P. Lorillard Tobacco factory, 1927.

The recorded history of Yorkville begins in the 17th century when it was a tiny hamlet on the Boston Post Road, which ran northward from New York, which at the time only occupied the tip of Manhattan. It was long the province of farmers and wealthy landowners, including merchant Archibald Gracie, whose riverfront estate is now the official residence of New York’s mayor. In the 19th century, the area slowly began its transformation into the urban neighborhood we see today. Like most such transformations in New York, these changes were largely propelled by transportation improvements. In 1834, the New York & Harlem Railroad (later the New York Central) opened a station at 86th Street and Park Avenue, and in the 1850s, horsecar lines were completed along Second and Third Avenues. This opened the neighborhood to low-density residential development, a few remnants of which remain, including 412 East 85th Street. After two major economic depressions (in 1857 and 1873) and the Civil War, the area was finally primed for a major wave of construction in the late 1870s with the arrival of mass transit. The Third Avenue elevated train was completed in 1877-78, and the Second Avenue elevated in 1879-80. In a relatively short period, the Upper East Side was entirely built up, and the elevated trains segregated the area along ethnic and economic lines. West of Third Avenue, wealthy homeowners established the city’s most exclusive neighborhood, while east of Third Avenue became a thriving immigrant community (already known as Yorkville by the 1860s), which in many ways was a second-generation immigrant neighborhood—a place that recent arrivals aspired to live after filtering through the older, more congested downtown districts like the Lower East Side. Its housing stock was largely composed of tenements, but they were brand new and built after the Tenement Law of 1879 (the “Old Law”), so were subject to improvements. There were abundant employment opportunities, notably in the neighborhood’s breweries and at the Steinway piano factory in Queens, which was a short ferry ride away from the foot of East 92nd Street. The largest and perhaps most visible immigrant group in Yorkville was the Germans. Already an established presence in New York following a wave of immigration in the 1840s, they began moving uptown from their Lower East Side settlement, Kleindeutschland (Little Germany) to Yorkville, which by the turn of the century had become New York’s foremost German neighborhood. They brought with them many of their institutions, including churches and benevolent organizations, as well as cultural and commercial enterprises, such as beer halls and music societies. East 86th Street became the community’s main artery. Other groups had micro-neighborhoods in Yorkville, as well. Czechs began moving to the area in the 1880s and settled mostly between 71st and 75th Streets. Hungarians arrived around the turn of the 20th century on East 79th Street, though their institutions can be found throughout the neighborhood. Yorkville’s heyday as a distinct immigrant community was relatively short-lived. German immigration to New York peaked in 1882, and by the early 20th century, Yorkville’s Germans were already moving farther afield, using the recently built subway to access newer, more affordable neighborhoods in the outer boroughs. At the same time, anti-German sentiment during World War I led many Germans to downplay overt displays of national heritage. The Second Avenue and Third Avenue elevated trains were demolished in the 1940s and 1950s, respectively, removing one of the major boundaries between Yorkville and the rest of the Upper East Side. The neighborhood has seen its share of redevelopment since then, with large apartment buildings towering over the tenements. The recent opening of the Second Avenue subway re-established one of the area’s transit links, but may also put additional pressure on Yorkville’s surviving historic resources.

Bohemian National Hall ARCHITECT: William C. Frohne DATE: 1895-97 STYLE: Renaissance Revival Bohemian National Hall (Narodni Budova) is a rare survivor of the social halls built in the nineteenth century for New York City’s immigrant ethnic communities. Constructed in two phases in 1895 and 1897, it replaced an earlier National Hall on East 5th Street, which had served the Czech and Slovak population living in the Tompkins Square area of the Lower East Side. The five-story building was designed by William C. Frohne in the Renaissance Revival style. Richly ornamented, it is faced in buff Roman brick, stone, and terra cotta. Among its prominent features are a projecting entrance porch with paired granite columns and a two-story arcade with Ionic columns resting on lion’s-head bases.

View east from the southwest corner of First Avenue and East 70th Street, ca. 1935. The large tower of the Rockefeller Institute seen in the distance still stands east of York between 70th and 71st Streets. Today it is obscured from this view by the large Hemlsey Medical Tower.

"East 74th Street, east from but not including Third Avenue. This view showing prominently the north side, 1937." Though the storefronts seen adjacent to the corner of 3rd Avenue (on the far right of the photos) have been replaced by a large apartment building, the building at nos. 214 and 216 (just slightly down the block) with the large arched doorways remains.

168 East 73rd Street CLIENT: William Baylis ARCHITECT: Charles W. Romeyn DATE: 1899 STYLE: Neo-Flemish Renaissance The 168 East 73rd Street Building is a fine example of the type of private carriage house built during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in this area of Manhattan. Constructed in 1899 for William Baylis, this carriage house was designed by Charles Romeyn in a sophisticated rendition of the neo-Flemish Renaissance style.

New York Hospital under construction, 1940. The original New York Hospital was founded in 1771 by Edinburgh graduate Samuel Bard in lower Manhattan. The hospital moved a number of times in the ensuing centuries until it landed at its current location in 1932 (it had become affiliated with Cornell University a few years earlier in 1927).

Fire Engine Company 39 and Ladder Company 16 Station House ARCHITECT: Napoleon LeBrun & Son DATE: 1884-86 STYLE: Romanesque Revival This six-story Romanesque Revival structure was designed by N. LeBrun & Son for the headquarters of the New York Fire Department and to provide fire protection in a neighborhood that was experiencing considerable growth and change. Unlike many modest mid-block firehouses, the East 67th Street building served multiple functions, providing space for two fire companies, the offices of the Commissioners, and various departmental bureaux.

501-7 East 71st Street, at N.E. corner of York Avenue. In the foreground is the excavation for the Cornell Medical College-New York Hospital, July 31, 1930.

York Avenue - 74th Street, looking northwest, 1934. This corner of mostly empty storefronts and apartments on the upper floors would not survive long after this photograph was taken. In 1939 a Norman Gothic style church was erected on this corner for a congregation with a long New York City history. The Church of the Epiphany was established in 1833 as the first church of the New York Protestant Episcopal City Mission Society. The parish, which began in a small room on the Lower East Side, had their first church building at 130 Stanton Street. Through various moved and mergers with other parishes the church had services in locations on 47th and 50th Streets, as well as Lexington Avenue. The current church building was constructed around the time that the nearby hospital facilities were also being built. The architect of the church, Marion Sims Wyeth of the firm Wyeth & King, is perhaps currently (2017) best known as the architect of Mar-a-Logo. This Florida mansion built by socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post as a winter retreat for presidents was purchased in 1985 by Donald Trump and has been used in 2017 by the 45th president.

Three-story frame structures, southwest corner of 1st Avenue and 75th Street, 1935. Charles Kosches was a furniture store that had locations uptown as well as on 14th Street and st Avenue.

Park East Synagogue ARCHITECT: Schneider & Herter DATE: 1889-90 STYLE: Moorish Revival, Byzantine With its richly-decorated and imaginatively composed Moorish Revival facade, this building is an unexpected delight in the picturesque streetscape of East 67th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues. Its combination of Moorish and Byzantine architectural detail marks it as a late manifestation of the attempt to find appropriate expression for synagogue architecture which accompanied the proliferation of new Jewish congregations after the Civil War.

My Archive Spring 2019 "On a sizzling Indian Summer afternoon on September, 1958, on a New York sidewalk, Eileen M. Scanlon, a June, 1958 graduate of Julia Richman High School, with her KODAX in hand seized the moment, for posterity, via a picture of her youngest sister, Francie (right) and best friend, outside of that very high school." —Francie Scanlon

New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center (now NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center), ca. 1931. The view is from Roosevelt Island, then known as Welfare Island.

Third Avenue Railroad Company car barn, behind the tracks of the Third Avenue El at 65th Street, October 8, 1936. This imposing French Second Empire structure opened in 1861 and later expanded to cover the entire block between Second and Third Avenues, 65th and 66th Streets. The car barn served as a storage and transfer facility for Third Avenue streetcars and also included stables until horse-drawn streetcars were discontinued in 1899. In the early decades of the 20th century, elevated trains, subways and the increasing prevalence of automobiles combined to make the streetcars redundant. When the fleet switched to buses in the 1940s, that spelled the end for the car barn: in 1946, the dramatic Victorian building was sold to New York Life and demolished. The Manhattan House, a groundbreaking modern apartment building, was completed on the site in 1951.

The Memorial Hospital (now part of Memorial Sloan Kettering) moved to its new location following a donation of land and millions of dollars from John D. Rockefeller Jr. amongst others. Officially reopening in 1939, the Memorial Hospital was one of the city's leading cancer hospitals.

1314-1318-1322 York Avenue (Avenue A), at and adjoining northeast corner of 70th Street, 1928. No. 1314 (at corner) was built around 1905 on the site of the Davis Moulding Mill (1895). No. 1322 (at left) was built around 1895, as a cigar factory, and circa 1916 by the American Tobacco Company. These buildings were demolished soon after this photograph was taken in 1928. They were replaced by a building for the New York Hospital and Cornell Medical School, which included residences for nurses. Today that structure is called the Hemsley Medical Tower and is a residence for families of patients at New York -Presbyterian Hospital.

Court of the First Model Tenements in New York City, 1936 At the time of the 1879 Tenement House Act, which first regulated the City’s low-income housing, Mayor Edward Cooper invited a group of prominent businessmen to form the Improved Dwelling Association. The Association invested $300,000 in the first model tenement and by law was limited to a five percent return on its investment. Constructed in 1882, the tenement was laid out along the perimeter of First and Second Avenues and 71st and 72nd Streets, with an open courtyard in the center admitting light and air. Fifty years later, Abbott documented the courtyard, which had become a communal laundry line: ropes with pulleys led from apartments to five-story poles embedded in concrete. She later recalled that winter day: the laundry was frozen stiff, and the children were huddled together, too cold to move. In the 1960s, the tenement was replaced with a full-block, white brick apartment building.

Located between 65th and 66th streets between Second and Third avenues, Manhattan House (1947-51) occupied a full block in an area that was undergoing significant change as the elevated train tracks that had imprisoned that swath of the city was either recently demolished or scheduled for demolition. An old trolley barn, tenements, and assorted commercial buildings were so affordably priced that New York Life bought extra property in the surrounding blocks. The clean, crisp modernist design by architect Gordon Bunshaft, principal at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), which was associated with the firm Mayer & Whittlesey on the project, was an immediate success and attracted famous tenants such as Benny Goodman, Grace Kelly, and furniture designer Florence Knoll, as well as Bunshaft himself. The apartments were spacious, but the overall density was an impressive 478 pp/acre. Thanks to New York Life’s interest in long-term profits, the building was more “tower in a garden” than “tower in the park” and covered a higher percentage of land (59 percent) than the vast publicly subsidized projects that were its contemporaries. Manhattan House inspired its share of glazed brick imitators, but the truth about private investment in postwar New York was grim. With unrelenting middle-class flight, the demand for high-quality, higher-priced apartments in Manhattan remained comparatively weak. Density reduction, given these facts, made more sense to both private and public developers. Had density levels of Manhattan House been pursued across large areas of the city during the postwar years, it is likely that the city would already be accustomed to much greater density as is the case in crowded cities like Hong Kong. Instead, market failure in postwar New York was used to justify an aggressive strategy of subsidized low-density living.

My Archive Spring 2019 "A photo of my father in front of the building we lived in—242 East 72nd Street in Manhattan, taken by my brother for a class assignment." —Jill Melamed

177-179 East 73rd Street CLIENT: Automobile Realty Co. ARCHITECT: Charles F. Hoppe DATE: 1906 The 177-179 East 73rd Street Building is a fine example of the type of commercial garage built in New York City during the early years of the 20th century, at a time when automobiles were beginning to supplant horses and carriages as the primary mode of private urban transportation. The garage was designed in 1906 in the fashionable Beaux-Arts style by Charles F. Hoppe for the Automobile Realty Co. With its bold massing and detailing, the building reflects a sophistication of design unusual for a utilitarian structure.

Seen in this undated photograph, the First Hungarian (Magyar) Reformed Church at East 69th Street, has a distinguished history, architect, and design. Originally established on the Lower East Side in 1895, the congregation commissioned, in 1914, Hungarian-American architect Emery Roth to design their new church in Yorkville. Roth was born in Hungary and immigrated to the United States as a child. He opened a New York City office in 1895, and over the next forty years, he designed some of the most iconic apartment houses in New York City in a variety of styles. The First Hungarian Reformed Church was the architect’s only ecclesiastical building, and it displays a Hungarian vernacular style that incorporates Art Nouveau motifs. The structure was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000 and as a New York City individual landmark in 2019.

The Holy Trinity Cathedral, at 319 East 74th Street, was constructed in 1932 in the Neo-Byzantine style. Eleanor Roosevelt laid the cornerstone of the cathedral in 1931, and today the church serves as the National Cathedral of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in America. Originally established in 1891 on the West Side, Holy Trinity was the first Greek Orthodox church in New York City. But that’s not the only first on the block. The Upper East Side is so dense with extraordinary ecclesiastical structures that this stretch of East 74th Street is also home to Jan Hus Presbyterian Church, (visible further up the street in this photograph) at 351 East 74th Street. Jan Hus is the oldest Czech Presbyterian Congregation in the United States. Originally founded in 1877 to serve a variety of small Czech communities worshiping around the city, the parish grew to become the First Evangelical Bohemian Presbyterian Church. The building at East 74th Street was constructed in 1888 by renowned architect R.H. Robertson in a Bohemian Gothic Revival Style with features “that harks back to Prague,” embracing the cultural roots of its congregation. The church went on to build an even greater sense of community around Czech identity when it constructed the Neighborhood House next door in 1915. The house became a center for Czech music, art, and dance, and offered social services like job training, athletic clubs, and language classes. Later it also offered a number of theatrical shows that would serve as early training grounds for Barbra Streisand, Robin Williams, and Jerry Seinfeld. Most recently the Neighborhood House has provided outreach and advocacy for the homeless In 2019 the congregation sold its East 74th Street building and purchased a new property on First Avenue where they hope to create an Urban Outreach Center comprised of a pantry, showers, charging stations, and more to serve the community. The building at East 74th Street was acquired by the Church of Epiphany, which is adapting the sanctuary and community house for continuing us

Public School 183, 1920. A C.B.J. Snyder school was constructed in 1902 and opened in 1903. The school has a long history of promoting science-based learning and has been nicknamed the "School of Discovery." Today the school remains P.S. 183 and is named after Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish novelist and travel writer.

Manhattan House ARCHITECT: Mayer & Whittlesey; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill DATE: 1947-51 Considered by many writers to be the first white brick apartment building, it was also notable for being one of the first multiple dwellings in New York City to attempt “an indoor-outdoor synthesis” through the integration of large windows and deep projecting balconies, as well as landscaped driveways and a block-long rear garden enclosed by a low granite wall. Manhattan House generated considerable media attention and in 1952 received an award from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, which described it as “extremely attractive in appearance and beautiful in detailing.” Future New York Times and Wall Street Journal architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable also praised its design, commenting in 1960 that Manhattan House was “one of the best examples to date … notable for its clean architectural shape, as well as for its superior execution in a highly competitive, speculative, building field.”

Postwar, the private sector showed signs of renewed interest in high-density housing. The resurgence of the city’s service sector, as embodied in gleaming office towers of midtown, indicated a real estate vitality not seen in the city since the 1920s. Modernist apartment projects pointed the way to stylish, in-town living. Explore the entirety of the Skyscraper's Museum's Exhibit: Housing Density From Tenements to Towers.

Originally founded in 1895 by Slovakian immigrants on the Lower East Side, the Church of St. John Nepomucene moved north to East 57th Street, before finally settling in Yorkville at First Avenue and 66th Street. Their current building, seen here in 1927 two years after it was completed, was designed in a Romanesque Revival Style by architect John van Pelt. The prominent tower, rose window, and brick and stone facade with intricate details stand out along the busy avenue to this day.

FDNY Engine 39, ca. 1915. Set among a row of historic institutional buildings on 67th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues, the Fire Department headquarters was the first and largest. Constructed in 1886 to the designs of the fire department's regular architect, Napoleon LeBrun, the Romanesque-style building included a 150-foot tower. The block itself was on a slight hill and the addition of the tower allowed for a panoramic view all the way down to the Battery. The building also housed the department's complex telegraph system. It was described in 1887 as ''an excellent piece of design . . . giving the taxpayer something worth looking at for their money.'' Over the next five years the fire headquarters acquired some grand neighbors, including a police station house (just left of the firehouse), the Mount Sinai Hospital dispensary and nursing school (left of the police station), and the Orthodox Congregation Zichron Ephraim (the Moorish style church at right). Despite plans to demolish the police and fire buildings in the 1970s for a Hunter College complex and an overturned landmark designation for both in 1980, the buildings remain among their historic neighbors. While the historic exteriors have largely been preserved and maintained, the fire house (no longer the headquarters, but home to Engine Co. 39 and Ladder 16) lost its tower and some of its facade carvings, giving it a somewhat unfinished look.

67th Street Branch, NYPL, July 26, 1930. Built in 1905 by Babb, Cook & Willard, the 67th Street Library has the Italian Renaissance Revival design of many of the Manhattan Carnegies. The most distinctive feature of the building is the unusual Art Nouveau transom window above doorway (seen at right).