally enthroned on a terraced plateau, displaying urns, fountains, flagpoles, sculpture and ornament. Replete with sparkle and delicacy, it is by night or day a joyous creation. This building comes closer than any other in America to the complete realization of Beaux-Arts design at its best.

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.

In 1911 this stately row of buildings included the original building of the Church of the Holy Rest. Established in 1865 by Civil War veterans, as a memorial to those who had died during the war, construction on the church building at 551 5th Avenue began in 1868 (when the neighborhood was very much residential). The structure was grand with a large rose window fronting 5th Avenue and a tall mansard roof with decorative metal work at the top. The church was very involved with the local community, opening up a soup kitchen for the poor as early as 1890. By the 1920s, commercial enterprise had taken over the neighborhood, and newer nearby churches competed for parishioners. In 1924, the pastor negotiated the purchase of land uptown across the street from the Carnegie Mansion (now the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum), and the Church of Heavenly Rest moved into a new building complete in 1929.

David Carey was a prolific Jewish actor in the Yiddish Theater.

237 Madison Avenue, ca. 1980. This fifteen-story neo-Romanesque building (at center) was constructed in 1927 by architect Andrew J. Thomas. Originally intended for long-term residents, the structure reopened as the Hotel Duane in 1984, following renovations, and was later renamed the Morgans Hotel, under the ownership of the Morgans Hotel Group. On July 14, 2017, the Morgans Hotel closed its doors for the last time. The building is now owned by Shel Capital and the Kash Group, who are expected to convert the nearly 100-year old property into a condominium complex.

The four corners of the flagpole seem to symbolize the virtues of the western world before the onset of World War I, but in fact the totems north and south of the library facade were installed at the eve of World War II, when they may have seemed as both hallowed and dated as today, yet remain the type of ideas that sent explorers cleaving the waves of the Atlantic to colonize lands where civilizations of peoples had inhabited for thousands of years: “Conquest,” represented by a sword; “Discovery,” represented by a globe; “Adventure,” by the ship Argo; and “Civilization,” by a topless female holding a book. The whole structure rests on the backs of four turtles, which reference creation myths of the Lenni Lenape, who dwelled in Manhattan long long long before Director-General Peter Syuyvesant, or his successor, Rudolph Giuliani.

New York Yacht Club ca. 1970 A fanciful version of Beaux Arts architecture, the main facade introduces, between columns, a series of bay windows in the form of sixteenth-century galleon sterns. The pergola which once graced the third floor contributed a further air of lightness and gaiety to this club designed by Warren & Wetmore.

William Wilgus, New York Central Railroad's largely self-taught chief engineer, was the mastermind behind Grand Central Terminal's innovative engineering technology. With the plan for electrification and the sinking of the railroad tracks below grade, while building the new modern terminal, Wilgus also convinced railroad officials to commercialize the air above the new street-level decking. In leasing the area above the tracks to developers, the Railroad could increase its profits and create a bustling business district that surrounded, supported, and benefited from Grand Central Terminal. Terminal City, as it was called, began to develop even before GCT was complete in 1913. Between 1909 when the Grand Central Post Office opened and the early 1930s when the Depression largely halted construction, the neighborhood boomed with hotels, apartment hotels, private clubs, and office buildings. Many of these structures were designed by Warren & Wetmore, one of the two architectural firms that created Grand Central. Most of the best-known hotels of Terminal City, including the Biltmore, Roosevelt, and the Commodore, were constructed by the mid 1910s, while the office buildings, including the Graybar and New York Central Buildings, were largely completed in the 1920s. This walk does not propose to be a complete list of all Terminal City development. It does not include any post-World War II constructions and it concerns itself ONLY with some of the Terminal City structures that are still extant. Some of the buildings will be easily recognizable, while others, though technically the same structure, bear no resemblance to their former selves. So lace up some comfortable shoes and let's get exploring.

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.

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

Harvard Club of New York ARCHITECT: McKim Mead & White; Charles F. McKim DATE: 1893-94 The charm of this building lies in its red brick with limestone trim and in its intimate scale, the delicate refinement of its handsome detail, and the pleasing harmony of its well related architectural components. The front elevation consists of a handsome motif, where the main entrance doorway at street level is surmounted by a central round-headed window, flanked by two pairs of limestone Ionic columns which rest on the second-floor ledge and support the delicately refined third-floor cornice. Directly above this and centered between two windows is the handsomely carved shield of Harvard University.

May 3rd, 1913 On May 3rd, 1913, marchers arranged themselves, as the New York Times described, "In straight and graceful lines which were brightened with resplendent decorations, passed in attractive and impressive dignity up Fifth Avenue...it was the greatest spectacular triumph ever won by women in this country in their pursuit of the ballot." Inspired by a massive suffrage march in Washington D.C. in March of the same year, this parade was intended to further press the issue of enfranchisement. The parade's Grand Marshal was Inez MIlholland, a lawyer and suffrage activist, who lead the parade on a white horse. Assembled in formation, the suffragettes maintained strict order during the march, the participants were ordered to keep: "Eyes to front. Heads Erect. Shoulders back. Dignity and Silence." Beginning in Washington Square Park, the marchers proceeded in unseasonable heat (almost 87 degrees.) Following disruptions of previous parades by "Antis" (people opposed to Women's suffrage), the 1913 parade had widespread police protection to prevent the harassment of marchers. Counter-protesters mixed with the thousands of spectators, but it was noted that there was no significant disruption. Banners and signs were common throughout the parade, the New York Times noting that there was more "punch in them than usual. A selection included: "More Ballots: Less Bullets." "Politics Govern Even the Purity of the Milk Supply. It is Not "Outside the Home." But Inside the Baby." "To Create Sex Antagonism Is an Unwise Precedent." "Let the People Rule; Women are People." and notably "Hasn't Your Wife Brains Enough to Vote?" "No Government Ever Yielded a Right Unless Bullied into It." While the "Antis" and the New York Times (based on the Anti's count) tallied the parade at 9,613, however, other sources put it at 30,000. Suffrage groups from across the United States joined the parade as well as groups from abroad such as Sweden and England. Parades like this were vital for pushing the conversation on women's rights forward.

Blind performers on 42nd Street outside of Grand Central Terminal, undated.

Delmonico's Restaurant, ca. 1898. Perhaps more than any other establishment, Delmonico's restaurant epitomized the Gilded Age. IT was the premiere public place for the elite to dine and hold lavish affairs, and it set trends in dining and entertaining that people across the country- and even the world- spired to. Upper and middle-class women read about the restaurant's linens, oysters spoons and flower arrangements for ideas on how to set their own tables. And silver purveyors like Reed and Barton clamored to sell the restaurant their place settings so customers would buy them. The original owners, brothers Peter and John Delmonico, started out in 1827 with a shop at 23 William Street that served cakes, ices, and fine wines. By the 1830s, they had created the "restaurant" as we know it today. Before Delmonico's, men went to restaurants to eat, not dine. They visited sparse rooms where employees ran back and forth between the kitchen and the tables to serve from a handful of dishes that were written on a big board. By contrast, Delmonico's offered an elaborate printed menu of French and Italian dishes in an opulent setting with waiters who catered to patrons' every need. Like other restaurants and hotels in the 1880s, Delmonico's opened a midtown location- the one you're stopped at-to be closer to the city's nightlife and its patrons. Now diners could walk just a few blocks for a meal after an evening at the Metropolitan Opera. In 1923, the combination of high rents and prohibition caused Delmonico's to close. Though the current Delmonico's downtown is under new management, you can still order two of the original's signature dishes- Egg's Benedict and Chicken a la Keene.

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.

Since arriving on these shores, dogs have made New York City their home. Here are some of our favorite photos from our partners' collections of New York dogs in their natural habitat!

Union League Club, Park Avenue, 1931. The Union League Club was founded in 1863 by a group of prominent New Yorkers who shared a firm commitment to the Union cause in the Civil War. The members were part of a breakaway from the Union Club, which had maintained support for Confederate Members. Frederick Law Olmsted was among the Club’s founders, and later members were a veritable directory of the city’s Gilded Age society, including John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and several former and future Presidents of the United States. The Club first occupied a building on Union Square, followed by clubhouses on Madison Square and Fifth Avenue. The present neo-Classical building on Park Avenue was designed by architect Benjamin Wistar Morris III, and erected on a lot assembled by J.P. Morgan and his son J.P. “Jack” Morgan, Jr. The new club opened in February, 1931, with the first four floors dedicated to social and dining spaces, and the upper levels including 64 bedrooms. The club, which continues to operate today, extended membership to women in 1988, and was designated a New York City landmark in 2011.

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.

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

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

The "Air Lines Knot-Hole Club," pictured here, was "to kibitz the erection of the world's largest airline terminal." The word "kibitz" is Yiddish for "spectator," though particularly one who might offer poor advice. The "knot holes," (perhaps referring to imperfections in wood grain) are viewing holes that allowed inspectors and other curious members of the public to check out what's going on beyond the construction fence. In 2013, an iteration of these "knot holes" became a local law, stating that "every 25 feet, fences must have 12-inch by 12-inch viewing panels." However, the Airlines Terminal Building, completed in 1939, most likely placed them as an advertising gimmick to excite inquisitive New Yorkers.

Knox Building, 1944. Designed by architect John H. Duncan, who also created the Grand Army Plaza Memorial Arch and the General Grant National Memorial, the Knox Building was constructed in 1901 and 1902. The 10-story Beaux-Arts structure was the headquarters for the Knox Hat Company (founded in 1838). The Beaux-Arts style for a commercial building was unique even in a city dotted by buildings of this style, most of which were residences, hotels, and civic buildings. In 1965 the building became the headquarters for the Republic National Bank and in 1985 work was undertaken to construct a 29-story L-shaped tower that hugged the 1902 building. The new construction unfortunately meant the demise of the neighboring Art Deco Kress building. Today the Knox mansard remains a striking visual on the corner, with the HSBC Tower as its modern backdrop.

The physical likeness of the statue of Beauty atop the fountain just south of the entrance steps to the library is the model Audrey Munson, whose countenance and contours have provided the personification of Civic Fame above the Municipal Building; the figure of Abundance as goddess Pomona outside the Plaza Hotel; and “Columbia Triumphant” at the USS Maine Monument for the bombed ship that ushered the US into the Spanish-American War. After a suicide attempt and failing mental health, brought upon by pressure from family and the media, Audrey was checked into an upstate asylum in 1931, where she died over 60 years later at age 104.

100 Park Avenue, ca. 1950. This shiny glass tower was designed by Kahn & Jacobs in 1950 in the International style. As one of the first large office buildings constructed in New York after the Depression, the structure is astylar in ways that architects, up until that point, could not previously imagine. Unlike prewar buildings which were drawn to be responsive to the environment, new advances in technology set this building apart. With the advent of central air-conditioning and fluorescent lighting, the tower was designed to emphasize floor space rather than airspace and light. Its ground floor alone is 40,000 feet, making it the prototype of the "block-through" office building in New York City. In 2008, the property was redeveloped by Moed de Armas and Shannon and awarded "International Building of the Year" by the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA).

New York Yacht Club Building ARCHITECT: Warren & Wetmore DATE: 1899-1900 STYLE: Neo-Grec The New York Yacht Club Building is a brilliant synthesis of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts’ tenets of character and composition. It was the first commission of the architectural firm of Warren & Wetmore and helped to establish their reputation. The building’s facade was influenced by the Ecole’s highly expressive neo-Grec movement which established the role of character as one of the school’s two primary design tenets. Among the facade’s notable characteristics are its carefully executed asymmetrical composition, its clear expression of the interior plan and its daring use of nautical symbols.

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Nicknamed "The Deuce," West 42nd Street between Sixth and Eighth Avenues was once one of the roughest and seediest spots in New York City. Home to dozens of sex-related businesses, from live sex shows and grindhouses, to peep shows and prostitution, the sex industry dominated the bottom of Times Square in the 1970s and 1980s (long after this photograph of the street was captured).

Though today the stretch of Fifth Avenue from 40th to 42nd Street looks onto Bryant Park and the New York Public Library, in the late 18th century, passersby would be met with a vastly different sight: 50 feet high and 25 feet thick granite walls that could hold up to 20,000,000 gallons of water. This was the Croton Distributing Reservoir and served a crucial role in the development of New York City. The concept of a municipal supply of water began after the growing city had been hit by waves of epidemics due to a lack of clean water (which was only accessible by wells or cisterns). The public outcry that followed prompted the military to create the Aqueduct, which started at dams at the Croton River in Westchester and ended at the Reservoir. The Croton Distributing Reservoir allowed New Yorkers the ability to have running water in their homes and served as the predecessor to the tap water available to us today. Outstripped by the growing city, the Croton Distributing Reservoir became obsolete and eventually was torn down. However, photographs of the imposing walls with their Egyptian facade provide a reminder of this essential relic of city infrastructure that occupied four acres of Midtown.

Wendel Mansion, 1934. In the early 20th century one family could lay claim to the title of most powerful landlords in New York City. The Wendel family owned more than 150 properties in Manhattan and had a net worth of what would be billion dollars today. They owned the land under some of Manhattan's most well known buildings, including the Standard Oil Building and the Time-Life Building. Unlike some flashy real estate moguls (of the past and today) the Wendel's were private in their wealth and their lives. The origins of the families money and land holdings dated to John G. Wendel, a German fur trader who arrived in New York at the end of the 18th century and befriended and then married into the Astor family. The grandchildren of the first John Wendel included six sisters and a brother who lived in a mansion on the corner of 39th Street and Fifth Avenue. The home had no electricity and no phone, and the inhabitants wore clothes and lived as though they were still in the 19th century. The brother John was known as "The Hermit of Fifth Avenue,” and tightly controlled his sisters' lives until his death in 1914. The home was constructed around 1856 by the first John Wendel. Sitting on a large corner plot, it had a considerable carriage house and back-yard. The ever-frugal family hung their laundry out to dry in the yard, annoying their neighbors. When the final sister died in 1931 the four-story mansion still had gaslights, an ancient coal stove, and more ancient servants. The large yard, which was then an uncommon open space among the large commercial buildings surrounding it had been used largely as a dog park for the last sister's poodle. The family's fortune was divided among a number of charities and institutions, including Drew University in New Jersey. The Fifth Avenue mansion was given as a bequest to the school. The home was demolished in 1934. Today a bronze plaque with a image of the home and a bit of family history graces the structure built in its place.

GRAND CENTRAL DEPOT Railroads brought people, profits…and pollution. Residents complained. So in 1854 the city banned soot-belching steam engines below 42nd Street, keeping them far from New York’s populated heart. Trains arriving from the north unhitched their engines at 42nd and towed passenger cars the last few miles downtown by horse. Despite these restrictions, the Hudson, New Haven, and Harlem Railroads were eager to expand. To coordinate their services (and save money) they agreed to share a new transit hub. With 42nd Street the southern limit for steam engines, it was the logical station location.Grand Central Depot opened in 1871. Three towers represented the three participating railroads. Thirty years later, a new Annex doubled the Depot’s size. But double wasn’t enough. Rail traffic had quadrupled.

38 East 40th Street. ca. 1905. Designed by Ernest Flagg, this home was the first in Manhattan to use the Hennebique process, a late 19th-century method for reinforced concrete.

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.

This slick black tiled Art Moderne storefront housed Kayser Hosiery. From the curved windows to the tiered levels at the top of the storefront and the block typeface, it exudes the style of Streamlined Moderne. Founded in the 1880s producing simple cotton gloves, Kayser grew to manufacture and sell hosiery, lingerie, swimwear, and silk gloves. Their colorful advertisements featured beautiful illustrations of flappers and fashionable women through the decades.

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

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

West 43rd Street facade of the New York City Bar Association, undated photo.

Flag pole base in front of the Main Branch of the New York Public Library, ca 1935. The large Carrere & Hastings Fifth Avenue Branch is flanked by two tall flagpoles. The elaborate bronze bases for the poles were designed by Thomas Hastings and are decorated with allegorical and symbolic figures, in the same ornate Beaux Arts style of the library itself. The figures depicted (including people, turtles and owls) represent various human races as well as themes and actions such as Discovery, Conquest, Civilization, Adventure and Wisdom. The bases were created by Menconi brothers (Italian immigrant sculptors) in plaster from drawings by Hastings and the piece was cast in the Tiffany Studios in Queens. The bases were installed in 1912.

Lamp Cleaner on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, 1940. This cast iron, twin lamp post seen being worked on here was one of the original 1892-installed ornamental posts on Fifth Avenue between Washington Square and 59th Street, the first large-scale installation of decorative electric lighting in the city. The New York Times said this about the lamp posts: "Fifth Avenue is to be lighted with handsome electric lamps.... The Edison Illuminating Company will furnish the light on an improved system, consisting of a new style of arc lights used on a low-tension circuit....Fifty cast-iron poles, 20 feet in height, and each carrying two electric lamps of about 1,000 candle power...will be ornamental in character, as will also the lamps, which will have artistic ground-glass globes and brass trimmings....The avenue is likely to present a very brilliant spectacle, as there will be 100 lights." Though impressive they must not have provided enough light, because less than one year later 50 more posts were added to the mid blocks.Today this location has a contemporary post, but in 1997 more than 60 historic lamp posts of various sizes and shapes were landmarked. (About 100 historic lamp posts survive, but the balance not landmarked in 1997 are either within historic districts or on individually landmarked property.) The building seen in the background is 500 Fifth Avenue, the 1931 Shreve, Lamb & Harmon Art Deco skyscraper.

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.

Temple Emanu-El was established in 1845 as New York City’s first Reform congregation. 33 members met in a loft at the intersection of Clinton and Grand Streets on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. As the congregation grew, Emanu-El moved further and further uptown. In 1854, it moved to its third location at 110 East 12th Street, which later housed St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church

Century Club, ca. 1905-1920. The Century Association (also called the Century Club) is a private social club established in 1847 as a community to promote interest in the fine arts and literature. The club evolved from the Sketch Club, founded in 1829 by editor and poet William Cullen Bryant. The first permanent headquarters for the club was purchased in 1857. The townhouse at 42 East 15th Street (later nos. 109-111) was home to the organization's activities through 1891 when they moved to a new McKim, Mead and White-designed building on 43rd Street. Rendered in a formal Italian Renaissance Revival style, the structure has remained the headquarters for the secretive club since then. Particular architectural features of note include the massive arched entrance, the wreathed round windows at the third-floor level, and the ornate cornice. The 1967 LPC designation report for the building states, " The roster of Centurions reads like the "Who's Who" of American Arts and Letters." Members of the club have included its architect Stanford White, painter Winslow Homer, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and FDR. The club began admitting women in the late 1980s after a prolonged legal battle. Today the club has a membership of around 2500 people, including former Mayor Bloomberg, documentarian Ric Burns, author Robert Caro, and any number of unknown lawyers, doctors, and business people.

New York Hippodrome ca. 1910 Occupying an entire block on 6th Avenue, with a seating capacity of 5200, the Hippodrome (which opened in 1905) was outfitted on a grand scale. The stage was 200 feet wide and 100 feet deep (large enough for the jai-alai exhibition games played there). It had an 60-foot apron which could be filled with water for aquatic productions. Behind the scenes, hydraulic machines raised and lowered the stage, and an indoor stable housed horses and elephants for circus productions. Such spectacles were so expensive to produce that the theater failed financially and closed in the late 1930s.

Hotel Algonquin, ca. 1907. Completed in 1902, the Hotel Algonquin is perhaps better known for its guests than its building (though its Beaux Arts design with neo-Renasaiance details, created by Goldwin Starrett, is quite lovely). Originally conceived as a residential hotel (for all intents, an apartment building) called the "Puritan," the owners decided to offer short term stays instead. They were also convinced by the hotel's manager (later owner) Frank Case to change the name to the Algonquin. It was in the main dining room here, in the years after World War I, that a group of journalists, authors, publicists and actors began meeting daily for lunch. Referred to as the Algonquin Round Table or the Vicious Circle, the daily exchange of conversation and ideas included core members Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and Robert E. Sherwood, all of whom wrote for Vanity Fair. Meeting daily for the better part of a decade, the salon inspired literary styles and up and coming writers, and resulted in the founding of The New Yorker magazine. Today the historic hotel remains open and it still the home of a hotel cat, a tradition started by manager-owner Frank Case. The current hotel cat is a Ragdoll named Hamlet, for former resident John Barrymore's greatest stage role.

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.

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

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.

Knox Building ARCHITECT: John H. Duncan DATE: 1901-02 STYLE: Beaux-Arts The Knox Building is one of the finest Beaux-Arts style commercial buildings in New York City. It was designed by the notable New York City architect John H. Duncan who had achieved his reputation with his designs for the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch and Grant’s Tomb. This favored motifs as full facade rustication, large scale ornament, and a two-story mansard roof are carried over from Duncan’s residential designs and here skillfully transmuted to a large commercial building.

New York Public Library This building probably comes nearer than any other in America to the complete realization of Beaux Arts design at its best. Replete with sparkle and delicacy, with its urns, fountains, sculpture, and ornament, it is by night or day a joyous creation. Unlike the legion of heavy Classical buildings that invaded the country after the World's Columbian Exposition, it has somehow managed to keep the light, airy quality which so often is seen only in architectural drawings, so rarely achieved in execution.

Explosion in front of the Murray Hill Hotel, January 27, 1902. On Jan 27, 1902, a wooden shed at 41st and Park Avenue filled with 200 pounds of dynamite exploded. The nearby Murray Hill Hotel saw extensive damage. The explosion, followed quickly by billowing flames and flying glass killed five on the ground, while the tunnels being dug (the reason for the explosives) were largely undisturbed.

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!

Grand Central Terminal Interior. For the Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station, Guastavino Jr. devised a series of vaults of cream-colored tile to create a space that was both intimate and expansive. The vaults endured the ultimate test in 1997 when a fire ravaged the popular restaurant. Thousands of tiles delaminated from the ceiling and had to be replaced, but engineers cited the results of the Guastavino Company’s fire tests of a century earlier to prove that the basic structure was still sound. The bar reopened only 12 weeks after the fire.

Main Branch, NYPL Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street (Carrère & Hastings, 1901-11, master plan and restoration: Davis Brody Bond, 1980-2000; South Court addition: Davis Brody Bond, 2000-02; Children’s Center at 42nd Street: Gensler Architects, 2008) NYC IL, NYC INL, NHL The NYPL’s Main Branch is one of the city’s most important civic monuments and most impressive works of architecture. Along with Bryant Park, it is located on the site of the old Croton Distributing Reservoir, once the city’s main source of fresh water. The reservoir’s 50-foot high, 25-foot thick walls were demolished in the 1890s, just as plans were underway for a new central library. Some of the reservoir’s foundations can still be found in the library’s South Court. In 2000-02, a new wing was added to this part of the building and the architects intentionally exposed the foundation wall as a record of the site’s history. Situated on the eastern end of two city blocks, the library’s marble façades and lavish interiors are a masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts style. The firm of Carrère & Hastings, fairly unknown at the time, was chosen to design the building. Their success led to commissions for 14 Carnegie-funded branches across the city, more than any other firm. The building’s front is set back from Fifth Avenue by a grand staircase and terrace that give the façade added grandeur and perspective. The terrace’s two famous lion statues were sculpted by Edward Clark Potter and were originally named “Leo Astor” and “Leo Lenox” after the library’s founders. During the Great Depression, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia nicknamed them “Patience” and “Fortitude.” The main entrance is housed within a triple-arched portico supported by coupled Corinthian columns. The rear, or west façade, expresses and honors the function of the building. Its series of full-height, vertical rows of windows both represent and give light to the seven floors of book stacks within. The steel stacks once held 88 miles of books, which have since been moved offsite. However, the stacks also function as structural support for the building, providing a powerful symbolism to the building’s construction. On all four façades, pedimented pavilions lend visual interest and elegance. When it was completed in 1911, the library bore the distinction of being the largest marble structure in the United States. Formerly known as the Humanities and Social Sciences Library and the Center for Humanities, the building was renamed the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building in 2008 to honor a major gift to the institution. The library functions as a reference, rather than a circulating library, and, as such, includes magnificent interior reading rooms, including the Rose Main Reading Room. This grand space, with arched windows and a fresco ceiling, is one of the most revered interior public spaces in Manhattan. In the 1980s, the institution undertook a major restoration of many of the library’s interior spaces and added two levels of stacks beneath Bryant Park. At that time, the library collection had outgrown the building, necessitating the park’s excavation.

Century Association ca. 1975 Despite its rather fussy detail, the main massing of this facade, with its once deeply recessed Palladian arched loggia, is extremely masterful and teaches a lesson in the successful combination of elements. McKim, Mead & White designed this building when the Club moved from East 15th Street; they achieved great elegance in its sumptuous interiors..

Grand Central Eagle, ca. 1966. The current Grand Central Terminal was preceded by two other train stations: Grand Central Depot (1871) and Grand Central Station (1901). Grand Central Station, which was not so much a new building as the renovation and expansion of the earlier Depot, was the shortest-lived of the iterations. Completed between 1898 and1901, it stood for less than a decade, replaced by the Beaux Arts icon in 1913. A feature of Grand Central Station still lives though. Adorning its four towers were larger-than-life cast iron eagles. As Grand Central Station was being demolished, a number of them were removed and sold or auctioned off. One is seen here in Mount Vernon, New York in 1966. In 1999 the first of the eagles returned to the Terminal and was installed at the Lexington Avenue entrance to the Grand Central Market at 43rd Street. Two years later, a second eagle, rescued from a monastery in Garrison, New York, was installed here at the Terminal entrance at Vanderbilt and 42nd Street.

Heckscher Building, 1916. August Heckscher, a German-born real estate developer, built this Madison Avenue skyscraper in 1916. Though it was constructed before the 1916 Zoning Resolution codifying setback requirements for skyscrapers, the Heckscher Building, designed by Jardine, Hill & Murdock, featured a five-story base, with a setback 27-story tower above. However, as reported by Christopher Gray in a 2002 Streetscapes column, Heckscher’s then-unique design had more to do with the peculiarities of lease terms for some of the assembled Madison Avenue plots. Be that as it may, the Heckscher building now stands among a thicket of Midtown skyscrapers, each with its own creative response to the 1916 regulation preserving light and open space.

Hotel Manhattan, 1922. The Hotel Manhattan was a 16-story structure completed in 1896 to the designs of Henry Janeway Hardenbergh. At 250 feet tall, it was once (likely briefly) the tallest hotel structure in the world. It was crowned by a stately mansard roof. The hotel was demolished in 1961 and replaced in 1963 by a Kahn & Jacobs-designed glass tower.

Aeolian Building, 1920. The 18-story building, completed in 1912, boasted a third floor concert hall which hosted performances by many leading musicians of the day — including the 1924 debut of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”

Samuel Longley Bickford began a career in restaurants just after the turn of the century, but it was not until 1921 that he established his eponymous restaurant chain.

I'm Picketing Your Heart for the Humane Society, ca. 1940.

Grand Central Terminal, ca. 1975. Here is a case in which distinguished architecture and a brilliant engineering solution were wedded to produce one of the fabulous railroad terminals of our times. Grand Central was always a place one was proud to show to out-of -town visitors until the mean clutter of shops and splays ruined its once magnificent interior scale. Nonetheless, the exterior windows, with their great expanses of glass and steel, represent the best of Parisian Beaux Arts Architecture.

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.

475 Fifth Avenue (at left), ca. 1975. Built in 1926 for the Farmers' Loan and Trust, 475 Fifth Avenue was designed by Starrett & Van Vleck, who built in the Italian Romanesque Style.

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.

Grand Central Terminal, Park Avenue Viaduct and the Grand Central station of the Third Avenue El, 1920.

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.

Joseph B. and Josephine H. Bissell House ARCHITECT: Edward L. Tilton DATE: 1903-04 STYLE: Neo-Classical By the early 20th century this area was the city’s most prestigious residential neighborhood and was known as Vanderbilt’s Row because of that family’s involvement in maintaining the elite character of the neighborhood. The house was purchased by Josephine H. Bissell in 1903. She hired prominent architect Edward L. Tilton to alter the house by removing the traditional Italianate style brownstone facade and its high stoop and replacing it with a more fashionable neo-Classical style brick and limestone facade with an American basement plan.

C.K.G. Billings "Horseback" Dinner at the Sherry Hotel, March 28, 1903.

Town Hall, date unknown. The McKim, Mead & White-designed Town Hall was commissioned by the League for Political Education, a woman's suffrage organization. The building, completed in 1921, was designed as a democratic meeting space, where people of all rank and background could be educated on the political and social issues of the day. As part of this democratic spirit, the auditorium was designed without box seats and with the intention that every seat in the house would provide an unobstructed view. Well known for its political events (birth control advocate Margaret Sanger was arrested on stage in 1921 during a speech on contraceptives to mixed gender audience), it has also become a preeminent venue for the performing arts.

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.

Early 20th-century censors, excited about “controversial” subjects being explored in New York’s theaters, focused mainly on sexuality – in particular, homosexuality and interracial relationships. In 1927, the New York Legislature passed the Wales Padlock Law, which made it illegal “depicting or dealing with, the subject of sex degeneracy, or sex perversion,” and offending theaters could be closed. (Similarly, Hollywood movies were subjected to the infamous Motion Picture Production (Hays) Code of 1930.) Although the New York law was not often enforced, and was protested by the theater community, it had a huge and censorious effect on the Broadway stage. Despite the law, which remained on the books until 1967, lesbian and gay characters did manage to make it to Broadway, often in the works of lesbian and gay playwrights. The last Broadway show impacted by the Wales law was Dorothy and Howard Baker’s lesbian drama Trio (1944-45) at the Belasco, which was shut down by the LaGuardia administration two months after opening, but engendered a protest over censorship from theater folks, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the press, and politicians. Two later plays of note at the Belasco were Lorraine Hansberry‘s A Raisin in the Sun (1959-60; 530 performances) that starred Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, and Diana Sands and had first opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, and Frank Marcus’s The Killing of Sister George (1966-67; 205 performances).

Hotel Woodstock, 1907. The 12-story Beaux Arts hotel designed by Mulliken & Moeller opened in 1903 as the Hotel Spaulding. But financial troubles saw the building sold in foreclosure two years later. Purchased in 1906 by new owners and renamed the Hotel Woodstock, the hotel entered into a period of success. In 1911 the building was expanded, adding more than 40 feet to the frontage. A 1912 ad for the hotel notes it "European Plan" and "Special Summer Rates." A room with a nearby bathroom cost $1.50, while one with a connecting bathroom was $2.00 and up. The hotel changed hands a number of times in the next few decades. By the 1970s as Times Square was becoming the seedy hub of porn theatres, peep shows, and drug activity, the hotel too had lost its once classy and professional sheen. It no longer could maintain occupancy and was falling into disrepair. In 1975 the non-profit Project Find took over the building and became the first NPO to manage an SRO (single room occupancy) in New York. They bought the hotel outright four years later. The hotel was completely renovated in 1993 through funding from the City's Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). In 2018 Project Find and HPD partnered again to preserve the affordability of the senior supportive housing SRO. Work included new amenities, rooftop access, facade restoration, and an additional 10 units, bringing the facility up to 291 permanently affordable units.

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

Belasco's Stuyvesant Theatre ARCHITECT: George Keister DATE: 1906-07 STYLE: Neo-Georgian This theater was designed as Belasco’s ideal theater by George Keister, an important theater architect, in an elegant neo-Georgian style reminiscent of townhouse architecture and specifically intended to suggest the intimate drama presented by Belasco within. As such it represents an early monument in the development of the “Little Theater” movement in New York.

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

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

One of the best parts of a summer in New York City is the wide array of free outdoor programs. There’s nothing like lying back in the grass while hearing crisp notes dance from a trumpet at Kingsborough’s Lighthouse Bandshell. There's nothing like watching the Delacorte Theater reawaken the words of Shakespeare under a starry night. Part of what makes our city so special is that it unites communities and cultures with free arts performances. While we won’t be able to share these moments in the summer of 2020, this story celebrates those experiences in all five boroughs. We hope to see you there next year!

Hotel Belmont, 1922. The Hotel Belmont was the tallest hotel in the world when completed in 1906. Built over subway infrastructure (which necessitated considerable underground supporting columns) the 23-story hotel was designed by Grand Central Terminal architects Warren and Wetmore. Despite the high cost and the ornate nature of the building, it was not reviewed favorably upon opening. The Architecture Record called the the cornice “ponderous” and “rather loud.” A critic had even more negative opinions of the interior where he found decorative features to be questionable, useless, and boring. He also called the entranceway “rather cold and uninviting." Despite these judgements, the hotel was successful, its proximity to the train terminal a major benefit. In 1930, quietly and with little fanfare, the hotel closed. On May 3, after a final luncheon, the full-time residents moved out. The furniture, housewares, decorative features, and utilitarian items were sold at auction. Demolished in 1931, plans for a skyscraper were floated but nothing came of them. After three years of being vacant, construction began on the low rise Art Deco Airlines Terminal Building, which was completed in the early 1940s.

Women's League for Political Education, 1899. Though this photograph does not specifically detail the location of the gathering, it is likely the League's headquarters in the Berkeley Lyceum on 44th Street. The League, originally established as a pro-women's suffrage group, created a meeting place where people of all walks of life could be educated on important issues of the day. They held classes, meetings, and lectures. They also founded a number of affiliate groups including The Civic Forum, an assembly designed to foster higher standards of civic responsibility and international goodwill and the Economic Club of New York, a non-partisan organization that encouraged dialogue on economic, social, and industrial problems. The League, which was opened to both genders around 1905, moved into a larger space in 1921 in the building today known as Town Hall, where they continued this work. A new project started in 1935 was 'America’s Town Meeting of the Air' a public affairs discussion radio show, recorded at Town Hall for more than 20 years. In 1938 the League changed its name to The Town Hall, Inc.

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.

Tiffany and Company Building, May 2, 1907.

Lefcourt-Colonial Building, 1930. The Lefcourt-Colonial is a 45-story, Art Deco office building that was commissioned in 1930 by Abraham E. Lefcourt. Designed by the Charles F. Moyer Company and Bark & Djorup, the building has a storied history as part of Lefcourt's real estate empire. While the Lefcourt Colonial is only one of Lefcourt's many buildings in New York (20 in Manhattan!), it is one of his most iconic. The building's most prominent feature, its tower, can actually be seen from almost any point in the midtown area!

15 Vanderbilt Avenue ca. 1923 John Campbell leased 15 Vanderbilt Avenue (known widely as the Campbell Apartment) from William Kissam Vanderbilt in the same year that this photo was taken: 1923. Campbell, a member of the New York Central's board of directors wanted an opulent office, and he got one. Located at the southwest corner of Grand Central, it was at 3,500 square feet, the largest ground floor office space in Manhattan. Nor was Campbell content with size alone, he hired architect Augustus Allen to decorate the space. Allen, known for his luxury architecture, had worked for many a robber baron before and knew his way around opulence. He reimagined the room inspired by 13th-century Florentine architecture. Allen added leaded windows, wood detailing, and hand-painted ceilings. The centerpiece of the office was an enormous faux fireplace. Nor was the apartment reserved for business, Campell would hold music recitals and other social events in it as well. It is said that the Persian rug he installed was worth 300,000$ at the time. Upon Campbell's death in 1957, the apartment was used for less glamorous activities. Initially used as signalman's office, the Metro-North Commuter Railroad police took ownership of the space. Under them, it served a number of functions, including gun storage and office space. At one point, the wine cellars were even used as a prison. Needless to say, the space was well worn and like much of the city in rather shabby shape. In 1999, however, it was given a new use: a luxurious cocktail bar. Several costly renovations in the past decades have restored it to its former glory and is now a bar called The Campbell.

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.

There’s no place like Grand Central. The sheer scale and elegance of the main concourse transforms the daily commute into a complex choreography as commuters and tourists negotiate through the hallways, overheard conversations turn into mysterious plots of other people’s dramas, and what can be mundane becomes a unique experience. Grand Central has seen a steady tide of humanity for the past 100 years, becoming a beloved New York landmark.

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.

New York Club, ca. 1907 If you asked a well-heeled New Yorker today if he or she knew about the New York Club, you might well be met with a look of confusion. However, that would not have been the case a century ago. Founded in the 1840s, the prestige of the New York Club was such that it was noted as a simple N. in the Social Register. It was so well known that one needn't have a longer signifier. As such, many of New York's prominent citizens were members and its coffers were bountiful. At the turn of the century, the club was feeling confident enough to buy land for a new clubhouse across from Bryant Park and the Ne York Public Library. They retained Henry Hardenberg, known for the original Waldorf-Astoria (and later the Plaza Hotel), to design their nine-story clubhouse. The new home's facade was old New York with red brick and terracotta with common spaces as well as bedrooms. It cost more than a $1,000,000. Opened in 1907, the new location quickly amassed quite a membership, and there were almost 700 members by the start of the First World War. However, like many of its fellow clubs, the Great Depression took its toll on the New York Club and soon they were forced to sell. In 1933, the clubhouse was taken over by a liquor distributor, who used the space for sales and tasting rooms. The New York Club sold the building for less than a quarter of the price it had cost to build. Freedom House (an early human rights and racial equality organization) purchased the building in 1945 and renamed it after Wendell Wilkie, a Republican presidential candidate. During its tenancy, it hosted a number of organizations under its roof, including the NAACP. Doom came for the building in the familiar specter of a bank, the Republic National Bank, purchasing it as part of a midtown expansion. In 1985, its distinctive facade was demolished by workmen before it was sold, with many preservationists speculating that it was a preemptive move to prevent landmarking and a cynical act by the bank. Regardless, without any protection, the Bank demolished the old club as soon as it took ownership of the land.

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.

Century Association ARCHITECT: McKim, Mead & White DATE: 1889-91 STYLE: Italian Renaissance Stately in its formal appearance, this four-story Italian Renaissance building, of granite, terra-cotta and brick, is extremely successful in its architectural treatment. McKim, Mead & White, architects for The Century Association, had a reputation for understanding the use of Renaissance elements, and Stanford White, the partner in charge of this project, was renowned for his talent as a designer and for his great ability in using materials, texture and detail in the creation of a building. Working in the true Renaissance spirit, achieving unity and balance, he reestablished the supremacy of form and detail.

Berkeley Lyceum Theatre, drawing from 1935. This now demolished theatre building was constructed in 1887-1888 as a gym for the nearby Berkeley School. The headmaster of the private school also established a men's athletic club in the building to assist in the financial costs of the building's maintenance. In the mid 1890s the building also began hosting theatrical performances. It was the original New York home of Henrik Ibsen's play Ghosts. At the same time that the building became home to a proper theatre it also became headquarters for a new progressive organization. The Women's League for Political Education, was established in 1894 by a group of prominent suffragists following the defeat of the women's suffrage amendment to the New York State constitution. The organization's mission was to provided education on social and political issues. Originally a female only organization, the League for Political Education became co-ed sometime in the early years of the 20th century. In 1914 the League purchased a lot on 49th Street for a new building, which would provide a larger space for classes and lectures. The new building, originally called the Societies' Building (now known as Town Hall), opened in 1921 and was designed with the democratic principles of the League in mind. No box seats were included in the design and every effort was made to allow an unobstructed view for every seat in the house. The Berkeley Lyceum was torn down in 1916.

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.

We've rounded up our favorite photos of New Yorkers in costume.

In the late 1930s and 1940s, a plane ticket from New York to Europe cost the equivalent of five-thousand dollars. Airfare was a privilege of the wealthy and the Airline Terminal Building was built to accommodate them. The Airline Terminal Building saw its cornerstone laid by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia on April 22nd, 1940. The building served multiple airline companies, including American, Eastern TWA, United, and PanAm. The terminal provided a convenient Midtown hub for passengers to purchase tickets, have their bags checked, dine, and watch the news in a 600-seat theater before being transported by bus to the airport to catch their flight. The building opened on January 26, 1941, ferrying passengers to the New York Municipal Airport. Initially, it brought passengers to Newark, which the same year, as well as Idlewild when it opened seven years later. This sleek, 5-story Art Deco structure was designed by architect John Peterkin in what was then called the modern-classical style. Its stark, symmetric facade faced Grand Central across 42nd Street. Above the door of the building was a mural depicting a map of the planet, projecting its role as was the gateway to the world. Inside, a blue dome raised over gold painted walls, offering an atmosphere that was reminiscent of "Arabian Nights," according to the New York Times. However, after Newark and Idlewild airports opened, buses pulling traffic through grid-locked Midtown stopped seeming like an amenity. A sister terminal opened on First Avenue between 37th and 38th street near the Midtown-Queens tunnel in 1954. The original Airline Terminal Building began to just offer ticketing services. Declining in value and usage, the terminal was shuttered in 1978 to make way for a corporate headquarters.

25 West 45th Street, 1913. This limestone office building was designed by the firm of Wallis & Goodwillie and completed in 1913. In early 1925 this building became the home of the brand new magazine called the New Yorker. The publication of "gaiety, wit, satire, fiction, social commentary, and criticism" remained here for the next decade before moving to 43rd Street in 1935.

Three examples of very dense high-rise housing developments suggest how the private market might have rebuilt parts of Manhattan for the middle class if the real estate boom of the late 1920s had not ended in the Great Depression. Two were created by the visionary developer Fred French: Tudor City (1927), a 14.5-acre enclave of a dozen towers on E. 42nd Street, and Knickerbocker Village (1934) on the Lower East side, which replaced some of the district’s oldest tenements with modern, but extremely dense, multifamily housing. The other, London Terrace (1930), packed 1,665 units into an avenue-long apartment block in Chelsea. The density of these middle-class developments averaged 463, 800, and 931 persons per acre, respectively. This story is adapted from an exhibition at the Skycraper Museum. The original version can be seen here.

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.

T.A. Havemeyer Residence ca. 1898 First occupied by the Theodore A. Havemeyer Family in 1867-1868, this mansard-roofed mansion on the south-west corner of Madison Avenue and 38th Street was remodeled by society architect Richard Morris Hunt in 1891-1892. Seven Byron photographs were featured in a 1895 Once A Week article about Mrs. Havemeyer and her grand home. This photograph was taken the year after Theodore Havemeyer's 1897 death. Havemeyer and his brother made their fortune in sugar refining, and during the 1890s controlled as much as 98 percent of the U.S. sugar industry

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

"Beauty," ca. 1915. Flanking the main entrance of the Main Branch of the New York Public Library two statues stand, presiding over stone fountains. "Truth," the figure of an old man stands in the niche on the north side, while "Beauty" (seen here) is a young woman. Sculpted by Frederick MacMonnies, the works complement the grand Beaux-Arts style of the building. While the water flowed in the two fountains for decades, it was turned off sometime in the 1980s. Plans for work on the features fell through in 2013, but funding came through a couple of years later. In July 2015, the fountains bubbled with water once again, to the surprise and delight of passersby.

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.

Pershing Square Building, 1940. In 1914 the hotel which had previously occupied this large corner lot, the Grand Union Hotel, closed after it was acquired by the city. The city and its transit agency, the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, had big plans for the site. They proposed a large diagonal subway station which would connect the older section of the IRT (under Park, then Fourth Avenue) and the new section (which would proceed uptown via Lexington Avenue). The building was razed and despite wartime delays the station was complete in 1920, providing a strong foundation for the construction of a large building above. Designed by John Sloan, working with the architecture firm of York & Sawyer, the 1923 Pershing Square Building is a Lombard Romanesque- Renaissance Revival structure. The textured brickwork and multi-colored terra cotta of the facade predates its popularity in later Art Deco buildings. Interestingly, because the subway station foundations of the building were begun prior to the 1916 zoning laws, it was was designed without adherence to newly required regulations regarding setbacks (it was the last tall building without setbacks). Given its prime location above the busy subway station and adjacent to the railroad station, the building was a very successful venture within Terminal City. Early tenants included a number of large corporations, such as the Irving Trust Company, as well as smaller offices of real estate agents, lawyers, and investors. The building was renamed the American Can Building in 1945 for one of its then largest tenants. Today called the Pershing Square Building, once again, or simply 125 Park Avenue, the Terminal City office building remains largely unchanged and was designated a landmark in 2016.

Liggett Building, 1922. The Carrère and Hastings-designed Liggett Building was a commercial office building completed as part of the Terminal City development in 1922. Despite its first class architectural pedigree, the building itself was not a showy structure, given the firm's other major works. In 2016 the Liggett Building and four of its surrounding neighbors were razed in preparation for the construction of One Vanderbilt, a gargantuan, glassy skyscraper to be erect across Vanderbilt Avenue from Grand Central (it will rival the Empire State Building when completed). Whatever one's opinion on the new development, the removal of these five buildings did provide New Yorkers with something none of them had ever seen... an unobstructed view of the west facade of the venerable Terminal.

Richard Thibaut Wallpapers, 1922. Established in 1886, Thibaut is America’s oldest continuously operating wallpaper firm. The two-story showroom building was completed circa 1921 to the designs of Trowbridge & Livingston, replacing two older homes. It is unknown how long the wallpaper firm occupied the low rise building, but in 1927 the facade of this building was retained when the structure had a massive addition constructed. The design of the resulting 22-story office building was created by the firm of Albert Buchman and Ely Jacques Kahn for the National Bank of Commerce.

Biltmore Hotel, 1914. Constructed in 1913, the Biltmore Hotel was the first post-Grand Central Terminal commission for Warren and Wetmore (who had used some seriously underhanded methods to secure Terminal City work). At 26 stories the Terminal's neighbor stood five times as tall, with two imposing wings surrounding a center light court. The terrace at the sixth-floor setback provided guests with a roof garden and occasional ice skating rink. As early as the 1920s the gold clock of the lobby was a well-known and popular meeting spot, for New Yorkers "Meet me under the clock," directed one to the Biltmore. Not only known in popular culture, the hotel was the location of a number of important geo-politcal events. In 1916 the Treaty of the Danish West Indies was signed there, transferring the now U.S. Virgin Islands to America for $25 million in gold. In 1942 the Biltmore Conference was vital in the establishment of Palestine as a Jewish Commonwealth. By the 1980s the once thriving area known as Terminal City was run down and full of aging structures. The Biltmore was closed in 1981 and, though a somewhat perfect candidate for landmark designation, the demolition of the structure began soon thereafter. Shocked preservationists worked to save some of the interiors. The building was not fully razed, but was gutted, taken down to its steel framing, and rebuilt as 335 Madison Avenue. Today the rescued clock and piano live in the lobby of the new building.

Algonquin Hotel ARCHITECT: Goldwin Starrett DATE: 1902 The Algonquin Hotel, which opened its doors in 1902, has played host to generations of famous men and women from the literary and theatrical worlds. Most often associated with the legendary Round Table, the group of critics and humorists who convened almost daily in the 1920s for luncheons spiced with quotable conversation am repartee, the hotel has also been frequented by countless others in the acting and writing professions. The particular cultural character of the Algonquin was nurtured by its devoted and congenial proprietor, Frank Case. “I was determined to get the Arts, especially the Theater,” Case later reminisced, and beginning with such illustrious guests as John and Ethel Barrymore, Douglas Fairbanks, Booth Tarkington and Sinclair Lewis, he proceeded to become ‘boniface’ to not only the stars, but to aspiring young artists as well.