Lincoln Tunnel entrance roadway at Dyer Avenue and West 34th Street, February 10, 1938.

West 28th Street Bathhouse at 407 West 28th Street as seen from Ninth Avenue, 1927. The Public Bathhouse seen in the center of the frame was the second to last such public facility constructed in New York City. Built in 1914, the complex included showers, an indoor swimming pool, public laundry facilities, a gymnasium with an indoor track, a roof garden, and playground. The nearby Irish community used this facility. The pool facility was active until at least the 1960s, and was demolished sometime during the Lindsay administration (1966-1973). This block (between Ninth and Tenth Avenues and 28th and 29th Street) is currently occupied by an annex of the 1933-built Morgan Postal Facility, constructed in 1992.

Jim and Al Coffee Shop under the Ninth Avenue El at West 34th Street, 1932.

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.

Board of Health Building, Chelsea Center. Entrance, 1937.

Ninth Avenue east side, from West 34th to 33rd Streets. Building shown is the New York Asylum for the Blind, 1922. The New York Asylum for the Blind was established in 1831 and that same year a large building for the organization was constructed in the bucolic area that would later become the border between the Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen neighborhoods. In 1831 this area was far north of the city and the open space and park-like grounds were the perfect location for a school for the blind. The large neo-Gothic structure was designed by an unknown architect, but was constructed in a style very similar to James Renwick's buildings on Blackwell's Island. These facilities on today's Roosevelt Island included a smallpox hospital, insane asylum, debtors house, and a prison. The school had upwards of 150 students and whenever possible jobs in the institution were also filled by the blind, including teachers. The school roughed some harsh criticism in the second half of the 19th century. An article in 1854 said this of the school, "Neglect, slovenliness and bad management are visible in every part of the establishment." In the early 20th century the city had not only stretched to the Asylum but surrounded it on all sides with large urban development. After a number of failed attempts to move elsewhere, the renamed New York Institute for the Education of the Blind (a more politically correct moniker) finally relocated to Pelham Parkway in the Bronx in 1924. The following year the large, nearly 100 year old building was demolished. Today the plot that was once occupied by the Asylum is now the popular photography store B\&H.

Man and boy at fire hydrant, around 28th Street and 11th Avenue, with Empire State Building (1931) visible in background

Board of Health Building, Chelsea Center, 1937. The simple Art Deco building was built in the mid 1930s for the Board of Health. The building, which has functioned as administrative offices and a medical clinic for the BOH and later the Department of Health, is currently (Spring 2017) undergoing a large scale renovation and should open again in late 2017.

329-339 West 30th Street, north side, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. No. 333 was the Rural New Yorker Building which was formerly the old Chelsea Methodist Church. About 1910.

Constructed on the Hudson River Front between 1979 and 1986, the Javits Center is the most contemporary building on our tour. I.M. Pei and Partners designed the conference center to evoke the crystal palaces at the center of 19th-century World’s Fairs in London and Paris. Unfortunately, the Javits Center, has been enmeshed in controversy since its nascence. The project was finished two years behind schedule andmore than $111 million dollars over budget, and was investigated by the U.S. attorney’s office for its links to corrupt, mob-dominated unions. The glass exterior was constructed without any thought to cleaning, and the defining feature of the proposed design, a glittering entrance hall that would have opened onto the Hudson River, was never constructed due to budgetary constraints. In 2015, FXFOWLE completed a major renovation of the Javits Center which greened the building and made the glass façade safer for birds. Javits has been disparagingly likened to a tinker-toy set, a mausoleum, and Darth Vader. New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff went so far as to list the building as one of his “top candidates for demolition” in New York City. With such vitriol surrounding the Javits Center, could a building like this ever warrant historic preservation? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. Historic and cultural significance are accrued over time. Buildings can only be considered for historic designation once they have turned 50, which also happens to be the average lifespan of an American commercial building. A building is most at risk for demolition when it is between 30 and 40 years old. The Javits Center is 34. Should preservationists begin to reconsider the architectural contributions of this building? Probably – I.M. Pei is a significant Chinese-American architect whose work will be studied by many generations to come. With its clear nod to 19th-century architecture, the building embodies many of the ideals of the postmodernism movement and fulfills criteria for cultural significance. Time is the most precious resource in historic preservation – how can we better guess which buildings will be significant before they are at high risk for demolition?

413 West 35th Street, 1932.

467 Ninth Avenue, 1938. The building in the foreground is one of New York City's ubiquitous corner markets. The building across the street at no. 469 is the North-Western Dispensary building. The dispensary was a municipal social welfare and medical facility for the poor. The three-story brick building was constructed for this facility in 1869. In 1938 when this photograph was taken, it is unclear if the dispensary still functioned. The signage on the building notes it is occupied by a cheese shop on the first floor and a flag and awning business on one of the upper floors.

339 West 29th Street, 1932. No. 339 (seen here covered in ivy) is a 19th-century rowhouse with a powerful abolitionist history and a sad and complicated recent history. Built in 1846-1867, the four-story house was constructed as part of a row for Cyrus Mason. James Gibbons, a banker, and financial writer purchased the home in 1852 and moved in with his wife Abigail Hopper Gibbons and family. The family was ardent abolitionists. The house served not only a station of the Underground Railroad, but the home hosted a school for African American children and a meeting place for black and white abolition leaders. The house was well known for these activities and so was targeted during the Draft Riots in 1863. After black homes and orphanages were burned, the rioters turned to the abolitionists. This house was set aflame on the second night (July 14), and the occupants were only saved from death (by fire or beating) via an escape route that included climbing to the roof, running over the neighboring homes, and climbing out through someone else's house. The home was designated a New York City landmark as part of the Lamartine Place Historic District in 2009. Around that same time, the current owner added a fifth floor (illegally). Over the next decade, the community members and preservationists fought to have the home returned to its original state. Through lawsuits and legal and landmark hearings, the community persisted, and in 2017 when the project came to the Landmarks Commission, the added floor was denied. The height of the building and the cornice would need to be restored. After more than a decade under scaffolding, the front of the building will soon be visible once again.

10th Avenue southwest corner and 29th Street, 1940. The lot that once included this Esso gas station remains empty today despite acquiring a new glassy neighbor in 2015. The West Side Line, a spur of the New York Central Railroad can be seen in the distance. Today this railroad infrastructure is the High Line.

James A. Farley Post Office Building, 1912. Formerly the General Post Office Building, the main branch of the United State Postal Service was built as part of the Pennsylvania Station construction plan. The firm of McKim, Mead, and White designed both the train station and the post office in a Beaux-Arts style. The General Post Office and Pennsylvania Station became twin symbols of American progress and industry. With its giant order Corinthian colonnade stretching the length of two city blocks, the Post Office matched the grandiosity of Penn Station across the avenue. Bracing either side of the colonnade are square pavilions, capped with low domes expressed as stepped pyramids on the exterior. From the street, continuous steps lead to the main floor, which hosted various customer services. A dry moat at the base of the building allows for natural light to flood into the basement level, occupied by workspaces. On the interior, the ceiling is coffered and its floor is Knoxville marble. The colossal structure housed nearly one-acre of mail sorting space. In 1967, the facility was praised for handling one-tenth of all U.S. mail during Christmastime. However, the facility became outdated, hand-sorting technology just didn't cut it any longer, and the size of the building became too much to maintain. The former post office hosted a variety of bizarre functionalities: Operation Santa, beginning in 1912, authorized postmasters to respond to children's letters to Santa Claus. Pneumatic mail tubes facilitated the transport of mail (up to 100 pounds) to 22 post offices in Manhattan (and one in Brooklyn) at speeds of 30 to 35 mph. A Museum of Postal History occupied a small portion of the main floor, displaying postal paraphernalia until 2017. Portions of the landmark are now being converted to house the Moynihan Station, an Amtrak concourse which would expand Penn Station.