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

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.

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.

Church of Sts. Cyril & Methodius and St. Raphael, ca. 1977. This French Gothic church was constructed between 1901 and 1903 as St. Raphael. Designed by George H. Streeton, the parish of St. Raphael served the poor Irish community of Hell's Kitchen. That Irish parish dated to 1886. In the late 19th and early 20th century Catholic Croatian immigrants were also moving into the west side neighborhood. Many worked on the docks, rail yards, and factories near the waterfront. They had no Croatian language church, though in the early 20th century a Croatian priest began celebrating marriages and christenings in an Italian parish nearby. In 1913 the parish of Sts. Cyril & Methodius was established in a small disused church at 552 West 50th Street. They remained there until the 1970s when they purchased a back back building to St. Raphael. Soon though they were given permission to take over use of the whole church building. The church was renovated after the transfer of parishes. In the 1990s it was a center of relief assistance during the Bosnian War. Today it continues to have massed said in both English and Croatian.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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."

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.