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

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

Built in 1900 by Oscar Hammerstein I, the Republic was taken over in 1902 by David Belasco. The theater reverted to its original name around 1910 and continued as a legitimate house until 1932 when it became home to Billy Minsky's burlesque shows. After Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia banned burlesque in 1942, the Republic was converted into a movie theater, the Victory, and fell into decline. In 1995 the beautifully restored New Victory opened again as a theater.

New York Times Building ca. 1912 The New York Times Tower opened with a fireworks display in Times Square on New Year's Eve, 1904. Designed by the architect Cyrus Eidlitz and his partner Andrew McKenzie, the Tower redefined the landscape of the newspaper industry and the city itself. Built at the direction of the paper's owner and publisher Adolph Ochs, who had purchased the ailing New York Times in 1896, the new building was part of his larger plan to reinvigorate the newspaper. Ochs wanted a building to "wake up the nation" and to call attention to the paper's resurgence under his leadership. Ochs began his investigations of real estate in 1902, and the first sites he considered were close to City Hall and Newspaper Row. But rising real estate prices pushed Ochs uptown. The final site was a wedge of land at Broadway and 42nd Street in an area known as Longacre Square, a neighborhood of cheap theaters and hotels on the brink of a major transformation. A key advantage of the site was the potential to connect directly to the new Broadway IRT subway that was to open in 1904. The new Times Building was the first in the city to have a subway station in its basement. This was more than mere novelty: it gave the Times the advantage of speed. With the printing presses located in the basement and with access directly to the trains, the Times could distribute papers underground to distant points far more quickly and efficiently than its competitors. Eidlitz & McKenzie worked with the small site to create an iconic wedge-shaped building. The base rose fifteen stories and a tower at the south end added ten floors, with a private observation lounge on its roof for Ochs. While Eidlitz initially designed a mansard roof, at Ochs's request he redesigned the tower based on Giotto's campanile at the Florence Cathedral, which he had much admired during his European travels. The building's façade and ornament used glazed terra cotta with robust Renaissance and Gothic details.

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.

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.

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

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

Before the Times building ascended at 1 Broadway, there was a small hotel built around beer. During the 1890s, the Pabst Brewing Company began purchasing hotels and music halls to promote their beer. Securing properties in the Midwest and Chicago, Pabst would then sublease them to managers as long as they would only serve Pabst products. Leasing the land for the hotel from Charley Thorley (who in turn was leasing it from Henry Dolan, the Pabst Hotel's lot sat at the intersection of Broadway and Seventh Avenue. Its architect, Henry F. Kilburn then built a nine-story structure with hotel rooms on the third through nine floors and a restaurant and rathskeller on the lower floors and basement. While the rathskeller exceeded the property lines lawfully, a portico built for the restaurant did so illegally. While commonly done, this would be something the Pabst Hotel would come to regret. Opening November 11th, 1899, the Pabst Hotel found steady business as a bachelor's hotel and rathskeller. But suddenly, the Pabst found itself with a surprising enemy. The New York Times began ferociously attacking the Pabst for its illegal portico. While the portico was indeed illegal, it was odd that the paper would so rabidly pursue one single violation when the practice was fairly common. Nor did the Times let up. Beginning in July of 1900, the New York Times published dozens of articles and editorials demanding that the city remove the portico at the hotel's expense. However, the hotel's manager Regan ignored the articles and the city officials had no motivation to go after this violation over all the others. Numerous delaying tactics were put into place and it wasn't until 1901 that a judge ordered the portico removed. However, Regan and Thorley immediately appealed the decision. While the Pabst Hotel was fighting its portico battle with the Times, its demise was sealed in a different way. During the construction of the New York subway, the Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs had been campaigning for a subway stop at 42nd Street. The Subway had then purchased the neighboring property to the Pabst Hotel. However, in April of 1902, the Subway took possession of the Rathskeller, the underground beer hall where the hotel sold Pabst beer. With that, the Pabst corporation gave up, claiming this meant that the lease they had with Thorley was void (they would also later sue him.) What happened next offers some insight into the New York Times singling out of the Pabst. Adolph S. Och's purchased the Eno land from the subway corporation and leased the Pabst from Thorley. The Times then announced it was giving up its long-time home and building a new tower on Longacre square. The Times had won their war against the Pabst Hotel. When the Pabst Hotel was demolished in November of 1902, it was the first building supported by a steel structure to be fully demolished.

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.

Before the Times building ascended at 1 Times Square, there was a small hotel built around beer. During the 1890s, the Pabst Brewing Company began purchasing hotels and music halls to promote their beer. Securing properties in the Midwest and Chicago, Pabst would then sublease them to managers as long as they would only serve Pabst products. The New York Times had other ideas for this plot in then-Longacre Square.

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."

American Theatre ca. 1895 The American Theatre, designed by Charles C. Haight, opened on May 22, 1893, with The Prodigal Daughter. T. Henry French, the manager, was one of the country's foremost producers, specializing in lavishly mounted extravaganzas. In 1897, French lost control of the theater in a foreclosure judgement, and it was taken over and used for every sort of entertainment; its last tenants being a burlesque troupe. Damaged by fire in 1930, the theater was razed to make way for other commercial structures.

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.

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

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

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.

New York Times Building ca. 1908 Designed by Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz, son of the noted architect Leopold Eidlitz, this building overcame several structural difficulties in the construction of its foundations. In style it is reminiscent of the Italian Renaissance, with corbeled cornice and decorative detail. On a similar site, it repeated the theme of the Flatiron building, although with less visual daring.

The photo published in The Forward on December 25, 1968 had this curious (and sexist) caption: Israel’s Prettiest Join New York’s Finest at Times Square (טיימס סקװער in Yiddish), New York as a New York police officer stands in the center and observes stoically.”

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.

Hotel Cadillac, 1907. The Hotel Cadillac was originally constructed as the eight-story Barrett House Hotel in 1883 (a second 12-story section, seen at right and first called the Cadillac, was added a few years later). Here in 1888 Eugene O'Neill, the playwright was born. In 1900 the two section merged under the one name. The hotel survived until 1940 when it was razed for a small taxpayer building.

989 Sixth Avenue, unknown date.

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

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

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

Purity (Defeat of Slander) was a sculpture erected in Times Square in 1909 by artist Leo Lentelli. The statue depicts a crowned women draped in robes on a tall plinth. She holds a shield with the words "Our City" inscribed with "visible great dark blotches and spots to typify the mudslinging she had warded off," described William Harmon Black, former president of New York City's Board of Alderman (via Untapped Cities). Symbolically, the work represented public criticism of widespread political corruption in New York City politics at the time. Ultimately, the statue's life was short lived. Made of plaster, Purity melted in a downpour in November of 1909, and the 8-ton sculpture was dismantled a soon after.

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.

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.

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.

Theatre Republic, 1900. Theater mogul Oscar Hammerstein I opened this venue with a Venetian facade as the Theatre Republic in 1900. In 1902, its manager and theatre impresario David Belasco leased the building. He renamed the theatre after himself. When Belasco took over full operation of the venue, he undertook major work, installing an orchestra pit, a new lighting system and a modern stage with trap doors through which scenery could be hoisted. In 1910, Belasco's Stuyvesant Theatre on 44th Street took over the Belasco Theatre name, while this one returned to the name Theatre Republic. By 1931, the theater was once again renamed, this time as Minsky's Burlesque, Broadway's first burlesque house. Upon the ban of burlesque shows in 1942, it became "The Victory," a second-run movie house. Just as it set the stage as a place to indulge vices of the 1930s, in the 1970s the venue became the first porn theater on 42nd Street. The Victory cleaned up its act in the 1990s, and the stage was "once again graced by legitimate theater." It opened with the plays "Crowbar" and a production of "Romeo and Juliet." The Victory was acquired by the City and State to become part of the 42nd Street Development Project. The theater reopened as The New Victory Theater in 1995.

Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street, ca. 1914. The trolley, which is traveling north towards the Times Building at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street, is a car of the New York Railways Company Seventh Avenue Line. Originally organized as the Broadway and Seventh Avenue Railroad, which began operation on Seventh Avenue in 1865, the line was leased in 1893 by the Houston West Street & Pavonia Ferry Railroad Company. Through various leases, acquisitions, and new incorporated companies, this line would eventually become (like most Manhattan streetcar lines) part of the New York Railways Company. In 1925, New York Railways was acquired as a subsidiary of the Fifth Avenue Coach and that action was the death knell for the trolleys, which were replaced by buses by 1936.

Following the Civil War, the resumption of industry, trade, and peace were boom times for New York City. Hundreds of thousands flocked to New York and as they did the city expanded. Out of this new growth came with it the Theater District, which teemed with shows, operas, and acts to amuse the city's population. This list highlights some of the theaters that sprung up during the turn of the century.

Lyric Theatre, 1903. Completed in 1903, the Lyric Theatre actually was one of the only New York theatres with two formal entrances: 213 West 42nd Street (seen here) and 214-226 West 43rd Street. The original occupant of the theatre was supposed to be composer Reginald De Koven's American School of Opera. Unfortunately, the school went bankrupt before construction was completed and the theatre was leased to the Shubert brothers. In 1934 the building became a movie theatre, which it remained until 1992. In the mid-1990s, as a part of the Times Square renewal project, the theatre was gutted and combined with its neighbor, the Apollo, to create the Ford Center. The Ford Center was then renamed the Hilton Theatre in 2005, the Foxwoods Theatre in 2010, and was once again called the Lyric Theatre by 2014. Today the facades of the two formal entrance to the original Lyric Theatre act as the entrances of the modern Lyric Theatre.

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.

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

The Museum’s ongoing exhibition Activist New York recently debuted a new case study that explores the battle over birth control and obscenity laws that raged in New York at the turn of the 19th century. A visitor to the new “Social Purity” case will notice a photograph of a scantily clad woman lounging in front of a lion skin. This is the dancer Gertrude Hoffman (sometimes spelled Hoffmann), and it was her portrayal of the princess Salome and her subsequent arrest that earned her a spot in the exhibition.

EMPIRE THEATER, MANHATTAN Address: 234 W 42nd St Architect: Thomas Lamb Constructed: 1912 The Empire Theater was designed by premier theater architect Thomas Lamb in 1912 in the heart of the Broadway Theater District. Lamb designed at least 48 theatres in New York City alone during his career. In 1998, it was moved 170 feet westward and now serves as an entry for a 25-screen multiplex, with the original auditorium converted into a lobby and lounge. The exterior remains intact and features a swath of glazed terra cotta in varying colors, which encrusts an enormous rounded archway, the building’s focal point.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hammerstein's Victoria Theater, 1899. Oscar Hammerstein's comeback to the theater world was named "The Victoria," because: "I have been victorious over mine enemies, those bloodsuckers at New York Life!" The insurance company had previously shuttered his Olympia Theater complex and two Harlem opera houses. Somehow, Hammerstein convinced the owner of the lot at 42nd Street and 7th Avenue to lease the land to him with no down payment. Over a year, Hammerstein constructed The Victoria: resourcefully utilizing bricks and wood from the demolished livery. The carpet was salvaged from an ocean liner. In 1899, The Victoria opened as a 1,350 seat house - the seats being, of course, secondhand. The theater boasted variety acts, particularly vaudeville and musical comedy. The Victoria closed in 1915. It was razed and replaced with the Rialto Theater.

Eltinge Theatre, 1927. Designed by famous theatre architect Thomas Lamb, this theatre was named for Julian Eltinge, an American stage and screen actor and female impersonator. Funded by producer Al Woods, it was given this name to honor the entertainer who helped Woods built his fortune. Opened in 1912 the theatre featured Woods' new approach to seating for patrons of all sizes: "slender," "medium," and "stout" seats. Woods was forced to sell the theatre during the Depression, and by the late 1930s, it was a burlesque theatre. In 1941 it was converted into a second run movie house, and in 1954 it was renamed the Empire Theatre. In 1998, as part of the renewal plan for 42nd Street, the landmarked building (all 7.4 million pounds of it) was lifted onto tracks and, using steel rollers, moved 170 feet down the block. In its new location, the old theatre building now functions as the ground level facade, entrance, lobby for the 25 screen AMC movie theatre.

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

Paramount Building ARCHITECT: Rapp & Rapp DATE: 1926-27 The building’s distinctive massing creates a striking pyramidal silhouette which is further enhanced at the upper stories by overscaled consoles, four clock faces recalling the Paramount trademark and a crowning glass globe. Designed by the Chicago-based firm of Rapp & Rapp, who were among the best-known and most prolific designers of elaborate movie theaters in this country in the 1920s, it served as the Eastern headquarters for the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, forerunner of Paramount Pictures, whose entrepreneurial founders played a major role in promoting the revolutionary motion picture medium.

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

New York Times Annex ca. 1924 Until 1997, the New York Times was headquartered and printed its papers in a curious châteauesque structure at 229 West 43rd Street, a block from the 1904 skyscraper that gave its name to Times Square. The Annex Building took shape in three major stages of construction from 1913 to 1924. The first section was an 11-story structure at the east end of the site designed by Buchman & Fox that was engineered to anticipate upward expansion. The dignified design of limestone and terra cotta presented the appearance of a university club, but the interior was laid out as a true vertical factory that the Times proclaimed "the greatest and completest newspaper workshop in the world." The need for more space came rapidly. With daily circulation reaching 313,000 copies by 1921, the Times sought to double the plant's printing capacity. In 1922, architects Ludlow & Peabody designed a 100-foot extension on the west side-an 11-story addition on the west, a four-story "attic," and seven-story setback tower rising above the whole in the style of the French Renaissance, which like the Times Tower was ornamented with lavish confections of cream-colored glazed terra cotta. Like the first section of the Annex, the interior was carefully designed and engineered as a purpose-built factory that produced a continuous daily flow of news and newspapers. Every floor was occupied by the functions of the paper. In 1932, Detroit-based architect Albert Kahn added another west wing, and additions in 1947 by Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon that extended the Annex to 44th Street and expanded the overall building size by 61 percent. While many other newspapers moved printing operations to areas with cheaper rents, the Times continued publishing from the Annex until 1997, when they relocated their printing to a new plant in College Point, Queens. Today the 52-story New York Times Building on Eighth Avenue and 41st Street, designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop with FXFowle, completed in 2009, only houses the paper's white-collar workforce.

"The Busiest Restaurant on the World's Busiest Corner." Toffenetti's was opened in 1940, by Italian immigrant Dario Toffenetti. Restaurant mogul had first encountered success in the Midwest, where he opened six restaurants on the Chicago Loop. He opened a seventh temporary location at the 1939 New York World's Fair before establishing a brick and mortar restaurant in Midtown. He purchased a valuable lot in Times Square and commissioned building designed by Walker & Gillette clad in sleek glass, with an escalator, stainless steel kitchen, lavish washrooms, phone booths with air conditioning, and walls covered in surrealist murals by Hugh Troy. Patrons would never guess that Toffenetti found his humble beginning selling baked potatoes in Wisconsin. His 1,000 seat restaurant describes their menu item not as mere potatoes, but "Idaho Potatoes," "bulging beauties, grown in the ashes of extinct volcanoes, scrubbed and washed, then baked in a whirlwind of tempestuous fire until the shell crackles with brittleness." His canny marketing was all the range at the time, and other snippets from his menu included: "Sugar Cured Ham - These hams are cut from healthy young hogs grown in the sunshine on beautifully rolling Wisconsin farms where corn, barley, milk, and acorns are unstintingly fed to them, producing that silken meat so rich in wonderful flavor," and "Spaghetti - one hundred yards of happiness." On the back of the menu, an illustration of Toffenetti - bald head and all, with the motto: "Your satisfaction is our constant inspiration." Toffenetti's served the world's busiest corner 24-hours a day until 1968. The building was demolished in the 1990s to make way for 4 Times Square.

One Times Square, ca. 1908. The building at the center of the image is the Times Tower, built between 1903-1905 for the New York Times. It was designed by the firm of Eidlitz & MacKenzie in a narrow triangular shape and clad in an intricate granite and terra-cotta facade. On New Year's Eve in 1903 Adolf Ochs, the Times' owner, celebrated the evening and made a show of the new building by setting off fireworks from the roof. This continued yearly until 1907 when Ochs changed the midnight event into the dropping of an illuminated ball from the building's flagpole. The Times moved out in 1913 and the building was purchased in 1963 by Allied Chemicals which drastically altered the facade, replacing the granite and terra cotta with marble facing. Over the next four decades the building changed hands a number of times. in 1975 it was further altered by architectural firm Gwathmey Siegel. Since 1995 (when it was purchased by Lehman Brothers) the building has been empty of tenants, except for ground level commercial spaces. The building has been used exclusively as an advertising location and for the yearly New Years activities. It is one of the two most valuable public advertising space in the world (the other being Piccadilly Circus in London).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally known as Long Acre (also Longacre) Square after London’s carriage district, Times Square served as the early site for William H. Vanderbilt’s American Horse Exchange. In the late 1880s, Long Acre Square consisted of a large open space surrounded by drab apartments.

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

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).

Macy's, ca. 1928.

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.

West 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue at the northwest corner, showing Hammerstein's Victoria Theatre, 1904. Oscar Hammerstein I was a late 19th and early 20th-century theatre mogul. Following the financial failure of an early theater nearby, called the Olympia Theatre, Hammerstein quickly rebounded by opening a theatre called the Victoria in 1899. The theatre was built on the site of Gilley Moore’s Market Stables and used the debris of that structure to fill the walls of the new building-- as a cost-saving measure. The theatre also had a popular roof garden called the Paradise Roof Garden, an open-air entertainment venue. Originally a venue for legitimate theatre productions (most of which were not particularly successful), in 1904 Hammerstein turned the place into a vaudeville house (a much more profitable venture). The building was sold in 1915 and demolished. Various theatre buildings were constructed and then razed on this lot over the next few decades. Today the structure at 3 Times Square is an office building known as the Thomson Reuters Building. It is a 32-story glass curtain wall structure completed in 2001.

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

Between 1899 and 2002, the northwest corner o Seventh and 42nd Street was occupied by a theatre (with various reputable and less reputable productions). First, Oscar Hammerstein's massive Victoria Theatre presented legitimate theatre before turning—very successfully— to vaudeville. That theatre closed and was demolished in 1915. In 1916 a new theatre building on the site opened. The Rialto sat 1,960 patrons. The venue was exclusively a motion picture house, becoming one of midtown's best-known movie palaces. Paramount sold the building in 1935, and the new owners razed the venue. In its place, a new building with stores, offices, and a smaller theatre, also called the Rialto, rose. That theatre showed films but by the 1970s was screening movies of an adult nature. The period of mature movies was shortlived, and the theatre returned to live performances once again in 1980, also acting as host to a TV studio. Finally, in 2002 the 1935 building with the small theatre was demolished, and a large office building was erected in its place.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

246 West 38th Street, ca. 1923.

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

44th Street Theatre, date unknown. Originally opened by the Shuberts in 1912 as the Weber and Fields' Music Hall, three years later the comedy due left the space and it was converted into a legitimate Broadway theatre. The theatre, after 1915 called the 44th Street Theatre, was designed by William A. Swansea. The building included a roof top theatre, known by 1918 as the Nora Bayes Theatre, named for a vaudeville performer credited with "Shine on, Harvest Moon." The rooftop venue presented Federal Theatre Project shows in the 1930s, as well as marionette, amateur theatre, and dance companies, while the nightclub in the basement was likely a speakeasy in the Prohibition era. By 1940 the building was owned by the Times Corporation and leased by the Shuberts. In 1942 the nightclub became the Stage Door Canteen, a popular hot spot for American and Allied servicemen. The Shubert Organization lost its lease in 1945 and the building was soon-after demolished.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

The "naughty, gaudy, bawdy, sporty, 42nd Street." Over the 20th century it was constantly changing: theatre > burlesque > movies> grindhouse> XXX> revitalization. These are the theatres of the "Deuce."

Cine 42 was a single screen movie theatre that opened in 1974 in a small space next to the New Amsterdam Theatre. The theatre was "twinned" (i.e. converted to two screens) four years later. The venue presented only kung-fu and schlocky movies, surviving until 1992. Today, the building serves as the box office for the neighboring Broadway theatre.

Gilley Moore's Market Stables, ca. 1850. The site at the corner of 7th Avenue and 42nd Street was once home to Gilley Moore's Market Stables. A stable was not an uncommon sight here in Longacre Square, the area named for London's carriage district, which would later become Times Square. In 1898, the lot was leased to Oscar Hammerstein, who constructed the Victoria Theater.

Lambs Club ARCHITECT: McKim, Mead & White; Stanford White DATE: 1903-05 STYLE: Neo-Georgian The clubhouse of The Lambs is a handsome neo-Georgian style structure designed by the prominent architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White. The graceful loggias and fine decorative details give visual emphasis to the special nature of the building. This Club has provided an attractive place for actors to meet in the theatrical district and has made an important contribution to the cultural life of New York City through its theatrical productions.