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.

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

Martin Beck Theater ARCHITECT: C. Albert Lansburgh DATE: 1923-24 STYLE: Byzantine The Martin Beck Theater survives today as one of the historic theaters that symbolize American theater for both New York and the nation. It was designed for Martin Beck, one of America’s great vaudeville producers, by G. Albert Lansburgh, a prominent theater designer who considered it his finest work. Beck and Lansburgh created an unusual and exotic design based on Byzantine motifs, making the Beck architecturally unique among the Broadway theaters. Among its outstanding characteristics is its double-height stone-faced arcade with elaborately carved capitals. For over half a century the Martin Beck has served as home to countless numbers of the plays through which the Broadway theater has come to personify American theater. Its presence helps visually to define the Broadway theater district, the largest and most famous concentration of legitimate stage theaters in the world.

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).

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

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.

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.

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.

Port Authority Bus Terminal and the McGraw-Hill Building, ca. 1994.

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.

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.

238-244 and 246 West 44th Street, south side, between Broadway and Eighth Ave., showing the Little Theatre at No. 238-244, ca. 1920. Today the Little Theatre is the Helen Hayes Theatre, named for an American actress nicknamed the "First Lady of American Theatre." It is the smallest Broadway house with just under 600 seats.

No. 690 Eighth Avenue, ca. 1936.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Port Authority ca. 1950 Spanning two blocks on 8th Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets, the Port Authority Bus Terminal, depicted here before subsequent renovations, was the largest mass-transit center of its kind in the world when it opened in December 1950. It offered such amenities as heated on- and off-ramps to melt snow, air-conditioned telephone booths, redcap service, and telephones on walls near terminal entrances which allowed customers immediate access to "information girls" who could give departure, fare, tax, and routing information almost instantaneously.

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.

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.

St. James Theatre, 1935. Opened as the Erlanger Theatre in 1927, this building replaced the building that housed the original Sardi's restaurant. Its architects were Warren & Wetmore, famed for their work on Grand Central Terminal. Their design of a simple brick facade with an ornate iron loggia (an exterior, covered, but open gallery), was a departure from their more elaborate structures. The interior, though, was awash with French-inspired ornamental detail and its two balconies made it a popular venue for musicals. It was renamed the St. James Theatre in 1930 when it was taken over by the Astor family, who also owned the land it was built on. Eventually taken under the control of the Jujamcyn Theaters, the venue will host 2018's most talked-about new show, Disney's Frozen!

Little Theatre, ca. 1915.

West 40th Street Carnegie Library Branch, 1914. Completed in 1913 (relatively late for a Manhattan Carnegie) the West 40th Street Branch was designed by Cook & Welch. The architects had designed a number of other Carnegie libraries, including the Seward Park Branch. The neighborhood that surrounds is drastically different from when the building was constructed. Once flanked by four and five-story tenements, today the building is surrounded by the ramps and infrastructure of the Lincoln Tunnel, constructed in the mid 1930s. The library was decommissioned at some point in the late 20th century and was attached to a newer structure that was part of Covenant House, a charity that combats teenage homelessness. In 2020, the library was demolished to make way for redevelopment of the block.

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.

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.

Film Center Building, ca. 1948 The Film Center was built in 1928 and was used for various functions of film productions during the late 1920s and 1930s when New York City was the center of filmmaking. The building housed sets, editing, and production facilities, as well as a distribution center. The Film Center Building was designed by Eli Jaques Kahn in an Art Deco style. Kahn was a prominent architect in the first half of the 20th century, known for his modernist designs. The building has one of the most detailed surviving interiors from that period in New York City. Both the exterior of the building and a portion of the interior were landmarked in 1982.

Entrance to Film Center, ca. 1995.

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.

246 West 38th Street, ca. 1923.

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.

Eagle Brewery, ca. 1892. This 19th century west side brewery has a history intertwined with the oldest brewery in the United States, Yuengling. Eagle Brewery was founded in by John Frederick Betz, a young man who had apprenticed at Yuengling in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. After a trip to Europe to learn from master brewers in Germany and Austria, he returned to America and opened his business in 1853. Betz began a brewing empire, with operations in Philadelphia and Jersey City. In 1890 the name was changed to Lembeck and Betz Eagle Brewery. The NJ and PA breweries closed in 1920 during Prohibition, so likely this one did as well. It is unknown when the buildings were demolished.

41st Street Public Paths, ca. 1905. Built in 1904, this bath house was possibly one of the first to be demolished, according to NYC Bath House expert Michael Minn. Its address places it adjacent to or perhaps within the footprint of the 1931-built McGraw-Hill skyscraper. Though a 1956 seems to depict at least a section of the building in place and noted as a bath house.

McGraw-Hill Building. Up shot from 42nd Street, October 4, 1931. The McGraw-Hill Building is an Art Deco structure completed in 1931. Designed by Raymond Hood, it was the second building for publishing company in the city (the first was located at 469 Tenth Avenue). The facade of the 33-story building is covered in blue-green terra-cotta ceramic tiles, alternating with green-metal-framed windows. Starting in 1939 the building housed the headquarters of Timely Comics, which would later become Marvel Comics. In the Captain America #1, creator Jack Kirby gave the building address as the mailing address to which fans could write to the superhero.

In 1908 publishing magnate Charles Scribner built a printing plant and headquarters. The 14-story building was designed with 13 1/2 foot ceilings and wide set interior columns for the placement of large printing machinery. The windows also were built floor to ceiling. Today the building has been converted to a modern office building, with tenants such as the coworking company, WeWork.

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

"Larry David, Alicia Keys, and Samuel L. Jackson walk into an elevator. Sounds like the prelude to a bad joke? Actually, that’s just daily routine at Manhattan Plaza, a 1,600-unit affordable housing complex for performing artists in Times Square that has served as the launching pad for thousands of creative careers since it opened in the late 1970s. It was in this anonymous high-rise in Hell’s Kitchen, that Alicia Keys first learned to play the piano. It was here, in a federally subsidized apartment, that Larry David first met Kenny Kramer — the 'real' Kramer — and wrote the pilot for Seinfeld. To this day, Manhattan Plaza continues to serve as affordable 'on-campus housing' for thousands of performers in the nearby Theater District. But despite Manhattan Plaza’s enormous contributions to popular culture — not to mention the local entertainment economy — the project is little known. To most passersby, it’s just another ugly redbrick tower block. That’s about to change with the release of the forthcoming documentary Miracle on 42nd Street, which explores the project’s dramatic history and features countless Manhattan Plaza 'alumni' paying tribute to the project’s transformative impact on their lives and careers. The film also offers fresh insights into familiar moments in the city’s history: the fiscal crisis, the AIDS crisis, and the revitalization of Times Square." For more on Manhattan Plaza, check out this interview with award-nominated filmmaker Alice Elliott in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.

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.

Martin Beck Theater Interior ARCHITECT: C. Albert Lansburgh DATE: 1923-24 STYLE: Byzantine The exotic design of Martin Beck Theater, or Al Hirschfeld Theater, is based on Byzantine motifs, making the Beck architecturally unique among the Broadway theaters. Among the most notable design features of the interior are a triple-domed lobby with murals, and an auditorium with spiral-ribbed proscenium arch and fan vaults. Its exotic painted domed ceiling is the work of Albert Herter, a noted American muralist.

McGraw-Hill Building ca. 1936 The McGraw Hill building located on 330 West 42nd Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues was designed in 1931 by architects Raymond Hood and Andre Fouilhoux to meet the specific needs of the McGraw-Hill publishing company that occupied ¾ of the building. With a series of setbacks on its north and south sides, in accordance with New York City's building and zoning codes and the programmatic needs of a book production factory, the McGraw Hill building from east and west has the appearance of an Art Deco stepped tower. From the north and south it appears as a sleek 33 story Commercial Slab building in the International Style. The shock value of its innovative materials, the first clad with machine made terracotta and glass in a provocative blue green color and Hood's avant-garde formal language sets it apart as one of the gems of the city, fondly called "The Jolly Green Giant."

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.

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.

Film Center Building ARCHITECT: Ely Jacques Kahn DATE: 1928-29 STYLE: Art Deco The Film Center Building interior design is an example of the Art Deco style. The architect, Ely Jacques Kahn, was one of the city’s most prominent architects working in modernistic styles. The interior incorporates a technique of “woven” plaster wall and ceiling surfaces, and a wide-ranging polychromatic program, and it survives largely intact. The building was built to service the motion picture industry then centered in Times Square to the east and still serves the functions for which it was constructed.

McGraw-Hill Building. Entrance detail, October 4, 1931. ARCHITECT: Raymond Hood; Godley & Fouilhoux DATE: 1930-31 STYLE: Art Deco, Skyscraper Among its important qualities, the McGraw-Hill Building is a unique skyscraper, being both one of New York’s major Art Deco monuments and the herald of the newly emerging International Style. It was designed by the distinguished American architect Raymond Hood who achieved fame as a skyscraper designer. Among its outstanding features are the two profiles, one being a stepped tower and the other a slab, the distinctive blue-green terra-cotta facing, the horizontal window bands, and the entrance treatment. It was built to serve a distinguished American publisher. The building has received wide critical praise since its completion. The building is a key element in the revitalization of the west side.

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.

Martin Beck (now Al Hirshfield) Theatre, November 1935. Seen from down the block, the Martin Beck Theatre opened in 1924 and was designed by G. Albert Lansburgh (a San Fransisco-based theatre architect). Constructed for vaudeville promotor Beck, it had the distinction of being the only theatre in New York that was owned outright without a mortgage (and was the only Broadway theatre built west of Eighth Avenue). The Moorish-inspired theatre was particularly lavish in its design and both its exterior and a section of the interior were designated NYC landmarks in 1987. In 2003 the theatre was renamed for famed American caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.