400 Madison Avenue ARCHITECT: H. Craig Severance, Inc. DATE: 1928-29 STYLE: Neo-Gothic With its dramatic massing, intricate neo-Gothic detailing, and bright, expansive terra-cotta facade commanding a full Madison Avenue blockfront, the 400 Madison Avenue Building is one of East Midtown’s most striking prewar skyscrapers. Designed by H. Craig Severance and constructed by the George A. Fuller Company, one of the nation’s most experienced skyscraper builders, it was completed in 1929 as the area surrounding Grand Central Terminal was experiencing a boom in skyscraper construction and transformation into one of the country’s leading financial centers.

Shelton Hotel ARCHITECT: Arthur Loomis Harmon DATE: 1924 STYLE: Lombard Revival, Hotel Even while it was under construction the Shelton Hotel was recognized as the first successful embodiment of the massing requirements of the 1916 Zoning Law, notable for its soaring expression of height, powerful simple massing, striking silhouette, and exceptional handling of materials and details. The 31-story-plus-penthouse building is designed in the Lombard Revival style incorporating Medieval and Renaissance details. Above a beautifully detailed limestone base, its facades are clad with multi-hued greyish-brown brick and terra cotta. There are three setbacks, stepping up to a central tower, and a picturesque hipped-roofed penthouse.

St. Regis Hotel ARCHITECT: Trowbridge & Livingston DATE: 1901-04 STYLE: Beaux-Arts, Hotel The St. Regis Hotel is one of the most elegant and sophisticated Beaux-Arts style buildings in New York. Among the oldest of the early “skyscraper” hotels, it rises nineteen stories above the intersection of Fifth Avenue and East 55th Street. Begun in 1901, it was designed as the city’s most luxurious hotel by the firm of Trowbridge & Livingston. The st. Regis was commissioned by John Jacob Astor whose family had built the city’s first luxury hotel, the Astor House of 1836. The St. Regis is still one of the most important buildings on Fifth Avenue, contributing to the avenue’s fashionable character, reminding us all of its extraordinarily rich past.

17 East 57th Street, 1907. Squished between two larger homes, the Stephen O. Lockwood house was a mere 16 feet wide. The buildings at nos. 13. 15, and 17 were constructed as a trio of homes (one double wide and two narrow at the ends) in the early 1870s by Sidney W. Hopkins, a highly successful iron dealer. Designed by Arthur Gilman, the three separate homes were all created in a French style to look like a single, exceedingly wide mansion. By 1907 when this image was captured, no. 15 the wide, middle structure, had been altered with a limestone, English style facade, causing the narrow, still-mansard-roofed nos. 13 and 17 to look extra squeezed. The home was demolished, along with its neighbors, in 1923 for a new (and now long longer standing) building developed by William Randolph Hearst.

"Upwardly mobile, both literally and figuratively, in 1877 Belle Huntington moved with seven-year-old Archer from 109 Lexington Avenue, near 28th Street, to a large house uptown at 4 West 54th Street. By now a studious autodidact, passionately interested in art and interior design, she gutted the house, added a wing, and installed a stunning array of opulent features, including rosewood paneling, a stained glass skylight, brocade wall coverings, a Moorish smoking room, Turkish bath, Japanese bedroom and — the piece de resistance — one of the first Otis elevators in a private home. In June 1884, in her parlor, Arabella Yarrington Worsham married the recently widowed Collis P. Huntington — for the second time… Shortly after her wedding, Belle sold her furnished house on 54th Street to John D. Rockefeller, Sr. who, except for new carpets, barely changed a thing. And so Belle’s exuberant and imaginative Gilded Age decor remained intact until shortly after Rockefeller’s death in 1937, when his son demolished the building to make way for the construction of the Museum of Modern Art." Continue reading Margaret A. Brucia's profile of Archer Milton Huntington (co-founder of The Hispanic Society of America and other cultural institutions) in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.

Radio City Music Hall ca. 1976 Radio City, and indeed all of Rockefeller Center, came out of a plan to move the Metropolitan Opera. In the late 1920s, a plan had sprung to use the Rockefeller site to build a new opera house, but due to a lack of an endowment and various internal issues, it was canceled. However, John D. Rockefeller Jr. had been brought in to the prospective plan and had no desire to leave the plan alone. Striking a deal with RCA, Rockefeller imagined Rockefeller Center (and Radio City) to be developed as a media center with large theatres. Theater mogul Samuel Roxy Rothafel, having joined the advisory board in 1930, suggested they build two theaters: The International Music Hall on the north side of the center and the RKO Roxy Theater on the south side of the center. While the design of both theaters was in the hands of Edwin Durell Stone and Donald Deskey, Roxy strived to create a more modern theater through his suggestions. Roxy envisioned a more sleek, oval theater that somewhat eschewed the tiered seatings of others. In its design, Stone matched Radio City Music Hall's exterior to the rest of Rockefeller Center in its use of limestone but designed its now-iconic signs to distinguish it. For its interior, Stone conceived of a grand foyer with high ceilings, a curved staircase, and a 220 square meter mural "Quest for the Fountain of Eternal Youth" painted by Ezra Winter. Deskey supposedly was appalled by Stone's design and created the rococo interior of the theater to help make it palatable in his eyes. Construction began in December of 1931, and a year later, the Radio City Music Hall (the name change from the International Music Hall Stemming from the partnership with RKO) was ready for a lavish public opening. The Rockettes had already made it their home and Roxy had planned a series of elaborate acts. The opening, as it turned out, was a colossal failure, boring even the center's patron John D. Rockefeller, but the design was immediately beloved. Initially running a huge deficit, Radio City Music Hall was forced to begin showing feature films and its mixed film and stage format made it successful. It became a go-to New York venue for premieres and until the 1970s would complete 4 performances of their "spectacle" a day. While in the 60s the hall flourished with millions of visitors, the 70s marked a decline for the theater. On April 12th, 1978, the Music Hall closed its doors, having projected a multi-million dollar loss for the year. With the theater's future in jeopardy, a huge campaign arose to save it. Its interior was landmarked, it was added to the national register of historic places, and many of its devotees protested and voiced their support. Rockefeller Center eventually ended up renovating the Music Hall and changing up its performance roster. Through diversification, use as a venue, and a multitude of strategies, in 1985, the Music Hall posted its first profit in three decades. Since renovated again, the Radio City Music Hall continues to operate and serve up shows such as its famous Radio City Christmas Spectacular.

The corner of 56th Street and 5th Avenue (seen here at right) has been occupied by a series of grand, iconic, and now somewhat infamous buildings. The 19th-century buildings seen in this photograph at 725 Fifth Avenue were a series of private townhouses constructed by William Waldorf Astor between 1889 and 1898. In 1911 they were converted to commercial properties. The Harlow Gallery, which in 1920 hosted an exhibition of English sporting prints, occupied one of the spaces.

Ogden Goelet Mansion (at right), ca. 1915. The Goelet family arrived in New York in the 17th century and began their real estate acquisitions early on. Ogden Goelet, made rich by the inherited wealth of his bachelor uncle and father, commissioned architect E. H. Kendall to design him a grand mansion. The four-story stone home, complete with light moat and ornate dormers and chimneys, was even more extravagant on the inside, with interiors designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany's early design firm called Associated Artists. The home was finished in 1884 and celebrated with a small society party of 500! The home hosted lavish events for the next few decades before being razed in 1930, following the death of Odgen's wife the year before. It was the last large mansions on Fifth Avenue below Central Park to be demolished.

1231 Sixth Avenue, ca. 1937. The crowd here on the west side of Sixth Avenue between 48th and 49th Streets stand in front of a number of employment agencies. These include the Claremont Agency at no. 1231, the Atlantic Hippodrome Employment Agency at no. 1233, and the Geneva Agency at no. 1235. Though undated, the scene belies the massive employment lines that crowded New York streets for much of the Depression. The 50th Street station of the Sixth Avenue Elevated line is seen in the background. Service on this line ceased in late 1938 and it was razed in 1939, dating this photo to sometime prior.

On Sunday, October 12, 1823, a new Protestant Episcopal congregation was organized in a meeting room at 44 Broome Street. In July 1824, in accordance with the resolutions of that congregation, the cornerstone for the new St. Thomas Church was laid at the intersection of Broadway and Houston Street. By 1866 this part of town had turned seedy, impelling the worshippers to build a new church, which endures, at 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue. Saint Thomas's current structure, finished in 1914 and the fourth church built for the congregation, was designed in the French High Gothic Revival style by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue and Ralph Adams Cram.

James J. and Josephine Goodwin Residence ARCHITECT: McKim, Mead & White; Charles F. McKim; William Mead DATE: 1896-98 STYLE: Neo-Georgian This distinguished residence was built in 1896-98 for James Junius Goodwin, a prominent New York businessman. Designed in the neo-Georgian style by the firm of McKim, Mead & White, it is a handsome reminder of the fashionable townhouses that once characterized the West Fifties between Fifth and Sixth Avenues and is one of an ensemble of five townhouses on West 54th Street.

Racquet and Tennis Club, ca. 1918. While the Racquet and Tennis Club was formed in 1890 by the merger of the Racquet Court Club and the Racquet Tennis Club, it initially occupied a clubhouse at 27 West 43d Street. It wasn't until 30 years later that it moved uptown. Offered a lease by one of its members, construction began in 1916 on its Charles McKim designed Italian Renaissance Park Avenue Clubhouse . Completed in 1918, this five story building was built with stone and brick over a steel frame, occupying a full block of Park Avenue. Though the clubhouse provides its members with a dining room, pool, gym, and other amenities, it is most notable for its racquet sports facilities. These include squash and racquets courts, but more unusually two court tennis (or real tennis) courts of the 43 extant in the world. Moreover, it served as the site of a conference in 1931 that standardized and set the rules of the board game Backgammon. Controversially, the Racquet and Tennis Club has adhered to a strict male only policy, only permitting women to attend social events at the club. This has provoked some outrage, as when Evelyn Davis, a notable female Court Tennis player, requested to train for the Women's World Tennis Championship and was flatly refused.

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

Lady Chapel, St. Patrick's Cathedral ca. 1905 A sophisticated version of French Gothic architecture, this delicate little chapel attaches itself as a jewel to the coarser fabric of the cathedral proper. It reminds us of that period of medieval architecture when the builders were straining stone masonry construction to the limit in order to achieve new effects of lightness and daring.

The department store remained one of Manhattan's most popular stores for the next few decades. Beginning in the late 1950s the store's popularity began to decline and after a number of corporate takeover the store closed in 1979. The building was purchased by the Trump Organization and demolition began in 1980. Donald Trump promised the limestone relief panels of the naked women to the sculpture department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (seen in this 1925 at near the top of the facade) on the condition that they were removable. Without even attempting to remove them in one piece, the construction workers broke them up with jackhammers. Trump was admonished by the New York Times, who said “Evidently, New York needs to make salvation of this kind of landmark mandatory and stop expecting that its developers will be good citizens and good sports.” The Trump Organization responded by saying that the panels had "no artistic merit." Today Trump Tower occupies this corner.

The Museum of Primitive Art (far left, No. 15), Nelson Rockefeller townhouse (second from left, No. 13), ca. 1971 Rockefeller, the four-term Governor of New York and Vice President under Gerald Ford, founded the Museum of Primitive Art in 1954, in one of two twin townhouses he owned on West 54th Street. In 1979, he died of a heart attack at 13 West 54th Street. Rockefeller's death became something of a tabloid scandal after it emerged that he died not at his Rockefeller Center office, as initial reports had claimed, but at an office in the West 54th Street townhouse, where he had been in the company of a younger female aide. The buildings at center and right are the Rhodes School (Nos. 9-11) and No. 7 West 54th Street.

L. P. Hollander & Company Building STATUS Designated Individual Landmark 3 East 57th Street ARCHITECT: Shreve, Lamb & Harmon DATE: 1929-30 STYLE: Art Deco The building’s up-to-date Art Deco designs were paired with the company’s modern retailing techniques to encourage sales of its elegant women’s clothing. The facade of the nine-story building is framed by shiny black granite, with rows of ribbon windows set close to the front plane of the building. Between the floors, the window spandrels are formed of embossed aluminum without a masonry backing, in a technique that the same architects later used extensively on the Empire State Building.

St. Patrick's Cathedral, 1946. Construction on James Renwick Jr.'s massive Gothic Revival cathedral began in 1858 to replace the 1815-completed St. Patrick's Church on Mulberry Street. Church construction was paused during the Civil War and resumed in 1865. Dedicated on May 25, 1879, the church towered over nearly all of the built environment of the then sparsely developed neighborhood. The church rose even taller in 1888 when the spires were added to the Fifth Avenue facade. Between 2012 and 2015, a $177 million restoration project repaired the stained glass windows, restored the ceiling, and cleaned and re-cut stones of the spires. Some fun facts:🎉 The church seats more than 2200 people. It has three organs. The Archbishops of New York are buried in a crypt under the high altar. The Pieta is three times larger than the Pieta in St. Peter's, Rome.

St. Regis Hotel ca. 1905 If one had sought out the most handsomely decorated hotel in Manhattan in the early nineteen-hundreds, one might well have turned to the new St. Regis, where rich marbles, bronze, and wood were displayed in a series of splendid salons, corridors, and suites designed by the firm of Trowbridge & Livingston. Today these glowing bronze doors still greet the visitor on arrival.

Radio City Music Hall (Rockefeller Center) ARCHITECT: Associated Architects DATE: 1931-32 STYLE: Art Deco The Radio City Music Hall is the only surviving Art Deco theater in the country to incorporate so great a variety of architectural, artistic, and decorative features. When the Music Hall was completed in 1932 it was rapidly recognized both nationally and internationally for its artistic and technical excellence and it was considered one of the finest designs in the history of modern theater. The artwork in the Music Hall was executed in novel materials by the leading designers, sculptors, and artists of the period. The auditorium of the Music Hall incorporates many unusual features, such as shallow balconies and side ramps. The great arched ceiling of the auditorium incorporates the complex lighting system as well as the air-conditioning and sound equipment. It is the only theater of its kind in the country, making it a principal attraction to New Yorkers and tourists.

Jack and Charlie's "21," date unknown The story of the bar that ended up here at 21 West 52nd Street began downtown. Cousins Jack Kriendler and Charlie Berns opened a speakeasy called the Red Head on East 4th Street in 1922. Jack and Charlie's venture moved to 88 Washington Place (it was called the Fronton here) and then 42 West 49th Street (called the Puncheon Club here). The Puncheon Club became one of the most popular speakeasies in town, with famous actors, artists, and politicians as regulars. They were forced out of their 49th Street digs by the development of Rockefeller Center in the late 1920s. Reopened as "Jack and Charlie's 21" here circa 1930, the club continued its illicit activities. They had clever ways to avoid detection. If the case of a raid, employees would push a button to enact a system of levers used to tip the shelves of the bar, sweeping the bottles down a chute and into the city's sewer system. After Prohibition ended the venue continued as a bar (legally) and restaurant. Supposedly a number of celebrities and politicians (JFK, Elizabeth Taylor, Sammy Davis, Jr. to name a few) have stored their personal wine collections here. Known today at the 21 Club, the 37 jockeys that line the facade remain (and even got a restoration in 2015).

Mrs. O.H.P Belmont Residence, ca. 1910. This neoclassical three-story townhouse was designed by the architecture firm of Hunt & Hunt for Alva Belmont and her second husband Oliver Belmont (though he died before the home was finished). Following her husband's death, she commissioned an additional wing on the home to house his collection of medieval and early Renaissance armor. The Armory as the large gallery was known hosted women suffragists events during Alva's later progressive years. She sold the home in 1923 (the armor collection went to the Metropolitan Museum). The Catholic Charities of the New York Archdiocese later occupied the mansion. The Archdiocese sold the building to a developer in the early 1950s who demolished it for a 23-story office building designed by Kahn & Jacobs.

Windsor Hotel, 1885.

Hotel Shelton, 1924. The Shelton Hotel was the brainchild of James T. Lee (grandfather of Jackie Kennedy). He wanted to build a massive bachelor hotel. And massive it was. When completed in 1923, the structure, designed by Arthur Loomis Harmon, had 1200 rooms. Designed in a Romanesque Revival style, the building was considered the first major successful example to adhere to the massing requirements of the 1916 Zoning Law. The three setbacks culminate in a central tower. The building became a model for other skyscrapers and its architect would go to design the Empire State Building a few years later. Originally opened as a men's only residence, the building began admitting women and families soon after it opened. Georgia O’Keeffe and photographer Alfred Stieglitz lived on the 30th floor from 1935 until 1937. And in 1926 Houdini had himself locked in a box and submerged in the basement swimming pool, eventually emerging unharmed. Today the building is the New York Marriott East Side.

Upon its completion in 1931, the new Waldorf Astoria became both the tallest and the largest hotel in the world. At 625 feet, and with 1.68 million sq. ft. in floor area, the Waldorf occupied an entire city block between Lexington and Park Avenue and offered more than 2,000 rooms. Designed by architect Lloyd Morgan of the firm Schultze and Weaver, the new Waldorf Astoria was a mountain of construction, with its limestone base matched above with gray bricks, custom-made for the hotel and named “Waldorf Gray.” The wide base was topped by two towers which were filled mostly with private residences. Ornamental spires with a streamlined classicism gave the hotel a modernist “Art Deco” character. Dubbed “New York’s Unofficial Palace,” the Waldorf Astoria’s luxurious suites have been home to many high-profile residents, including William Randolph Hearst Jr. and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Every president since Herbert Hoover has stayed in the hotel’s Presidential Suite, and the Waldorf is the official residence of the United States’ UN Ambassador.

277 Park Avenue, 1962. This Emery Roth & Sons office tower is a quintessential example of the modernist steel and glass towers that sprung up along Park Avenue in the late 50s through the 60s. This building is still owned by the Stahl Organization, the original developer of the project. The tower has 1.74 million square feet of office space spread over 50 stories. The famed architecture firm Emery Roth & Sons were known for "marketable designs that maximized the net rentable area," particularly after World War 2. This block-spanning lot had previously been occupied by a McKim Mead & White apartment building, though it was never meant to stand the test of time. In order to prepare for Midtown's development as a business district, the New York and Harlem Rail Road Company, who owned the lot at the time, had a foundation poured that could support a 75-story tower.

My Archive Spring 2019 "I love old photographs of buildings and architecture, especially if my family is in them! This is my beautiful Mom, Maria Bambace Lofaro, who had immigrated from Italy a few years before this photo was taken, so this must be around 1953-54? A family friend or relative must have taken it. This could have been a big outing for my Mom because she lived in Greenwich Village, and they ventured to Midtown." —Mary Lofaro

Rockefeller Apartments ARCHITECT: Harrison & Fouilhoux DATE: 1935-37 STYLE: Apartment Rockefeller Apartments were commissioned by John D. Rockefeller,Jr., and Nelson Rockefeller. Rockefeller Apartments changed the current standards in apartment house planning, giving 15 percent more space to light and air than required by the building codes. Other apartment house plans sought only to provide the maximum number of livable and rentable rooms using every available inch.

My Archive Summer 2019 “My family is on the way to Radio City for my birthday celebration. But what is a visit to the city without going to Rockefeller Center? I love the hats my sister and I are wearing. That was when you dressed up to go to the City. We were from Bayside, Queens, so Manhattan was always the City. We are wearing hats and white gloves.” —Marueen Engeleit

Museum of Modern Art, 1976. The Museum of Modern Art began as the brainchild of three women in 1929: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Lillie P. Bliss, and Mary Quinn Sullivan. The women rented rooms in the Heckscher building on Fifth Avenue with the idea of creating a museum that championed modern art, especially the new European modernist artists. Bringing in A. Conger Goodyear as the museum's president as well as other influential trustees, Rockefeller and co were able to open to the public in November of 1929. Abby's husband (John D. Rockefeller Jr.) wouldn't pay for the endeavor as it began and the Museum had several temporary sites after the Heckscher building, including Rockefeller Center. However, he eventually donated land for MOMA's permanent (and current) home. It was in 1939 that the MOMA's new site, notable for architects Philip L. Goodwin and Edward Durrell Stone's international design, opened to the public

The design and craftsmanship within the spaces Goelet Building make it among the finest examples of an Art Deco commercial interior. The marble polychromy, the horizontal and vertical battens, the inlay, and the aluminium leaf, characteristic components of the Art Deco, effectively define the sequence of these spaces. Robert Goelet, a financer, and real estate developer wished a building that would be comparable in architectural merit and prestige to the family mansion it replaced and would also complement the use and appearance of the buildings of the adjacent Rockefeller Center, then under construction. The decoration of the ceilings covered with aluminum leaf, with the exception of the Goelet swan, a specific and realistic referent to the client, offers a broad range of stylized and geometricized Art Deco elements.

W.H. Vanderbilt Residences ca. 1898 William H. Vanderbilt purchased the entire block front on the west side of Fifth Avenue between 51st and 52nd streets in 1879, having recently inherited a fortune from his father, Cornelius Vanderbilt. Architects John B. Snook and Charles Atwood designed twin houses connected by a glass atrium and entrance vestibule, and the famed Herter Brothers decorated the houses with such extravagance that Artistic Houses devoted 17 pages to its interiors upon their completion in 1883. W.H. Vanderbilt and his wife lived in the southern house, while their two daughters and sons-in-law occupied the other.

"Madison Ave., east side, north from and including East 52nd Street. The 2-story building on the N.E. corner of East 52nd Street, is the Walker-Gordon Laboratory with the Juillard Music Foundation Building adjoining it on the east." Walker-Gordon was a company established in 1891 by Dr. Thomas M. Rotch, scientist Gustavus A. Gordon, and business man George H. Walker in response to high infant mortality. The men of science knew they could greatly reduce these deaths by careful prescription feeding and Walker financed the company. Walker-Gordon produced high quality milk products from labs in Boston, New York City (the building seen in this photograph), and a 180-acre farm in Plainsboro, New Jersey.

Martin Erdmann House ARCHITECT: Taylor & Levi DATE: 1908-09 STYLE: English Renaissance Revival The Martin Erdmann House is an outstanding example of a fashionable English Renaissance Revival townhouse that was built 1908-09 to the designs of the prominent New York City architectural firm of Taylor & Levi. It was designed in a period-revival style that reflected the upper-class tastes of the wealthy art collector, Martin Erdmann, and as such, is a rare survivor of the time when the area around Fifth Avenue was an affluent residential neighborhood.

Fifth Avenue at the southeast corner of 46th Street, 1946. Notice the two versions of double-decker Fifth Avenue Coaches waiting at the light. On the left, an older model, likely a Yellow Coach-produced Type Z (1930) with a covered upper level. The bus on the right is a Model 735 (1936-1938), which was called the Queen Mary because of its supposed likeness to the cruise ship.

Sperry-Rand Building, September 11, 1963. Designed by the firm of Emery Roth & Sons, the massive Sperry-Rand Building, completed in 1963, stand 43-stories high and includes two million square feet of space. In the 1970s the Sperry Corporation, which had been founded in Brooklyn in 1910 to manufacture navigation equipment, sold typewriters, office equipment, electronic digital computers for business and the military, farm and aviation equipment, and consumer products like razors. These items were each produced under their own separate businesses but they formed the Sperry conglomerate.

The Fifth Avenue flagship store of Tiffany & Co., ca. 1940. The ten-story building was designed by Cross & Cross, and completed in 1940, replacing the jewelry brand's previous flagship, also on Fifth Avenue, at 37th Street.

Loew's Lexington Theatre, 1925. This structure was originally called the Lexington Opera House and was opened by Oscar Hammerstein I in 1914. Due to a negotiation with the Metropolitan Opera which disallowed Hammerstein from staging opera, the so-called "opera house" opened with a program of vaudeville acts and films. Hammerstein sold the theater to Marcus Loew, who utilized it as one of his circuit's most popular venues. Leow's Lexington Theatre was kept in pristine condition, and the Beaux Arts design was hardly altered until its demolition in 1961. The theatre sat 2,500 and had 40 boxes. It was razed to make room for another of Loew's ventures, the Loew's Summit Hotel

Rockefeller Center at Christmas, ca. 1945 While the official Christmas tree tradition at Rockefeller Center began in 1933– when 30 Rockefeller Plaza opened, its tradition began during the Depression-era construction when workers decorated a smaller 20 foot tree on Christmas Eve. According to Rockefeller Center, workers pooled money for that tree with the garlands made by workers' families.

"The second Waldorf Astoria (without the hyphen) is the present one located at Park Avenue and East 49th Street. Opened in 1931, it was the largest, the tallest and the most expensive hotel ever built, not just succeeding its illustrious predecessor , but surpassing it in every way imaginable. Today, more than eighty years after its completion, the Waldorf Astoria remains the epitome of the grand hotel. New York City’s Waldorf Astoria may well be the best known hotel in the world. Synonymous with grandeur, luxury and sophistication, its name has been appropriated by numerous pretenders from London to Shanghai, by the Waldorf’s own ubiquitous salad, and, somewhat amusingly, by one of Jim Henson’s Muppets. The Waldorf Astoria has been celebrated (and occasionally excoriated) in both song and verse by such talents as Irving Berlin, Langston Hughes, Cole Porter, Wallace Stevens, and Thomas E. “Fats” Waller. It has been featured in countless books, plays, and movies, including a top-billed role in M-G-M’s 1945 melodrama, Weekend at the Waldorf. Thousands of people who have never set foot through its doors know the Waldorf Astoria by sight and reputation. Set in the very heart of the fashionable Fifth Avenue residential district, the new hotel was intended to cater specifically to the socially prominent ladies and gentlemen of New York and the increasing number of distinguished foreign visitors to the city from abroad. To them, the Waldorf proffered the finest in French cuisine, a telephone in every room, and the privacy of meals served in their chambers, the first room service. It surrounded them with the art and trappings of a European royal court and an army of servants seeing to their every wish. Clearly, the Waldorf was their hotel. And how did all this come about? It begins as a tale of two cousins..." To learn more about all the Waldorf Astoria, check out William Alan Morrison's article in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.

An exterior photograph looking North on Lexington Avenue. The intersection at 55th Street is visible in the distance. Apartment houses line the street, with several businesses, such as a laundry and a grocer, occupying the ground floor. In the distance, there is a throng of pedestrians and streetcars and a horsedrawn carriage can be seen. To the extreme right, there is a statue of a Native American in front of a shop.

Sixth Avenue El demolition at 50th Street, 1939. Constructed in the 1870s, the Sixth Avenue El was the second elevated line erected in the city (after the Ninth Avenue El). After nearly 60 years of shadowing Sixth Avenue, shaking its adjacent buildings, and dropping all sorts of debris from its tracks, the Sixth Avenue El's death knell was sounded when the city began work on the underground Sixth Avenue Line in 1936. The city purchased the line for $12.5 million and made plans for its demolition. Following a loud and boisterous trip, as passengers stripped the train car for souvenirs, the final IRT Sixth Avenue Elevated train rumbled into the station at 53rd Street and Eighth Avenue at 11:26pm on December 4, 1938. The last passengers made off with destination signs, light bulbs, and straps, all the while smoking cigarettes in flagrant disregard of the printed signage (which was likely stolen too)! The process of razing the elevated structure began in early 1939. The Wurts Brothers captured this crowded process of demolition at 50th Street. The IND Sixth Avenue Line opened in December 1940, two years and one week after the elevated ceased operations.

135 East 52nd Street, 1912. Constructed on land purchased with donations by a number of wealthy New York society women, the Young Women's Christian Association building was completed and dedicated in 1912. The building housed the national headquarters of the charity. The section of the building entered through 135 East 52nd Street was known as "the Annex;" it provided space for the National Board Training program and residences for its trainees. Affectionately known as as "600," it was the first building to be built in the United States solely for the use of a woman's movement. The National Board of the organization decided to sell the building (which they had received many previous offers for) in 1981. The building was demolished and redeveloped. The Y.W.C.A moved into a number of rented headquarters through the 1980s and 1990s, including a stint in the Empire State Building. Following a reorganization in 2003, they consolidated their activities into their Washington, D.C. office.

Fuller Building, 41 East 57th Street, ca. 1995. The Fuller Building, constructed in 1929 for the Fuller Construction Company, which had previously been based in the Flatiron Building. The New York Times dubbed the 40-story Art Deco skyscraper a “jazz-age testament to the emerging commercial chic of 57th street.” Designed by the architectural firm Walker & Gillette, the building features rich bronze, marble, and mosaic details, as well as abstract sculptures by Elie Nadelman on both its interior and exterior.

Hotel Beverly, 1930. Built in the "hotel alley" of Lexington Avenue north of Grand Central Terminal as part of the two decade development known as Terminal City, the Beverly Hotel was completed in 1927. Designed by Emery Roth with tiered, set back massing, the hotel was marketed to “sophisticated New Yorkers” and advertised their "many sunny outdoor terraces." The building's striking silhouette made it a favorite subject for artists. Today, the neo-Romanesque building is the boutique Hotel Benjamin, and has retained (or been returned to) its original appearance.

In 1929 the Stewart & Company woman's department store building opened. Designed by Warren and Wetmore, the firm who designed Grand Central Terminal, this building was somewhat of a departure for the firm, whose work was usually firmly entrenched in a very traditional Beaux-Arts style. A massive retail addition to a growing commercial neighborhood, the hulking exterior was somewhat unadorned except for a detailed entranceway of limestone, bronze, platinum, and hammered aluminum and near the top of the facade, limestone relief panels of two nearly naked women. The interior was laid out as a series of shops, fashioned in a myriad of rich and exotic woods and plush modern furniture.

13 West 54th Street House (far left) ARCHITECT: Henry J. Hardenbergh DATE: 1896-97 This handsome townhouse was built in 1896-97 as one of a pair with No. 15 West 54th Street for William Murray, a prominent businessman from Larchmont, New York. Designed in a Renaissance-inspired style by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, the residence is a distinguished example of the fashionable townhouses that once characterized the West Fifties between Fifth and Sixth Avenues and is one of an ensemble of five townhouses on West 54th Street.

Completed in 1961, the Equitable Life Assurance Building was designed in the International style by the firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (architects of Lever House and the Manufacturers Hanover Trust, among others). With this new building, the Equitable Company moved uptown from its long-held (and disaster-tinged) location at 120 Broadway. The building includes a 42-story main tower and a 14-story mid-block wing. Rendered in a glass curtain wall with low profile aluminum spandrels, the building appears to have a glassier facade than it truly does. The occupancy of the building was well announced with massive lighted signage at the top floors. Once reading Equitable, the lighted sign now declares UBS the building's major tenant.

Museum of Modern Art, 1939. In 1929, Lillie P. Bliss, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and Mary Quinn Sullivan founded the Museum of Modern Art to encourage and promote the schools of modern art developing abroad. The museum's 1939 glass-and-steel building, designed by Philip L. Goodwin and Edward Durrell Stone, remains a striking architectural presence in the museum.

Designed expressly as a showcase for jewelry, this building has always provided an exquisite background for the display of gems and silverware. The simple show windows are well set off between handsome piers which lead the eye up to one of the most beautiful cornices in Manhattan.

General Electric Building, January 27, 1937. Built in 1931 as the RCA Victor Building, this 50-story skyscraper was designed by the firm of Cross & Cross. The building combines the general form of Gothic architecture (emphasized verticality,piers and butresses, and pinnacles) and Art Deco motifs and ornamentation. Both of the base and the tower boast fantastic design and ornamentation. The top of the tower has the look of Gothic tracery (or the stonework elements that support the glass in a Gothic window), but includes Deco depictions of electricity and radio waves. The facade of the building uses three brick colors (orange, buff, and tawny) which are also the brick colors of the adjacent domed St. Bartholomew's Church, which can be seen in this image at the bottom center.

30 Rock ca. 1938 Rockefeller Center has a visionary dimension: it materialized a microcosm of the twenties' ideal, rationalized city of the future. Unprecedented in its sweeping scale of "urban renewal" (decades before the term was invented), Rockefeller Center replaced three full city blocks of low-rise, low-rent buildings, stretching from Forty-eighth to Fifty-first Streets between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, with a skyscraper complex of more than a dozen mixed-use buildings, with its multiple towers, widely spaced for sunlight and views. The centerpiece of the harmonious architectural ensemble was the seventy-story RCA Building, a tower that took the new form of a "slab," rather than the stepped pyramid produced by the zoning law, and that achieved a titanic scale, a volume of more than two million square feet, that was matched only by the Empire State Building. Raymond Hood and Harvey Wiley Corbett collaborated as key senior figures on the Center's larger team of designers, called the Associated Architects of Rockefeller Center. In the earliest stages of the design, Corbett advised on the overall site plan, advocating for plazas and arcades, a two-story commercial mall that bridged the cross streets, and separate pedestrian and vehicular zones, as in his visionary proposals. Hood's major contributions to Rockefeller Center were the massing of the RCA Building and the introduction of roof gardens throughout the complex.xtensive development of roof areas as interlocking gardens and a lofty observation deck created a romantic landscape in the sky that surpassed the visionary drawings by Hugh Ferriss of the early 1920s. Raymond Hood saw roof gardens as a transformative element in the modern metropolis. He objected to ìthe dirty-brown cluttered waste of unrelieved ugliness which is the roof view of New York we have accepted as inevitable.î Instead, as he wrote in "Hanging Gardens of New York," The New York Times Magazine article shown here, tower occupants could enjoy "a picture to which art and nature have contributed color and design with a note of gayety." Hood proposed nearly seven acres of gardens for Rockefeller Center, covering two thirds of the total roof area. To sell this idea to his businessmen clients, Hood emphasized the gardens' economic value. Water H. Kilham Jr., who worked on the project, recounted how Hood approached the developmentís manager J. R. Todd, disingenuously inquiring how much rental value might be gained if the Center's towers overlooked an open space like Bryant Park. When Todd replied "Around an additional dollar per square foot." Hood exclaimed: "A dollar, Mr. Todd! . . .Do you know there will be about seven acres of roof over the lower parts of Radio City? A lot of office space will look out over those roofs. At a dollar more per square foot extra you could afford to landscape those roofs like the hanging gardens of Babylon." Not long afterward, Kilham recalled, "the architectural sculptor RenÈ Chambellan was indicating foliage in plasticine on the model of the roofs, and I was working out a system of wire netting that would retain the roots of trees so they wouldnít blow over in the relatively shallow soil." About four acres of gardens were actually constructed at Rockefeller Center.

View of Rockefeller Center from 30 Rockefeller Plaza, ca. 1934.

With the United States entering the First World War in April of 1917, many U.S. social groups began raising funds to help support the troops abroad.

University Club ARCHITECT: McKim, Mead & White; Charles F. McKim DATE: 1896-1900 STYLE: Italian Renaissance The University Club on its conspicuous corner site is one of the most handsome buildings on Fifth Avenue. Although this granite building of stately and noble proportions closely resembles a sixteenth-century Italian Renaissance palazzo, its exterior displays a combination of original architectural features. The handsome facade is divided into three main horizontal divisions separated by two strongly defined band courses. Each of the three divisions contains a row of large arched windows.

Charles Scribner's Sons Building ARCHITECT: Ernest Flagg DATE: 1912-13 STYLE: Beaux-Arts The interior of this building is a fine example of Beaux-Arts commercial space, which created an appropriate image for the sale of books. It represents Ernest Flagg’s ideas on the interrelationship of exterior and interior design and planning. The flamboyant ironwork which frames the first floor interior exemplifies some of the best design and craftsmanship of the early 20th century. The two-story vaulted space, organized as a basilica-like form, with its mezzanine, balconies, and clerestory is outstanding for its complex spatial elements and beauty of form, as articulated in the elegant mirrored end-wall, graceful central staircase, spiral staircase on the south side, and delicate cast-iron railings.

Remains of the Windsor Hotel, 1899. This photograph is dated one day after the massive Windsor Hotel fire that claimed the lives of more than 90 people. The charred ruins of the building were not demolished immediately and the search for victims went on for nearly a month. Despite suggesting that they would erect a monument to the tragedy's victims, hotel proprietor Warren F. Leland and land owner Elbridge T. Gerry ended up using the site for billboards in the year after the fire. In 1901 a new three-story building, the Windsor Arcade, was constructed and housed luxury shops. It was later demolished in 1910.

International Building Interior ARCHITECT: Associated Architects DATE: 1933-34 STYLE: Modernist The ground floor interior with accompanying mezzanine floor interior of the International Building is one of the grandest and most dramatic interior spaces in the Rockefeller Center complex and a major component of the Center’s second largest building. This interior follows the east-west axis of the International Building at the northern end of the Center. The lobby gains its effect from the form of the space and its decorative finishes. The elements of the design and rich materials are not only characteristic of Modernist design, but are also some of the finest examples of their type.

Collis P. Huntington House, 1898. In 1889 railroad magnate Collis Huntington, who had only a few years before married his longtime mistress, Arabella, following the death of his first wife, purchased five plots on 57th Street and Fifth Avenue. Just across the street from the massive George B. Post-designed Vanderbilt mansion, Huntington commissioned the same architect to build a grand home. (The rough and uneducated Collis and his sophisticated but poor-born second wife wanted social acceptance; this house was an effort towards that goal.) Completed in five years, the large mansion included full plumbing; ten bathrooms; a refrigerator room; an attached complex with massage rooms, a heated pool, and a Turkish bath; and ornate wall and ceiling frescoes. (A writer in the 20th century described the jumbled interior of the mansion as resembling "a wayward railroad station.") Following the completion of the mansion, Huntington made a poorly played attempt to buy their way into New York's elite. It backfired and while their home might have been on Fifth Avenue among the upper echelon of well-heeled New York, they remained on the outside. Huntington died in 1900 and his wife in 1924 (after amassing an extensive art collection and marrying her husband's nephew). In 1925 and 1926 the house had its contents sold at auction, from Arabella's jewelry to Chippendale chairs owned by George Washington. Soon after the house was demolished. In 1940 Tiffany & Co. opened their flagship store here in a Cross & Cross-designed modern building.

Central Doorway of RCA Building, 1933. Designed by Raymond Hood, the head architect of the Rockefeller Center complex, 30 Rockefeller Plaza was originally built for the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) between 1931 and 1933. The 30-story building has an austere Art Deco facade with Gothic elements. The Art Deco decoration is best seen at ground level and features heroic and mythical themes (inspired by the Rockefeller's philosopher consultant). The relief above the center door seen here was created by Lee Oscar Lawrie, a preeminent architectural sculptor (he also created the statue of Atlas with Rene Paul Chambellan for the complex). The relief called Wisdom considers the power of universe; the central, bearded figure (biblical or perhaps Zeus) holds a compass. He is blowing away clouds, which represent ignorance. With the compass he is directing the cosmic forces. The quote inscribed below the figure comes from the Old Testament Book of Isaiah: "Wisdom and Knowledge Shall Be The Stability Of Thy Times." He is flanked by smaller reliefs depicting Sound and Light.

Columbia University Midtown Campus, ca. 1897. Between 1857 and 1897, Columbia University was located between Madison and Park Avenues from 49th to 50th Streets. This location was the school's second home after moving north from Park Place. At the time, the school was known as 'Columbia College' —it would be christened 'Columbia University' upon its move to the Morningside Heights.

277 Park Avenue, 1926. This apartment building designed by McKim Mead & White was completed in 1925. The structure took up the entire block with its 12 sections and 432 apartments and included a "drive-in...giant interior court" according to the New York Times. The building was funded by the New York & Harlem Rail Road through the construction of the new Grand Central Depot, who's railyards below prompted a redevelopment of Park Avenue. One notable previous tenant was John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign. In 1931, the Real Estate Record and Guide noted that of this part of Park Avenue, "no further long-term leases are being granted," to make way for the area's growth as a business district. The building was leased in 1923 for a maximum of 63 years, though in 1948 it was repossessed by the New York and Harlem Rail Road Company. After a much-disputed demolition in the 50s, construction began on a new 50-story office tower to take its place in 1962. Surprisingly, the foundation which the (much shorter by comparison) original apartment sat on had been cast strong enough to support a 70-story building. The rail company had anticipated a tower all along.

In the mid-1930s, the Steuben Glass Company (a division of Corning) commissioned architects William and Geoffrey Platt and John M. Gates to design a new headquarters for the firm which highlighted its product. The facade was four times more glass then limestone. The limestone acted as a frame for the 3,800 glass blocks made of Corning's Pyrex. The critics were mixed regarding the design. One called it ''a definite disappointment,'' while Lewis Mumford thought it ''simple and excellent." A local newspaper suggested that the facade of fixed windows could be ''washed off with a hose, dust and grime coming off as if it were a mirror.'' In 1959 Steuben decamped to an even more modern and glassy building across the street. No. 718's new owner, the jeweler Harry Winston, gave the building a neo-Classical travertine facade with entirely different fenestration (arrangement of windows and doors). Today the building looks much like it did following the 1960 renovation

The St. Patrick's Day Parade, looking south on Fifth Avenue from St. Patrick's Cathedral, March 1942.

Windsor Arcade ca. 1907 Though long gone now, the Windsor Arcade once sparkled with lightbulbs, columns, and ornaments as people wandered through its shops. However, its whimsical nature covered up a much more serious history. It was St. Patricks Day, 1899 when parade attendees suddenly began to notice cries for help and smoke coming from the 1872 Windsor Hotel. Horror soon struck the crowd as they watched people throw themselves from windows and become engulfed in flames. The fire escapes, which were simply ropes, couldn't adequately assist victims in reaching the ground; many fell to grievous injury or death. In the end, almost a hundred people perished in the fire and the hotel was entirely raised. While Warren Leland, the hotel's manager, wished to rebuild, Eldridge T. Gerry, the owner of the land, rented the space to billboards while considering the problem. Eventually, Gerry's architect, Charles Berg came up with the flamboyant Beaux Art structure that Gerry dubbed "The Windsor Arcade." The Arcade occupied a full city block, complete with street-level stores, offices on the second story, and studios on the third. All this surrounded a courtyard with an elaborate arcaded entrance on Fifth Avenue. Lit up by electric light bulbs, many argued about its taste, but none could deny that set among around the surrounding brick buildings, it was eye-catching. The Windsor Arcade eventually meet its end as well; it was demolished in parts during the early 20th century, giving way to towers.

The Marble Twin's Story begins with the construction of the St. Regis Hotel. Furious about the 18 story hotel, the wealthy denizens of the neighborhood began rapidly buying up the surrounding real estate in order to control development. On Fifth Avenue between the Union Club and the Plant mansion, George Vanderbilt commissioned the firm Hunt & Hunt to build two matching townhouses. The houses that would become known as the marble twins were built such that they could be combined to form a larger mansion. Completed in 1905, they were in the style of Louis XV and presented Fifth Avenue with a unified facade. The Vanderbilts then sold them to wealthy friends (along with conditions that hotels or apartment buildings would never be built on the grounds.) The Goelet family moved into 547 and Willaim B. Sloane purchased the other for his daughter. Eventually, as society moved northward, the two twins were converted for commercial purposes. Gimpel & Wildenstein, fine art dealers, leased 547 Fifth Avenue and used it as a gallery to sell their collection of old masters. It would largely remain unchanged until American Express renovated it in 1938 in a commercial alteration that destroyed its graceful stone balcony and refined the first story. Seven years later, its twin 645 Fifth Avenue would be demolished. 647 Fifth Avenue would survive though and when Versace leased it in 1995 it would pay for a restoration of its original balcony and first floor. The corner twin is now the last of the many Vanderbilt built mansions that once lined this part of Fifth Avenue.

Lexington Avenue between East 53rd and 54th Streets, ahead of subway construction. The northward extension of the IRT East Side Line, later dubbed the Lexington Avenue Line would be completed more than six years later, in 1918. This view includes two important landmarks of Lexington Avenue religious life: at left, the 1870s-era Central Synagogue; at far right (No. 619), St. Peter's Lutheran Church. The latter building has since been replaced with an angular granite structure described by the New York Times's David Dunlap as "New York’s most architecturally successful postwar sanctuary."

St. Patrick's Cathedral ca. 1883 In order to build a new Cathedral representing New York's status, John Hughes set about raising funds, seeking out one hundred wealthy Catholics to contribute $1,000 each to a start-up fund. He expected another $100,000 in contributions in the second year. A substantial mortgage and contributions from the parishes of the city would finance the remainder of the approximately $1,000,000 that was projected. Construction on the cathedral began as the New York economy slowly recovered from the setbacks of the Panic of 1857, but work was suspended in 1860, due to a lack of funds and to tensions leading up to the Civil War. Hughes died in 1864 before work resumed. Starting in 1867, the Archdiocese began assessing parishes sums ranging from $150 to $5,000 annually toward construction costs for the cathedral. These assessments continued until 1876. By 1871, more than $1,071,000 had been collected. By the fall of 1878, the cathedral was essentially complete, although the architect had scaled back his plans somewhat. The spires over the western twin towers shown here, perhaps inspired by those of the Cologne cathedral, and other optional details like the flying buttresses were left for succeeding generations to finish. Persistent shortfalls in funding plagued the cathedral construction project. In 1873, the trustees mortgaged the Archbishop's residence to help close the building deficit. A final fundraiser was a diocese-wide Grand Fair held in the completed but unfurnished edifice. The fair featured booths from each of the city's 45 parishes. The fair's program included advertisements from sponsors, such as Tiffany & Co. and Hecker's Self-Rising Flour. Opening night celebrations, lit by 1400 gas jets, drew more than 20,000 people, including Mayor Smith Ely and various other municipal dignitaries. Visitors paid the 25¢ admission fee and then purchased raffle tickets for donated goods in the various parish booths. Over the course of the 42-day fair, they could also visit the shrine of the Lourdes grotto or the floral pavilion created from cut flowers. The fair had attractions for all ages, including "Fish Pond" for children, a tobacco table appealing to male fairgoers, raffles with prizes such as a barrel of flour or a ton of coal at 25¢ a chance, musical entertainment, and food ranging from oysters and lobster salad to desserts. When the doors finally closed, the fair had raised more than $172,000. Not until 1910 was the debt on St. Patrick's Cathedral paid off. The long-delayed consecration, a five-hour ceremony conducted by Archbishop John Francis Farley and attended by a host of lay and ecclesiastical dignitaries including Papal Nuncio Cardinal Vannutelli, was held on October 5, 1910. Fifty thousand spectators crowded the streets around the cathedral to witness the blessing of the building.

Designed by the same firm as the Empire State Building, 245 Park Avenue replaced the 1911-built Grand Central Palace. Completed in 1967, the 48-story skyscraper has variously been called the American Tobacco Company Building, the American Brands Building, and the Bear Stearns Building (before they moved to 383 Madison Avenue). In the late 1970s, the publishing firm Doubleday was headquartered here. Today tenants include Heineken, Major League Baseball, and the asset and wealth management groups ofJ.P Morgan Chase.

Lines in front of Employment Agencies, date unknown (1930s).

24 East 54th Street was the original location of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum or the Museum of Non-Objective Painting as it was known at its founding. These townhouses were replaced by an automobile showroom, likely in the 1920s, and in 1939 Peggy Guggenheim hired William Muschenheim to design the gallery space. The museum showcased abstract paintings by American and European artists, such as Vasily Kandinsky and Rudolf Bauer. The museum remained here until it moved to a townhouse at 1017 Fifth Avenue in 1948.

St. Patrick's Cathedral ca. 1924 James Renwick Jr., son of Professor Renwick of Columbia College and himself as an architect, was probably one of the best-equipped architects in New York to undertake the stupendous task of designing a stone cathedral in Manhattan. The construction alone extended over a period of some twenty years, and the result was a fairly competent copy of a French Gothic cathedral, adapted to American needs.

When you think of classic New York brands, you might come up with Nathan's or the Yankees before thinking of Steinway & Sons. However, the historic piano maker has deep roots in the five boroughs.

Villard Houses, ca. 1980. The Villard houses, a six-building Italian Renaissance-style brownstone development completed in 1884, was designed by architect Joseph M. Wells, for Northern Pacific Railway president Henry Villard. However, Villard's stay in his residence at No. 451 Madison would be short lived: he soon declared bankruptcy and retreated to Westchester County. In 1943, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia presided over the re-opening of the building as the Women's Military Service Club, offering inexpensive lodging to visiting service members. Most of the complex was later acquired by the Archdiocese of New York. A timely Landmark designation in 1968 saved some buildings from substantial demolition as part of the construction of the Palace Hotel, completed in 1980.

Windsor Hotel, March 17, 1899. The Hotel, despite being what some considered to far uptown for success, was very popular and profitable. Alas the owner of the Windsor, John T. Daly owed a large mortgage and substantial constructions debts. When the family whose land the building was located on began foreclosing proceedings, the owner hanged himself. During the 1880s and 1890s the hotel became a popular location for political, financial, and diplomatic wheeling and dealing. On St. Patrick's Day, 1899, as thousands of revelers streamed by the hotel for the annual parade, a guest on a top floor lit a cigar and did not proper extinguish the match. It ignited a curtain and the cigar smoker exited the building without notifying anyone. The fire spread extremely fast and soon the entire building was engulfed. Despite their best effort to rescue patrons, the firefighters were pushed back by the heat and were forced to watch as people jumped from windows to escape the flames. Some firefighters arrived in their dress blues directly from the parade route. They attempted to keep the fire from spreading to nearby buildings by hosing them down, to some small success. The building was largely collapsed by 4:30pm, just an hour after the blaze started. The still burning ruins took days to cool down enough for a thorough search of the building. In the end more than 90 people were killed.

Whitney Mansion, 1895. Constructed in 1875 for millionaire Frederick W. Stevens and designed by George Harney, the mansion was filled to rafters with antiques and furnishings that Stevens purchased in Europe. After Steven's passing, his widow sold the home to Oliver Payne who gave it to his sister Flora and her husband William C. Whitney. The Whitney's had the home remodeled by Stanford White, but only lived their briefly as Flora died in 1893 and William remarried and moved to a different Fifth Avenue mansion. William's son Harry Payne and his wife Gertrude Vanderbilt lived in the home until 1907 when it was sold and demolished. In the 1920s the Heckscher Building (also called the Crown Building) was erected on the site.

Eleanor Roosevelt was a noted human rights activist, longest-serving first lady of the United States and friend to knish lovers everywhere!

Postum Building, 1936. One of the 1920s office building additions to the Terminal City neighborhood, the Postum Building was completed in 1925. A Neoclassical building designed by the firm of Cross and Cross, it calls to mind the style of Warren & Wetmore's Terminal City creations, while lacking the more decorative elements of the earlier buildings.

Night Scene of R.C.A. Building from 9 Rockefeller Plaza, 1937.

The Gotham Hotel ARCHITECT: Hiss & Weekes DATE: 1902-05 STYLE: Neo-Italian Renaissance The imposing neo-Italian Renaissance Gotham Hotel (now the Peninsula Hotel) is one of the few structures on Fifth Avenue which recalls the golden age of luxury hotels and the prominent place they occupied in the formation of the city. Rising twenty stories, including a multi-storied rooftop addition, at the southwest corner of West 55th Street and Fifth Avenue, the boldly rendered Gotham is a stylistic counterpoint to its contemporary, the flamboyant Beaux-Arts St. Regis Hotel directly across Fifth Avenue.

Heckscher Building, ca. 1921. Today known as the Crown Building (so named in 1983 for the crown-like look of the illuminated building at night), the 26-story building was completed in 1921 as the Heckscher Building. Designed by architects Warren & Wetmore, the French Renaissance style building was one of the first office towers designed and erected after the passage of the 1916 zoning laws. it was topped by a 12-foot gold-plated weathervane in the form of a rooster. In November of 1929 the Museum of Modern Art opened in galleries on the 12th floor of the Heckscher Building. The first exhibition was a show featuring the works of Cezanne, Gauguin, Seurat and van Gogh. The museum remained until 1932 and its final show in the space was "Modern Architecture: International Exhibition," curatated by Phillip Johnson. The gold weathervane was removed in 1942 and melted down for the war effort. The building was stealthily purchased by Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos in 1981 and soon after had its facade gilded and illuminated by a lighting designer (hence the name change based on its new look). Following the fall of the Marcos regime, the building was sold in 1991. Its most recent sale in 2015 for $1.8 billion made NYC real estate history, a world record price per square foot, $4,564.

Lever House, ca. 1952. Designed by the huge international firm, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Lever House ushered in the age of the "glass box" skyscraper (pioneered by the architects at SOM). Completed in 1952, the green-tinted glass curtain wall and elevated horizontal plaza at the base (set off the ground by columns) epitomize the International Style. At only 24 stories, Lever House is smaller than both most nearby skyscrapers as well as the large glass box commercial buildings designed by SOM since 1952. In an unusual occurrence (especially in comparison to the current real estate market), the building, instead of occupying its full zoning allowance, uses only 25 percent of the available zoning and provides open public space on part of the lot.

Elizabeth Arden Building, 689-691 Fifth Avenue, ca. 1977. Formerly the Aeolian Building, now the Elizabeth Arden Building, 689 Fifth Avenue was constructed in 1925-27 by Warren & Wetmore for the Gould Realty Co. Designed by the same firm that built Grand Central Terminal, this 14-story French Renaissance structure was leased to the Aeolian Company, a top manufacturer of pianos and roll-operated instruments, until 1938. During that time, the company maintained a 150-seat recital hall on its second floor. Since Aelion's departure, 689 Fifth Avenue has served as the flagship location of Elizabeth Arden’s Red Door Salon. In 1970, the building set a retail leasing record when Gucci agreed to pay $100 per square foot for retail space in the corner store.

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

48th Street west across Third Avenue. The Shelton Hotel is the tall building at center, February 1, 1938.

Goelet Building ARCHITECT: Victor L. S. Hafner; Edward Hall Faile DATE: 1930-32 STYLE: Art Deco The ten-story Goelet Building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 49th Street, built in 1930-32, was designed by Victor L. S. Hafner in the Art Deco style but modified to exhibit the supporting skeletal frame devised by the engineering firm of E. H. Faile. The spare horizontality of the lower stories’ glazed curtain walls suggests that, stylistically, this building is a transitional monument between the Art Deco and the International style.

The massive scale of Rockefeller Center is adorned with countless art deco reliefs and sculptures which soften the harden corners and squared-off entryways of the building. This selection gives a brief overview of a few works of art perched on the exterior of this monumental complex.

St. Bartholomew’s Church ca. 1995 St. Bartholomew’s Church on Park Avenue and 51st street was designed by Bertram Goodhue and completed with the addition of the dome designed by Mayers, Murray, and Phillips in 1927. One of the largest congregations of the Episcopal Church, St. Bartholomew’s with its “Cross of Triumph” at 148-foot above street level, still keeps its grand scale among towering apartment buildings. The 570-ft RCA Victor Building immediately behind it has identical brick and its Gothic style crown make it appear as an extension of the church’s style and presence.

In the early 1880s, as stone cutters were completing work on the William K. Vanderbilt mansion, the home's well-loved architect Richard Morris Hunt discovered that the artisans had created his likeness as a tribute. The statue of Hunt as a stone-cutter was installed on the roof over the entrance to the house. That home was demolished in 1926 and it is unknown if the statue was saved.

University Club of New York ca. 1915 Of all the buildings in New York which have been influenced by the Italian Renaissance, this club probably comes closest to resembling a sixteenth-century palazzo; yet despite this fact, the combination of details is quite original.

Durand-Ruel Gallery ca. 1913 When one thinks of the Impressionist paintings in New York, whether it be Degas, Monet, or Pissaro, one is more likely to think of the Met before a little gallery on 57th Street. However, the building in this photo was extremely important in introducing this painting style to Americans. As 57th Street became less and less residential at the turn of the century, art galleries began to spring up in place of homes. Few of these were more prominent than the Durand-Ruel Gallery, which first opened in Paris in the early 19th century and made its way to New York in 1887. Taking the place of the Morris Mansion, the Durand-Ruel family contracted Carrere & Hastings to build a French Renaissance building eight stories tall on 57th Street in 1913. The building served as both a gallery to present their art as well a residence for the family, on the floors above the gallery space. The gallery would go on to be a success, and it held a series of shows that helped familiarize New York collectors with Impressionist paintings. The Durand-Ruel Gallery left the space in 1950, and, in the 1980s, it was demolished for the construction of the IBM building.

Look Building ARCHITECT: Emery Roth & Sons DATE: 1948-50 STYLE: European Modernism The 21-story Look Building dates to 1948-50, when the minimalist aesthetics of European Modernism first began to transform the character of “setback” office buildings. That this handsome mid-20th-century modern structure combines tiers of ribbon-like windows with tightly-rounded corners and setbacks clad with a white brick to create a unique and memorable silhouette.

Saks Fifth Avenue is one of the grand flagship department stores that turned Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan into the city’s and the country’s premier shopping street.

Rockefeller Apartments, October 20, 1947. The Rockefeller Apartments, constructed between 1935 and 1937 in the International style, were commissioned by John D. Rockefeller, Fr. and Nelson Rockefeller. Designed by Wallace Harrison, who would go to collaborate further with the Rockefellers, the two buildings (the other is 24 West 55th Street) were created as a unit and were constructed with 15 percent more space given to light and air than was required by the building codes.

Hampton Shops Building ARCHITECT: Rouse & Goldstone DATE: 1915 STYLE: Neo-Gothic Designed in the neo-Gothic or Perpendicular Gothic style, it has an 11-story tripartite facade clad with grey terracotta resembling granite. This distinctive style was chosen because not only did it complement the St. Patrick’s Cathedral complex, which the building faces, but it also evoked the kinds of traditional-style furniture that Hampton Shops sold.

Windsor Hotel, ca. 1885. The Windsor Hotel, which occupied the entire blockfront on the east side of Fifth Avenue between 46th and 47th Streets, was hotel for a new kind of neighborhood. Construction on the seven-story hotel began in 1871, the same year the Grand Central Depot opened a few blocks away. The lots on Fifth Avenue between 42nd Street and 50th Street (where St. Patrick's Cathedral would rise in 1878) were being transformed from simple wood-frame structures, open spaces, and natural features like ponds, into a neighborhood of wealthy residents. When the hotel opened in 1873, it catered to this affluent sect. It was referred to in a late 19th century book as “at that time, the most luxurious and aristocratic hostelry in New York.”

Cadillc Salon, 1927. This ornately designed showroom was constructed in 1918 for the Fleetwood Metal Body Company. Fleetwood, established in the first decade of the 20th century in Pennsylvania, manufactured high end (and colorful) automobile bodies. These products were favored by a number of the rich and famous. The two-story Mediterranean-inspired building fit in well with its elaborate and fanciful mansion neighbors. In 1925 General Motors bought our Fleetwood and the 57th Street showroom had its facade altered to read Cadillac Salon, for one of GM's premier models. Eventually the Fleetwood bodies and the Cadillac chassis they were attached to, once displayed here, were replaced by other GM models. The car showroom likely moved out prior to the mid 1960s when GM built their new headquarters on Fifth Avenue. Today the lot that once housed the fancy car showroom is part of the massive IBM Building at 590 Madison Avenue.

592 Fifth Avenue, ca. 1975. In 1964 the building as drastically altered. Additonal stories were added and the facade was reclad with a white marble broken up by uniform elongated, tinted oval windows. Architectural firm Hausman & Rosenberg created this sleek modern look. In early 2017 the building's owner and primary tenent, United Overseas Bank, unveiled plans for another reclading of this building, this time (unsurprisingly) in metal and glass.

As the city expanded and the relentless churning of commerce caused New York's population to explode, the city pushed northward. As the city itself moved northward, so did its elite. They settled along the undeveloped edge of the brand new Central Park, building enormous homes and mansions to celebrate their fabulous wealth. This walk takes you through a selection of the Fifth Avenue mansions that would have once dominated the Avenue.

Racquet and Tennis Club Building ARCHITECT: McKim, Mead & White; William S. Richardson DATE: 1916-19 STYLE: Neo-Italian Renaissance The Racquet and Tennis Club Building, a superb example of the work of the architectural firm of Mckim, Mead & White, was built in 1916-18 as the third home of the Racquet and Tennis Club. Dominating the blockfront of Park Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Streets, the building is a notable essay in neo-Italian Renaissance architecture, embodying the principles of Beaux-Arts design to create a structure which is appropriate to the site and to the needs of the Racquet and Tennis Club.

430 Park Avenue, ca. 1943. Warren & Wetmore, the architects of Grand Central Terminal, designed this building for Spencer Fullerton Weaver in 1916. Originally erected as a residential development, the structure in its early years featured separate entrances at 55th and 56th Street; each entryway served as a corridor to one luxury apartment per floor. Due to development pressure and the changing neighborhood south of 57th Street, in the mid 1950s the building was stripped and converted into offices. With renovations done by the architecture firm Emery Roth & Sons, the building's original brick and limestone facade was replaced with a glass wall along its Park Avenue facing side. Between 1955 and 2012, the building hosted a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed automobile showroom. Over nearly a 60 year period, the showroom displayed the latest and greatest imported cars, including a Mercedes-Benz from 1957 to 2012.

Aeolian Building ARCHITECT: Warren & Wetmore DATE: 1925-27 STYLE: Neo-Classical The Aeolian Building was constructed to the design of architects Warren & Wetmore, a firm best known for its designs for hotels and railroad-related buildings. Designed in a restrained and graceful neo-Classical style with French Renaissance style detailing, the Aeolian Building is clad in Indiana limestone with Italian marble spandrel panels, and buff-colored terracotta on the upper portion.

"Atlas" in front of the International Building at Rockefeller Center, ca. 1976. Lee Lawrie's seven-ton bronze statue depicting Atlas, the Titan of Greek mythology, was installed in 1937.

St. Bartholomew's Church, ca. 1921. The parish of St. Bartholomew's Protestant Episcopal Church was founded in 1835. The congregation's first church was located on the corner of Lafayette at Great Jones Street in the neighborhood now known as NoHo. In the early 1870s, the congregation moved uptown to a new church designed by James Renwick, Jr. While in this location the church became very involved in social services, establishing six Sunday schools in five languages, a rescue mission, and a medical clinic. A new pastor in the early years of the 20th century advocated for a new church as, "a great gift of beauty to the city." In 1914 the church purchased a new plot of land at Park Avenue and 51st Street and Bertram Goodhue was hired as architect. The resulting structure was a grand edifice in a Byzantine-Romanesque style. The original design was scaled back quite a bit due to financial debts. The first mass was held in a very unfinished building in 1918 and the largely completed church was officially consecrated in 1923.

Fuller Building ARCHITECT: Walker & Gillette DATE: 1928-29 STYLE: Art Deco The first floor of the Fuller Building is an elegant Art Deco public space. The Fuller Building was built to be the headquarters of one of the largest and most important construction firms in America, the George A. Fuller Company. The interior’s stylized classical motifs joined to modernistic geometric patterns continue the Art Deco design of the building’s exterior. The design is elegantly executed in bronze and marble, and it includes depictions of the Fuller Company’s major works and images of the construction trades, promoting the Fuller Company’s premier role in the industry.

We stand alongside the Black community and all those speaking against systemic racism and violence with justice, hope, and truth. The fight for justice is one that we all need to play a role in, whatever form that might be. In our sphere of work, this means doing our part to help make archives more inclusive and equitable to communities that have historically been left out. As a start, this story is dedicated to honoring Black life and legacy in New York. Read on for stories of triumph in injustice.

592 Fifth Avenue, ca. 1912. Constructed in 1911 to the designs of famed firm Carrère and Hastings, 592 Fifth Avenue was originally a Beaux Arts style structure. It was built as the headquarters of the Black, Starr & Frost Company, a jewelry firm. Though the building survives today, it has a very different look today.

St. Nicholas Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, 1923. The western blockfront of Fifth Avenue between 48th and 49th Streets, including private residences and the St. Nicholas Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church. W. Wheeler Smith’s magnificent Gothic Revival church was built in 1872 for the well-heeled uptown congregation of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, a denomination that had been active in New York since 1628. Smith’s design featured an out-of-scale 265-foot steeple, visible for miles around. The church attracted prominent members, including the Roosevelt family, who occupied pew no. 39. As Midtown development accelerated and skyscrapers encroached on the church and its valuable real estate, the congregation found themselves under increasing pressure to sell. The final service was held in July, 1949. The church was razed later that year, to be replaced by the Sinclair Oil building at 600 Fifth Avenue.

The famous art collector Peggy Guggenheim opened her first gallery called Art from this Century on the seventh floor of this building. The gallery, which opened its door in the midst of World War II (1942), became the meeting place and exhibition space for exiled European artists. The opening show was a groundbreaking success, displaying works by established European Cubists and Surrealist artists. Most notably, the gallery is credited for launching the career of many American Abstract Expressionist artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.

Ritz-Carlton Hotel, ca. 1910. The first of what would eventually become a chain of hotels, the original Ritz-Carlton opened on Madison Avenue in 1911. Designed by Warren \&Wetmore, architects of the new Grand Central Terminal. The ambiance, service, and gathering spaces were considered some of the city's most spectacular. Other Ritz-Carlton Hotels opened all over the country and world (including Philadelphia, Atlantic City, Boston, Madrid, and Paris) over the next two decades. The hotel's dinning room was the first place that women were permitted to smoke in public and supposedly the French chef at the Ritz invented (or re-invented) Vichyssoise. In 1951 the hotel closed and was quickly razed, prompting a sad, nostalgic article in the New York Times that enumerated all of the famous old hotels that had also been lost.

William K. Vanderbilt Mansion ca. 1928 No single building better symbolized the Gilded Age than the home of William K. Vanderbilt, completed in 1883. While the rich had been flaunting their wealth in costumes and jewels, Vanderbilt displayed his dollars in limestone. And then other society men and women followed suit. When Vanderbilt's house went up, most of the city's elite lived in unassuming homes such as J.P. Morgan's. The Houses produced a streetscape so monotonous that it provoked "Edith Wharton's ire. She wrote of "little, low studded rectangular New York with its universal chocolate-colored coating of the most hideous stone ever quarried," and bemoaned the lack of "towers, porticoes, fountains or perspectives." Vanderbilt commissioned architect Richard Morris Hunt to create something that no doubt met Wharton's desire for something different. With Vanderbilt's wife, Alva, directing the project, Hunt produced a French Renaissance-style house that came to be known as the "petit chateau." It quickly commanded not only local but also national attention. In 1885, the country's 75 top architects named it the third best building in the United States, after the United States Capitol and Trinity Church. Within a few months of moving in, Alva hosted an extravagant costume ball that doubled as housewarming and social vindication. Mrs. Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, the doyenne of New York Society, had denied the Vanderbilt family invitations to her own affairs. This time, it was Alva who left Mrs. Astor off the list- but only after encouraging Astor's daughter to practice a dance for the party. In response, Astor paid her first house call to Mrs. Vanderbilt, which led to an invitation and social acceptance. Just seven months later, the Vanderbilt family would further solidify their place at the center of elite society with the opening of the Metropolitan Opera house, which William's father, William H. Vanderbilt, had helped to establish. The mansion went up for sale a few months after Vanderbilt's death in July 1920. It was demolished in 1926. The site has been occupied over the years by two successive office towers.

View north along the east side of Lexington Avenue toward 49th Street, October 20, 1915.

Time and Life Building, undated postcard. Opened in the spring of 1937, 9 Rockefeller Plaza (now called 1 Rockefeller Plaza) is a 36-story skyscraper. Completed in 114 work days, a month ahead of schedule, it was the eleventh building in the Rockefeller Center complex. The Art Deco office building was designed by Rockefeller Center's associated architects, led by L. Andrew Reinhard and Wallace Harrison. Early tenants of the building included the Girl Scouts, a number of advertising agencies and publishing houses, and the Museum of Modern Art (who stayed until their new building was completed 1939). The largest tenant, who moved in a year after the building opened, was Time, Inc, the publisher of Time Magazine, Life, and Architectural Forum, among others. This tenant gave the building its name; it was the original Time-Life Building (today the 1957-completed building at 1271 Sixth Avenue is the Time-Life Building).

Roger Horne, a Mohawk ironworker, grasping a rope in each hand and looking upward on a construction site at Park Avenue and 53rd Street in New York City. 1970 - 1971. David Grant Noble photographs. Courtesy of the National American Indian Memorial.

My Archive Summer 2019 "My parents were divorced, and my dad used to take me to a fancy lunch on Sundays and then we would walk along Fifth Avenue, or sometimes go ice skating or to the zoo. So it's a photo of me (Jennifer Place) taken by my father (Willard Fiske Place)." —Jennifer Place

No. 26 East 55th Street (left), ca. 1915. Between 1945-1955, the venerably Hugo Gallery was located in this townhouse. In the late 1940s, gallerist Alexander Iolas exhibited works from surrealist painters, including Rene Magritte. In 1952, the gallery mounted a young Andy Warhol's first solo exhibition, entitled "Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote."

653 Fifth Avenue ca. The story of 653 Fifth Avenue begins like the story of many of the mansions on Fifth Avenue: with a family dynasty. Morton Plant was the son of a fabulously wealthy railroad magnate Henry Plant. By all accounts, Henry and Morton's relationship was strained and upon his death, Henry attempted to leave his massive fortune to his grandchild. However, Morton was not one to stand idly by and he challenged the will successfully. The money having been secured, Morton began to live the life of a robber baron. Nor was Morton profligate, a successful businessman himself, he built on the advantages given to him by his father. Befitting his newfound status, Plant purchased the land at 653 Fifth Avenue from William Vanderbilt and commissioned the architect Robert W. Gibson to build him a home. Gibson, who had previously designed cathedrals and churches, built the sumptuous six-story mansion with a pillared entrance on 52nd Street. However, while it completed in 1905, the neighborhood around the home was changing. Real estate developers and tradesmen were moving in, and the heirs and robber barons that occupied the area were losing the struggle to preserve the neighborhood. With the Waldorf, St. Regis, Plaza and other hotels opening, the area was getting busier and busier. However, Morton withstood the changing area and his marriage would bring Maisie Plant into the home in 1914. It was Maisie that would give Morton a reason to leave. One day, Maisie was shopping at Cartier's flagship on Fifth Avenue when she spotted a beautiful set of pearls. The double-string set was valued at a million dollars and presented an interesting and unique opportunity. Pierre Cartier had been looking for a showroom that would properly enhance the brand's prestige and Morton was looking to get out of the neighborhood where he built his mansion. A deal was struck: the mansion was traded for 100$ and a string of pearls. Cartier assumed ownership of the mansion and Plant was free to move uptown. Cartier agreed to leave the exterior almost entirely untouched (and until it's 2000 renovation made very few alterations to the interior as well.) Morton Plant's body might not have agreed to the deal however, he died the next year, leaving Maisie single and wealthy. Cartier has preserved and used the mansion ever since as their primary US showroom.

Saint Thomas Church and Parish House ARCHITECT: Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson DATE: 1906-13 STYLE: Church The elevations are replete with ornament. The buttresses of the square tower, as well as those on the 53rd Street side, are simple and serve as beautiful foils for the elaboration of the main entrance and rose window above it. In beauty, detail and construction, this church is a masterpiece. The Parish House (formerly the Rectory) nestles alongside the Church on 53rd Street to the west of the chapel, and the integration of these elements is a superb accomplishment.

Hotel Barclay, 1928. Opened in 1926 as a residential hotel, the Barclay was designed by the architectural firm of Cross & Cross. Right in the center of the hustle of Terminal City (the lobby had a ticket booth for rail travel) the hotel was luxurious and popular among the glamorous social circles of the city. Between 1939 and 1962 the Cornell Club was headquartered in this building. The hotel was purchased by the InterContinental Hotel Group in 1978 and has seen a number of renovations in the last 40 years. The most recent renovation of the now named InterContinental New York Barclay Hotel was completed in 2016. Between 1926 and 2010 when the hotel closed briefly for renovation, it hosted the flagship location of Caswell Massey, the oldest apothecary and perfumery in the country (established 1752).

Waldorf Astoria Hotel, 1931. Originally two separate 19th century hotels that become one, on the land later occupied by the Empire State Building in the 1930s, the Waldorf Astoria Hotel opened its doors at 50th Street and Park Avenue in 1931. At the time it was the tallest and largest hotel in the world. President Hoover mentioned the hotel in a White House address, saying, "The opening of the new Waldorf Astoria ... marks the measure of nation's growth in power, in comfort, and in artistry." Built on the plot of land previously occupied by the New York Central Railroad powerhouse, the 47-story Art Deco building was designed by architects Schultze and Weaver. The main hotel occupied the lower 20-floors, while the central twin Waldorf Towers (topped with bronze-clad cupolas) were designed for 100 suites, with a portion of them leased as long term residences. Famous tenants of the building have included Herbert Hoover, General Douglas MacArthur, Bugsy Siegel, Lucky Luciano, and Cole Porter.

The F.M. Schaeffer Brewing Company was the longest operating brewery in New York City and the oldest lager beer company in the United States. It was officially founded in 1842 by two brothers who had immigrated from Wetzler, Prussia, Germany to NYC and brought with them the recipe to a popular lager beer from their hometown. Lager beer was unheard of in America at this time but thanks to the Schaeffer brothers, quickly became the beer of choice for New Yorkers and East Coast Americans. Their headquarters and brewing facilities remained in the city for over a century, and they were the last brewing company to operate in New York until the late 1970s. Their locations include Seventh Avenue and 17th Street (present-day Barneys!) where they stayed briefly and later moved to Park Ave from 50th to 52nd Street. They remained in their Park Avenue location until the early 20th century. They then moved to Kent Avenue in Brooklyn, where they remained until officially closing their New York plants in 1976. Today, Schaeffer Beer is owned by the Pabst Company, who still brew Schaeffer beer under the Miller Company to this day.

Saks Fifth Avenue ARCHITECT: Starrett & Van Vleck DATE: 1922-24 STYLE: Neo-Renaissance Saks Fifth Avenue is one of the grand flagship department stores that turned Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan into the city’s and the country’s premier shopping street. Designed by department store specialists Starrett & Van Vleck and built in 1922-24, Saks had to conform both to the conservative impulse to harmonize with the architectural character of Fifth Avenue, as promulgated by the Fifth Avenue Association, and to the modern requirements of an up-to-the-minute luxury department store, as well as to the new zoning law of New York which mandated upper floors to be progressively set back from the lot-line. The resulting design was a handsome, but restrained and dignified neo-Renaissance style retail palazzo, with its administrative offices occupying the less visible setback stories above the seventh floor.

Summit Hotel, undated postcard. The Summit Hotel (completed 1961) was the first major New York project for architect Morris Lapidus. Known for his oversized and somewhat garish Miami hotels (the Fontainebleau Hotel, particularly), Lapidus introduced a new type of building geometry to the staid rectangular forms of midtown. The 51st Street frontage is rendered as a subtle curve, with a uniform facade pattern of windows tucked between protruding white-brick masonry. Architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable said of the hotel: ''The Summit is a glittering display of gaudy confusion...\[m]osaics, marbles, woods, enamels, fabrics, synthetics, colors and crafts have been poured forth and combined with profligate abandon and aggressive insensitivity.'' Others have described it as jolly and welcome surprise among the city's grid. The architect himself noted many years after its completion that it was the "most hated" hotel in the city. But despite its scorn, it can be credited with—if not directly inspiring other eclectic building— at least laying the foundation for later experiments in architectural geometry. The hotel has changed hands a number of times in the last few decades and has had extensive alterations. Today it is the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Metropolitan. While many of the more ostentatious features have been removed or toned down, the groovy eight-story sign on the Lexington Avenue facade, which now spells out Doubleday on its oval protrusions, remains.

General Electric Building ARCHITECT: Cross & Cross DATE: 1929-31 STYLE: Art Deco Designed by the firm of Cross & Cross in the Gothic mode of the Art Deco style which is both symbolic and expressive of the function of the building, this tower is a major example of Art Deco architecture. The massing and articulation of the building, shown through the use of ornament and color, is remarkable and laudable. Not only does this treatment illustrate the breadth of the Art Deco, but it also gives the General Electric Building exemplary status. Moreover, the building is the successful culmination of the Cross & Cross firm’s efforts to develop a coherent and cohesive articulation for tall office buildings.

LOOK Building, October 26, 1951. Completed in 1950, the Look Building set a new standard for minimalist Modern office buildings. Needing to comply with zoning codes regarding setbacks, the 21-story structure renders those setback through uniform rows of windows and white brick, with tightly-curved corners. Its massing and setbacks give it a wedding-cake-like silhouette similar to a number of other Modern buildings in the city, namely the Starrett Lehigh Building. Designed by the firm of Emery Roth & Sons (by then led by the sons, as Roth died in 1948), the project was developed by Uris Brothers (also a second generation firm). According to the LPC Designation Report, "built on speculation, the Look Building needed to be fashionable, practical, and profitable." And the project was just that. Early tenants included the firm that designed it, famed industrial designer Raymond Loewry, and a number of publishers and magazines, including the eponymous publication, Look (much to the chagrin of fellow tenant Esquire). Today the building's tenants include the Municipal Arts Society.

Roosevelt Hotel, 1924. Named in honor of former President Teddy Roosevelt, the 1924 hotel was constructed on land leased by the New York State Realty and Terminal Company, a division of the New York Central Railroad. Designed by George B. Post & Son, the hotel was built with storefronts and not lounges on the sidewalk level, owing to its construction during Prohibition. Hotel guest once had direct access to Grand Central through a basement tunnel. The hotel was purchased in 1943 by Conrad Hilton, who three years later founded the Hilton Hotel chain. The Roosevelt was the first hotel to have a television in every room, which they instituted in 1947. The hotel has undergone numerous large scale renovations in the last 20 years and remains open as a luxury hotel.

In the early 1910s, the building was taken over by art and antique dealer Charles Duveen (brother to the more famous dealer Joseph Duveen). Charles added the sixth floor (with his name boldly advertised at the top) and toned down the facade decoration.

Lexington Avenue between East 51st and 52nd Streets, February 18, 1915. At center left is the Lexington Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, built in 1861. In 1937, the historically Swedish congregation moved to a new sanctuary on East 62nd Street, known as the Lexington United Methodist Church.

St. Bartholomew's Church ca. 1926 When the new Saint Bartholomew's was built in early twentieth century, the handsome entrances, designed in 1902 for the earlier church, were moved from Madison Avenue and incorporated in the new structure. They were inspired by the Romanesque Church of Saint Giles at Arles, France, and blended singularly well with the Byzantine splendor of the new edifice. The tower of the General Electric Building, which rises directly behind Saint Bartholomew's, used the same warm-colored brick as the church to harmonize with it- a farsighted bit of planning rarely encountered today

Lever House STATUS Designated Individual Landmark 390 Park Avenue ARCHITECT: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; Gordon Bunshaft DATE: 1950-52 STYLE: International Lever House is a 24-story glass and stainless steel clad office building composed of a vertical slab rising above a horizontal base. Its construction in 1950-52 heralded the beginning of a new wave of American skyscraper construction and a new synthesis of modernist architectural ideals. Since the time of its completion, its crystalline forms and glazed curtain walls have attracted world attention. It has assumed a major role in the literature of modern architecture and has been widely recognized as a key monument in the evolution of the International style.

Beverly Hotel (now The Benjamin) ARCHITECT: Emery Roth DATE: 1926-27 STYLE: Romanesque Above a handsome two-story arcaded limestone base (largely reconstructed) the upper stories of grayish-brown brick terminate in a series of skillfully modeled setbacks that rise toward a lofty octagonal tower with wheel windows that is topped by a pavilion with tile roof and copper finial. The Beverly Hotel is richly ornamented with stylized Romanesque motifs and incorporates details such as pelican and owl sculptures and warrior-head corbels.

Towers of the Waldorf Astoria in the Midtown Manhattan skyline, ca. 1935.

In the spring of 1930 Stewart and Company filled for bankruptcy and went out of business, a victim of the Depression and over extending the resources of what was a small company. In the fall of that year the building was reopened as the Bonwit Teller department store, another woman's retailer. The company hired Ely Jacques Kahn to redesign the interiors and entranceway. Out went the rich detailed interior of exotic woods and the jewel box of a entrance. Kahn replaced the doorway with a corporate Art Deco look of repeating pattern pressed metal grate and plain glass. The store would go on to hire Salvador Dali to design a series of Surrealist window displays for the 1936-1937 holiday season.

Waldorf-Astoria Hotel ARCHITECT: Schultze & Weaver; Lloyd Morgan DATE: 1929-31 STYLE: Art Deco, Skyscraper, Hotel This building combined a transient hotel and a related but separate residential tower into a 625-foot-high skyscraper, one of the city’s tallest at the time, located in the major new skyscraper office building district developing around Park Avenue near Grand Central Terminal. The architect of the hotel and towers, Lloyd Morgan of the firm of Schultze & Weaver, designed the complex in a sedate but handsome version of the modernistic style now generally referred to as Art Deco, adapting the skyscraper form and an up-to-date look to a conservative traditional establishment.

Racquet and Tennis Club and the Seagram Building, ca. 1975. The Seagram Building, seen here at center, is a 1958 skyscraper that was built for the Seagram liquor company. The building was designed by German-born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (who was once director of the Bauhaus, the art school which greatly influenced modern art, architecture, and design). Considered an icon of modernism, the simple, straightforward design of glass and metal, highlighted minimalist geometries and the underlying shape of the structure, without added ornamentation. From 1959 until 2016, the Seagram Building was also the home of the Four Seasons Restaurant, the bastion of mid century modern design, Americanized fine dining, and the power lunch.

St. Regis Hotel ca. 1907 John Jacob Astor conceived of the St. Regis Hotel as a companion to the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. While the Waldorf-Astoria was successful, its neighborhood was waning in social value. Astor decided that he was going to build a hotel that would match the best of Europe in elegance and luxury. Buying land on East 55th Street and Fifth Avenue, Astor intended the St. Regis to be sited in the most elegant part of town. Astor hired the architecture firm Trowbridge and Livingston. The architects designed a Beaux-Arts 18 story hotel that would be one of the first of New York's skyscraper tower hotels. However, it was met with controversy from the moment construction began in 1901. The land Astor had bought was in the midst of rows of mansions owned by the Vanderbilts and other wealthy New Yorkers. The St. Regis would tower over their homes and make their chic neighborhood into a new hub. The St. Regis' neighbors used their influence to delay as much as possible. First, the Board of Buildings discovered that the hotel wasn't fireproofed properly, which put a halt to construction. Next, the neighbors sued due to the blasting necessary for the hotel's foundations, however, the courts ruled against them. Finally, the neighbors found that the St. Regis violated a New York liquor statute due to its proximity to St. Thomas. The statute made it illegal to obtain a liquor license if you were within 200 feet of a church. The St. Regis was able to prevail in court by maintaining that their front entrance was far away enough not to violate the statue. The St. Regis was completed and opened on September 4th, 1904. Some estimates claim it cost a (staggering for the time) 5.5 million dollars. The rooms were fully modern with everything from telephones to heat to electric lighting. However, the fight was still not over. The liquor law also demanded the St. Regis needed permission from two-thirds of their neighbors in order to approve the liquor license. In 1904, William Rockefeller quickly bought a neighboring mansion in order to use it to revoke the St. Regis's license. However, J.J. Astor immediately bought another to support it. Stories in the newspaper were placed to smear the hotel's reputation, but high profile visits from the Roosevelts and the Japanese Imperial family helped bolster it. Finally, friends of J.J. Astor's in the New York Senate pushed through an amendment to the liquor law that exempted hotels with more than 200 rooms. The new law left the St. Regis and J.J Astor victorious. However, Astor was not to enjoy the St. Regis's success for long, dying in 1912 aboard the Titanic. His son Vincent would sell the St. Regis to the Duke's Durham Realty company, who expanded it by adding another wing. However, during the great depression, Vincent bought it back for a song and invested money into bringing it back to its former glory (including installing the Old King Cole Mural from the Knickerbocker Hotel.) Since then it has been restored and remodeled a number of times. In 1988, it was closed for three years as Sheraton did a full restoration. Similarly, Starwood would renovate the hotel again in 2014.

When the Vanderbilts, Astors, and Rockefellers moved uptown, the hotels quickly followed. The gravitational shift of New York's social scene meant that prestigious hotels like the Waldorf-Astoria were no longer in the thick of it. However, developers are never too far behind a trend and soon some of the world's most luxurious hotels sprouted next to the mansions of Fifth Avenue.

Bonwit Teller. Display windows, ca. 1940.

562 Fifth Avenue, ca. 1919. This corner building at no. 562 was an Italianate brownstone constructed sometime prior to 1846 when it came into the possession of the Harper family. Various members of the family, who owned the publishing house Harper & Brothers, lived in the residence over the next six decades. The lovely curved mansard roof was added during renovations in the late 1870s, giving the building a slight French Second Empire look. In 1909 Joseph Harper's widow leased her home to florist Charles Thorley for $27,000 a year (nearly $700,000 in today's market). Thorley, who was 16 years old when he opened his first flower shop downtown in 1874, had become the go-to florist for both New York's high society AND lovesick young men looking to dazzle their sweethearts. After occupying a series of shops, Thorley's business took up residence here at no. 562. And he transformed the building into a 'House of Flowers.' During his first few years here Thorley undertook a series of "greening" renovations: painting the building white with green trim, placing vines and shrubs all along the facade, installing window boxes with overflowing vegetation. This Midtown jungle was a sight to be seen. From this shop Thorley decorated the mansions of NYC's elite for weddings, funerals, and other fancy occasions. His business could not have been more successful; in 1912, during the Easter season only, he sold more than $45,000 in flowers. In 1915 Mrs. Harper passed away and the building—by then largely known as the Thorley Building— was sold. With the new owners raising the already exorbitant rent, Thorley choose to move on in 1920. Charles Thorley died in 1923 but his assistant Rose Fallon took over the business which prospered in various midtown locations (including lastly the Carlyle Hotel) until the mid 1960s. The corner mansion turned flower shop was demolished in the early 1920s, and replaced with a 12-story commercial building. That building, known as the I. Miller Building (for the shoe company that built it), was purchased in 2015 and soon after demolished (along with its neighbors to the north) for an as-yet unknown new development.

Built in 1872 this brownstone structure at the southwest corner of Fifth and 56th was appropriately ornate for early Fifth Avenue. The building featured prominent quoins (masonry bricks at the corners), fancy bulls-eye windows, and a decorative stone railing at the roofline. Originally a home, in the 1890s the ground floor was converted for commercial use. During the 1910s and 1920s, the building was home to a number of art and antique showrooms and galleries

Central Synagogue ARCHITECT: Henry Fernbach DATE: 1871-72 STYLE: Moorish Revival Central Synagogue is the oldest Jewish House of Worship in continuous service in the State of New York. Although the plan is Gothic in its arrangement, this stone Temple is our finest extant example of the Moorish Revival style in New York City. Dominating the East elevation are two striking octagonal towers, surmounted by globe-shaped domes enhanced by the patina of age. A prominent design element of this imposing facade is the largo handsomely enframed and geometrically constructed circular window, centered in the well decorated front wall which connects the two towers.

Residence of Charles R. Lohman Ann Lohman, also known as Madame Restell, provided contraceptives and abortions to women looking to prevent or terminate unwanted pregnancies—a practice that remained exceptionally lucrative even as antebellum abortion laws hardened. By the 1870s, Restell’s services made her one of the richest women in New York City; her profits funded the construction of her lavish mansion, pictured here, on the corner of the Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street. Image Info: Hatch & Co. Publishers, 1875 CREDIT: Museum of the City of New York, Gift of J. Clarence Davies, 29.100.2111

Goelet Building, 1935. Considered a transitional moment between the Art Deco and International styles, the 10-story Goelet Building was completed in 1932. Originally created in the Deco style by architect Victor L. S. Hafner, the engineering firm of E. H. Faile modified the design of the upper floors to visibly incorporate the supporting skeletal framing in the facade.The glazed deep green marble curtain wall of lower floors render in a simple horizontal arrangement hearken to the modern International style. The building replaced the 1882 mansion belonging to the Goelet family. Designed to compliment the nearby buildings of Rockefeller Center, this structure had ground floor retail and office spaces on the upper floors. Since 1964 the building has been called the Swiss Center, for the group of Swiss business, working in commercial, cultural, travel and financial activities, who began leasing it then.

Racquet and Tennis Club ca. 1975 This very fine adaptation of a Florentine palazzo was the work of McKim, Mead & White. Although it contains all the indoor facilities of a modern American athletic club it is a handsome addition to the broad thoroughfare of Park Avenue. Despite the fact that it is low, it is completely in scale with its contemporaries and with the giants that today surround it.

In 1928 the townhouses that once occupied this corner were demolished prior to the construction of the 12-story Stewart and Company department store building.

My Archive Spring 2019 "Rockefeller Center. The subject in the excellent sweatshirt outfit is yours truly, supported by my mom." —Isabel Sen

605 Fifth Avenue, 1925. Designed in 1924 by architect William Van Alen (of later Chrysler Building fame), this midblock building was forecast by the New York Times to be “one of the finest buildings along Fifth Avenue in this section.” The asymmetrical structure had six full stories of curved windows on one corner. The architect took advantage of the setback of the neighboring church to showcase this innovative feature. Completed in 1925 for the Child's restaurant chain, the resulting edifice of gleaming white limestone and expansive plate glass was called a veritable jewel-box” by a contemporary design magazine. It was said to have been the first building in the U.S. without corner columns. The unique vantage point by which passersby could look right through the curved corner of the building was lost in 1952 with the demolition of the church and the construction of 600 Fifth Avenue, a 26-story office building. Since 1997 the building has been home to TGI Friday's. For many years the facade was painted a bright blue with contrasting red and white awnings. In the last few years, the facade has gone back to white, but a four-story advertisement covers the upper floors (and curved windows).

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

In the 1940 movie "Young People," Shirley Temple sang and danced to the lighthearted ditty, "Fifth Avenue." Let's use the lyrics to guide us through the history of the grandest thoroughfare in New York City.

Silent Parade, July 28, 1917. Following a series of lynchings in Waco, Texas and Memphis, Tennessee in late 1916 and early 1917 and the vicious mob violence that killed 39 black men during a riot in St. Louis (though the actual number of dead and injured was likely much higher), the NAACP organized a demonstration. Called the 'Silent Parade,' more than 10,000 African-Americans marched slowly and silently down Fifth Avenue on Saturday, July 28, 1917. The women and children wore white. The NAACP sends out a notice for the event that included phases they hoped attendees might carry as signs. These included... Make America Safe for Democracy. The first blood for American Independence was shed by a Negro—Crispus Attucks. America has lynched without trial 2,876 Negroes in 31 years and not a murderer has suffered. Racial prejudice is the offspring of ignorance and the mother of lynching. The great contradiction— love of God and hatred of man.

Saks Fifth Avenue, ca. 1953. Designed by architects Ernest Alan Van Vleck and Goldwin Starrett, the Saks Fifth Avenue building was the first major department store in NYC to be designated a landmark. When Saks opened in the building 1924, an article in The New York Times said the store was ''the most modern and up-to- date building of its kind in the world,'' and that it marked ''the opening of a new shopping centre on upper Fifth Avenue.'' Saks Fifth Avenue was also one of the first flagship stores to conduct unveiling events for window displays. Using hydraulic lifts, the festive decorations were constructed in a sub-basement out of public view. Once ready, the displays were raised to street-level overnight for a dramatic unveiling.

Saint Thomas' Church ca. 1975 Despite its asymmetrical composition, with only one tower, this church is such a beautiful example of French Gothic architecture that we are hardly aware of the lack of a second tower. The plan is ingeniously arranged and has functioned successfully for the congregation and for some of the most fashionable weddings in New York.

Destroyed trolley after an explosion near the Grand Central Terminal Powerhouse at 50th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues, December 1910. On December 19, 1910 an explosion at the New York Central Railroad's Sub Station killed 13 people and injured dozens of others. At 8:22 A.M. the massive explosion (likely two blasts, one from a gas issue and one from the dynamite kept in the still-being completed powerhouse) rocked the area. The blast threw up brick, stones, beams, and other building materials, tossing them hundreds of feet. Windows in the area were blown out and a passing trolley felt the brunt of the force, killing at least four passengers.

The Warwick, date unknown. Designed by Emery Roth in association with George B. Post & Sons, this 36-story Renaissance Revival building was financed by publisher William Randolph Hearst. One of the original tenants of the residential tower was Hearst's mistress Marion Davies. (It is said he commissioned the building specifically for her.) Today the Warwick remains a luxury hotel.

William and Helen Ziegler, Jr. House ARCHITECT: William L. Bottomley DATE: 1921-27 STYLE: Neo-Georgian The Ziegler House, quite substantial at four-and-a-half stories (plus basement) in height and thirty-seven-and-a-half feet in width, has a beautifully detailed, symmetrical three-bay front facade. Bottomley successfully and creatively adapted an elegant neo-Georgian style design to an urban townhouse. Among its notable features are the Flemish bond brickwork with burnt headers, splayed lintels, and end quoins. The entrance with a bowed-arched pediment; multi-pane wood sash windows and paneled shutters. The modillioned cornice; the steeply-pitched, grey slate-covered roof with dormers and end chimneys; and the wrought-iron fence with brick piers at the sidewalk line.

718 Fifth Avenue ca. 1937 718 Fifth Avenue was designed by Platt and Platt in 1937. The grand five-story structure on Fifth Avenue and 56th Street announcing glass as the epitome of modernity. The façade of Indiana limestone and 2 large windows made of 3,800 square panes of translucent glass at night revealed divisions between floors and diagonal bracing, all the while showcasing the glass, another architectural advertisement.

Villard Houses ca. 1980 This great complex of town houses surrounding a central court yard was designed by Joseph M. Wells for McKim, Mead, & White in the manner of an early sixteenth-century Italian palazzo. By far the most beautiful feature of this block of residences is the interior decoration of Henry Villard's own house on the south side of the courtyard.