600 Park Avenue James Gamble Rogers, 1910-11 – NYC HD 600 Park Avenue was built for businessman Jonathan Bulkley and his wife Sarah Tod. After their deaths in 1939 and 1943, the Renaissance Revival mansion sat empty until 1946, when the Swedish Government purchased it as its Consul General’s residence. In 2009, the house became the residence of the Swedish Ambassador to the United Nations

"The street outside the George Gould house at 67th Street & 5th Avenue. Horse-drawn carriages are lined up outside the house for the wedding of Anna Gould to Count Boni de Castellane, 1895."

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.

129 East 62nd Street, date unknown. This neo-Grec style building, constructed between 1873 and 1874 by John Prague, has the triangular pediment (over the door) that is indicative of that architectural style. This is the final building in a row of 15 structures built at the same time, by the same architect, stretching from Park Avenue to the middle of the block on the north side of 62nd Street.

107 East 70th Street, date unknown (post 1921). This five-story building with stone trim was constructed in 1921-22 for Thomas Lamont, a principal at J.P. Morgan & Co. Inc. The architects Walker and Gillette were known for two types of structures: New York City townhouses and suburban mansions. This Tudor Revival style home features stone projected bay windows, a portico with Tuscan columns, large leaded-glass windows, and series of Tudor style chimneys. The architects also set the home back from the building ten feet, and did not build all the way to the lot line on the west side, creating a side garden hidden by a street wall. In 1954 the building was retrofitted for the offices of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York (upon donation of the home by the widow of Mr. Lamont). The organization still occupies the building, which underwent a massive interior renovation in 2009 by the preservation focused firm of Beyer Blinder Belle.

Lotos Club (1947) Built as a private residence, this house shows the most ornate phase of the Beaux Arts style as expressed by many of our architects. The desire to make an elaborate display of details, modified for the sake of originality, often led us up a blind alley.

740 Park Avenue ca. 1945 740 Park Avenue combined the efforts of Architect Rosario Candela, who most likely focused on apartment planning, and Arthur Loomis Harmon, who probably styled its sleek exterior. (In a similar streamline moderne style, Harmon's firm, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, designed the Empire State Building, which was under construction when 740 Park was completed.) Setting back above the 12th floor on the building's Park Avenue side, 740 featured a distinctive two-story base of corrugated stone, a body decorated with shallow pilasters, and stainless-steel doorways with elaborate geometric decoration. The building originally contained 30 apartments and its first tenants included builder James T. Lee, whose house had stood on the site. Lee's granddaugher, Jacqueline Bouvier--later Kennedy Onassis--spent part of her childhood in the building, and, in 1937 John D. Rockefeller Jr. created a triplex apartment for his family.

35 East 68th Street (left), ca. 1977. This 1901 Carrère & Hastings townhouse was built for Edward K. Dunham, a doctor and professor of pathology at Bellevue, and his wife Mary (née Dows).

Institution for the Improved Instruction of Deaf-Mutes, June 12, 1937. This ornate Queen Anne style structure was completed in 1882 to the designs of architect Henry Fernbach. The educational facility occupied the entire blockfront on Lexington Avenue from 68th to 67th Streets. Instruction here was focused on a method of communication known as Oralism, which asked that deaf students reproduce sounds by imitating the position of the lips of hearing people. This was the mode of instruction that the school promoted through the 1960s. The institution was renamed the Lexington School for the Deaf by the mid century and moved to Jackson Heights in 1960s, where it remains today (teaching both oralism methods and American Sign Language). This imposing building was once only one of a row of civic and charitable institutions that lined Lexington Avenue between 66th to 69th Street that included Mount Sinai Hospital, the New York Foundling Asylum, and, the still standing, Seventh Regiment Armory. The deaf school was eventually demolished and replaced with another building for Hunter College.

Sara Delano Roosevelt and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Houses ARCHITECT: Charles A. Platt DATE: 1907-08 STYLE: Georgian This dignified Georgian-style double townhouse was designed by Charles A. Platt and built in 1907-08. The residence was commissioned by Sara Delano Roosevelt, with No. 47 to be occupied by her and No. 49 by her son and daughter-in-law Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and their family. The design of the house is similar to Nos. 6 and 8 East Seventy-Sixth Street, the Ludlow-Parish houses, where, in 1905, Eleanor had been given in marriage to her cousin Franklin by her uncle, President Theodore Roosevelt.

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.

William W. Cook House, October 23, 1944. Built for lawyer and corporate law expert, William Cook, the house on 71st Street was a French Renaissance mansion deigned by York & Sawyer. Completed in 1913, the two-story entrance with massive bronze gates and the fifth floor open portico (with tile ceiling by Rafael Guastavino) truly set the building apart from the other structures on the block. Upon his death, Cook donated the home to his alma mater, the University of Michigan, who sold it in 1942. During the middle of the 20th century the house was occupied by foundations that worked in scientific, educational and anthropological research and work. The home was converted back into a single family home in 1992 and remains remarkably similar to its original form.

117 East 69th Street, date unknown (post 1929). The neo-Federal building at no. 117 is a relative newbie in this neighborhood. While a number of other neo-Federals are the early 20th century renovations of original 19th-century rowhouses, this one was a brand new construction in 1928-9. Designed by Julius Gayler for the lawyer, banker, and one-time Governor of Puerto Rico (1904-07) Beekman Winthrop, the house has a huge skylight and dramatic spiral staircase. In 1977 the home was purchased by Jim Henson and became the New York headquarters of the Jim Henson Company and The Muppet Workshop. While it served this function, the home was supposedly extravagantly decorated to reflect the playful work of its occupants. Henson passed away in 1990 and the Henson business moved out of the building in 2003.

Edward Durell Stone House, ca. 1980. In 1956 architect Edward Durell Stone purchased a narrow 1878-built rowhouse on 64th Street. Originally designed in a neo-Grec style by James Ware, the 15 feet wide facade was dramatically transformed by the modernist Stone. He removed the stoop and created the entrance at the basement level. The most impactful work was the addition of a bright white filigree screen that reached from street level to the roof, rendered with a somewhat dizzying geometric pattern that alternately looked like circles, squares or diamond shapes depending on the perspective. Though fiercely modernist, Stone respected the history of his home, adding his mid-century details alongside the 19th-century interiors in a harmonious way. This photograph captures the home sans screen when a few years after his father's 1978 death, Benjamin Hicks Stone removed the screen due to deterioration and instability. He reproduced and replaced it. When the home changed hands in 2004, the new owners hired Hicks Stone to restore it and update the kitchen, baths, and mechanical systems.

720 Park Avenue, ca. 1928. Park Avenue at its N. W. corner of 70th Street, long before the Upper East Side became a desirable neighborhood. Pictured in the foreground is the old 1872 Presbyterian Church before it was torn down and replaced by apartments.

Astor Mansion, Fifth Avenue; 1897. Where you now see Temple Emanu-El, Mrs. Astor's French chateau once stood, with a ballroom large enough for 1200 guests. Mrs. Astor— the only name she went by—was the gatekeeper of Gilded Age society. And a ticket to her annual ball told you whether you had made it in. Through blood and marriage, Mrs. Astor hailed from the city's oldest and wealthiest stock. Caroline Webster Schermerhorn was born to one of New York's first Dutch families, who made their fortune in shipping. Her husband, William Backhouse Astor, was the grandson of the country's first millionaire, John Jacob Astor, a fur trader who had the foresight to buy up Manhattan real estate in the early 1800s. Ball season extended from debutante parties in December through weddings around Easter time. But Mrs. Astor's fête—always the first Monday in January—was the most exclusive of them all. Her social advisor, Ward McAllister, had determined that there were "only about 400 people in fashionable New York," telling the press "If you go outside that number, you strike people who are either not at ease in the ballroom, or else make other people not at ease." In fact, Mrs. Astor's first ballroom accommodated up to 600 guests. But that wasn't the point. In 1895, Mrs. Astor decided to leave her home on 34th and Fifth Avenue to come up to this location before you, following the trend to move uptown. She hired William K. Vanderbilt's architect, Richard Morris Hunt, who put up the four-story French Renaissance chateau to the tune of $2 million—or $54 million in today's dollars. Like her house, Mrs. Astor's balls took their inspiration from European kings and queens. Servants wore green plush coats and brass-buttoned red vests with white breeches, black silk stockings, and gold-buckled shoes. Mrs. Astor, meanwhile, usually donned royal purple, diamonds, and pearls, and greeted guests while standing next to a portrait she commissioned of herself. Until the end of her life, Mrs. Astor tried to maintain her reign over Gilded Age society. In a 1906 interview for a magazine called, appropriately, The Delineator, Mrs. Astor said, "I hope my influence will be felt in one thing, and that is discountenancing the undignified methods employed by certain New York women to attract a following." She added that recent parties "belonged under a circus tent rather than in a gentlewoman's home," probably thinking of a recent Newport ball that had totally upended the social order with guests dressed as the servants. Mrs. Astor died in 1908. Her mansion was torn down in 1926.

535 Park Avenue ca. 1913 535 Park Avenue began its life in 1909 when a group of businessmen and professionals began to plan for an apartment building on Park Avenue just above midtown. Intending on creating a co-op, the group hired the architect Herbert Lucas, known for his work on 24 Gramercy Park South. In designing the building, the group hoped that Lucas would land as close to "a private home as possible." Endeavoring to do so, Lucas came up with an elegant Colonial design, using simple brick and half-oval balconies. The co-op owners' apartments tended to be duplexes within the building, along with a numbed half floor simplexs that were rented, mostly to bankers and lawyers, to reduce the initial building costs. However, the press was not as kind. It was decried in the 1911 Architectural Review as a sham-palatial amongst other more biting critiques. The author, taking particular offense to the mix of red brick and terra cotta, called it "cheap finery" and described its cornice as that "of the cheapest and vulgarest kind of tenement houses." While 535 has aged well, the two-story terracotta band at its bottom has experienced some wear and tear, graying with dirt over the years. The co-op board undertook renovation work on the base in 2013, returning it to its original gleaming white color.

J. William and Margaretta C. Clark House ARCHITECT: Trowbridge & Livingston DATE: 1913-14 Only two bays wide, No. 49 East 68th Street is given interest and importance by a twin-arched loggia at street level. This is made possible by having the wall of the first floor set back about six feet from the building Iine. The arch on the right leads to the arched entrance doorway, while that on the left leads directly to the basement stairs protected by a low iron railing and gate. An arched window is set above the basement entrance door.

130-134 East 67th Street Apartment House ARCHITECT: Rossier & Wright DATE: 1907 STYLE: Italian Renaissance This building consists of duplex units of the type used on West 67th Street, although in the plan of this building many large double-story living rooms were built instead of studio spaces. So successful was the cooperative arrangement in this building, that the developer took title to the adjoining lot on the southeast corner of 67th Street and Lexington Avenue, as well as another property on the northeast corner of Lexington and 67th Street in 1907. Both of these soon were developed with cooperative apartment houses.

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.

17-25 East 64th Street, adjoining and west of the northwest corner of Madison Avenue.

Emery Roth and Sons designed this 1915 apartment building at 570 Park Avenue. The twelve-story building replaced eight rowhouses on the site. Between 1932 and her death in 1947 author Willa Cather lived here with her companion, author and critic Edith Lewis.

Residence of Judge Elbert H. Gary, 1927 Like many of Candela's buildings, 856 Fifth Avenue was built on the graves of the mansions that came before it, including Judge Gary's mansion and some adjacent buildings were torn down to build Candela's 856 Fifth Avenue. The Gary mansion had stood on the site for only 15 years. Gary's widow moved into the apartment house at 856 Fifth upon its completion in 1928.

W.C. Whitney Drawing Room ca. 1899-1900 William Collins Whitney spent more than $1,000,000 renovating the Fifth Avenue and 68th Street home that he shared with his second wife. Under the mastery of renowned architect Stanford White, this 1896-to-1899 project resulted in one of New York's most sumptuous Gilded Age interiors.

55 East 72nd Street, 1943.

On June 30th, 1836, invitations were sent to various gentlemen of good social standing – Astors, Van Cortlandts, Stuyvesants, van Rensselaers, basically a roll call of every influential Dutch New York family – to join the newly founded Union Club, the first club devoted to wealth and social standing in New York. For decades it set the tone for every other club. As you can probably guess, the Union Club became very popular, very quickly and there was soon a waitlist to join. Their current clubhouse on Park and 69th, designed by William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich and pictured below, was described by Christopher Gray as, “chunky with rusticated limestone and a huge angled mansard roof so big it looks like a Fifth Avenue mansion gone wild.” With five dining rooms and humidors stocked with cigars, it’s clear that the Union Club is still catering to the wealthy and connected of New York.

My Archive Spring 2019

Temple Emanu-El Temple Emanu-El was established in 1845 as New York City’s first Reform congregation. 33 members met in a loft at the intersection of Clinton and Grand Streets on the Lower East Side. As the congregation grew, Emanu-El moved further and further uptown. In 1854, it moved to its third location at 110 East 12th Street, which later housed St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church. By 1868, the congregation had built a permanent structure on Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street, designed by Leopold Eidlitz and Henry Fernbach. Much fanfare surrounded its consecration on September 11, 1868. The following day, The New York Times reported that a limited number of tickets available for the ceremony sold out several days in advance. “The anxiety to secure them was very great. When the doors were opened there was a crushing and crowding in which ladies’ crinoline and gentlemen’s hats suffered severely.” Over time, however, the neighborhood became increasingly commercial and Temple Emanu-El was unable to expand to accommodate its growing membership. In 1925, Temple Emanu-El sold the building and purchased property at Fifth Avenue and 65th Street, the site of the John Jacob Astor mansion. Construction of the new temple at the site of the Astor mansion began in 1927 and would last two years. Architects Robert D. Kohn, Charles Butler, and Clarence Stein designed the building. In the meantime, services were held 11 blocks uptown at Temple Beth-El, another Reform synagogue. On January 10, 1930, 2,500 people attended Temple Emanu-El’s formal dedication at 1 East 65th Street, where it remains to this day.

The Percy R. Pyne House, ca. 1978. One of four adjacent neo-Georgian Park Avenue Mansions, the stately residence at No. 680 was designed by McKim, Mead & White for the financier and philanthropist Percy Rivington Pyne II.

856 Fifth Avenue ca. 1929 With its smooth stone facades and flush windows rising above a three-story rusticated base, 856 Fifth Avenue was one of architect Rosario Candela's most elegantly severe designs. The building initially comprised nine single-floor apartments, two two-story maisonettes, and a penthouse duplex of 18 rooms. Interior decorator and style maven Dorothy Draper served as consultant on the building's plans and decorations.

New York Foundling Hospital ca. 1899 New York Foundling Hospital was founded in 1869, by Irish-born Sister Mary Irene Fitzgibbon with her co-worker Sister Teresa Vincent McCrystal, who formed a female lay auxiliary to obtain private and public funding for the project. The New York Foundling Hospital sought to alleviate the common nineteenth-century problem of abandoned babies. In December 1870, the Common Council of the City of New York approved a 99-year lease at a dollar per year for the block of land bounded by Lexington and Third avenues and 68th and 69th streets. The City also supplied $100,000 for the building fund. The auxiliary's Great Fair of 1871 netted an additional $100,000 toward the project. By November 1873, the first phase of the Foundling's campus was ready for occupancy. The campus expanded to include St. Ann's Maternity Hospital in 1880. St. John's Pediatric Hospital opened in February 1882, completing facilities dedicated to the care of children in need. From 1873 until 1958, when it moved to 1175 Third Avenue, the hospital was located at 175 East 68th Street. Now occupying a modern facility at Sixth Avenue and 17th Street, the New York Foundling Hospital is still operated by the Sisters of Charity, who no longer take in abandoned babies, but instead care for very sick infants from hospitals throughout the City.

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.

857 Fifth Avenue, 1929. In 1906, after seeing the new mansions of Fifth Avenue rise around him, particularly the new gleaming white Thomas Fortune Ryan mansion next door, George Gould decided to demolish his home and built something new. He hired Philadelphia architect Horace Trumbauer, who created an Italianate mansion that matched its neighbor's style, down to a rusticated base that was nearly exactly the same. The home once again became the host to a couple society wedding, this time for the daughters of George. George would die in 1923 and following his death, a major battle ensued over his wealth and real estate between his older children and his second wife (and former mistress with whom he had children while still married to his first wife). The house was eventually purchased by a Vanderbilt relative. Sold by that owner in 1951 for a mere $400,000 (it was built in 1907 for $1.25 million), it was torn down in the early 1960s and replaced with a 19-story building.

Thomas Hunter Hall, Hunter College, ca. 1978. The Female Normal and High School was founded in 1870 by Thomas Hunter, who served as its first president and, eventually, its namesake. “Normal” schools were predecessors of teacher’s colleges, where instruction prepared students — almost exclusively women — for careers as teachers. In 1873, the school moved to its present Lenox Hill location. This building, Thomas Hunter Hall, was designed by C.B.J. Snyder to replace the school’s previous Gothic main hall. Snyder’s neo-Gothic structure was completed in 1914, the same year the school adopted the name Hunter College, in honor of its founder. Today’s Hunter College High School was separated from the collegiate-level school in 1903, though both continued to share the same campus. The high school occupied several campus buildings, including Thomas Hunter Hall, before moving to a new campus on the former site of the Squadron A Armory in 1977. The school started admitting male students in 1974. Hunter College High School alumni/ae include a broad array of distinguished figures, from Supreme Court Justice Elana Kagan (‘77) to Lin-Manuel Miranda (‘98).

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

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.

Jewish New Year Prayer services and celebrations were always newsworthy and still are, in the pages of The Forward.

As the only institution in New York City receiving infants with no questions asked, the Foundling placed a reception crib outside the building, with a bell nearby to be rung to alert the sisters to retrieve an infant. When Foundling resources were strained during the depression of 1873, the Sisters moved the crib inside. But infants kept coming. In 1889, a new infant discovered in the crib received the number 20,715.

Helena Chaja Rubinstein, a rabbi's grandaughter and founder of the eponymous and enormously successful cosmetics firm Helena Rubinstein Inc. was born on December 25, 1870, in Krakow Poland, the eldest of eight daughters. She attended university in both Poland and Switzerland where she briefly studied medicine before immigrating to Australia, where she had relatives, and where her milky complexion and sense of style was noted by local light skinned women suffering overexposure to the sun there.

What did you do if you had a child you couldn't support in the 1800s? You could send it to the New York Foundling Hospital. The Foundling Hospital was founded in 1869, by Irish-born Sister Mary Irene Fitzgibbon with her co-worker Sister Teresa Vincent McCrystal, who formed a female lay auxiliary to obtain private and public funding for the project. The New York Foundling Hospital sought to alleviate the common nineteenth-century problem of abandoned babies.

Crimmins House, ca. 1898. Originally constructed as a fashionable brownstone in 1879 for the construction contractor John D. Crimmins, the home was one of William Schickel's first residential commissions in the city. Crimmin was involved in much of the construction of city infrastructure in the decades around the turn of the century, from the elevated trains, to gas works, and the Croton Aqueduct. In 1898, after deciding he needed a larger home, Crimmins purchased the adjacent brownstone (no. 42), hired Schickel once again, and commissioned a new double wide mansion. The resulting ornate Beaux-Arts facade, rendered in gleaming white, was eye-catching among the older brownstone homes on the block. Today the Beaux-Arts beauty remains, having been broken into a multi-family building some time in the mid century and sans its central staircase.

119-121 62nd Street, ca. 1911. Nos. 119 and 121 were originally separate structures built in 1873-74 by John Prague, as part of a series of 15 buildings on the north side of East 62nd Street. In 1910 the two homes were combined and a new single facade was constructed, creating a neo-Federal style building. The work was designed by Grosvenor Atterbury (who designed Forest Hills Gardens) for the owners of the structure, Dr. Lewis A. Connor, a famed heart doctor and founder of the American Heart Association. Today the building is the Consulate General of Bulgaria.

The most famous, and arguably the best example of the new, modern women’s hotel was the Barbizon Hotel for Women, built by Murgatroyd & Ogden and completed in 1928 at 63rd and Lexington. One of the Allerton Group partners, William Silk, was the developer, and the Barbizon resembled the Allerton in size and height, as well as in purpose: to provide amenities and entertainment in-house for single, professional women. Early newspaper coverage emphasized the Barbizon was designed for the “modern woman,” who was simultaneously depicted as “strong” and “dainty.” The Barbizon positioned itself as a hotel for women who wanted a career in the arts, taking its name from a school of French artists and advertising its proximity to cultural institutions. The hotel included artists’ studios and music rooms, as well as a rich program of cultural events. There were facilities for dining, entertaining, reading, and exercising as well, including a gymnasium and a pool. As with the Martha Washington, there were also elegant shops on the ground floor. Despite the modern and even luxurious amenities and public spaces, Barbizon bedrooms were small and fairly plain. As with earlier women’s hotels, the smaller rooms meant more occupants. A 1939 hotel brochure shows an image of a single bedroom with a somewhat glamorous inhabitant, while an amateur photo of a different single bedroom at the Barbizon reflects a starker reality: one window, a bureau, a small desk, and a day-bed.

Council on Foreign Relations, 58 East 68th Street, ca. 1975. Designed by architect William Adams Delano, this limestone building was erected in 1921 as the residence for Mr. and Mrs. Harold Irving Pratt. Mr. Pratt was the youngest son of Charles Pratt, an executive of Standard Oil and founder of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. The residence, formerly known as the Pratt House, was constructed of custom-made limestone and is reputed to have cost over one million dollars in 1920. In 1944, with the home unoccupied, the Pratt family donated the residence to the Council on Foreign Relations, where Harold Irving Pratt previously served as a member. The Council on Foreign Relations moved in April, 1945.

Park Avenue Armory This indefensible fort, bristling with battlements, provides an amusing commentary on the architectural expressionism of the eighteen seventies. although a functional drill hall makes up for its defensive shortcomings. A high belfry above the central tower has been removed and the tower has been lowered since the turn of the century.

Church of St. Vincent Ferrer, ca. 1930. The Gothic Revival church by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue was completed in 1918, for a Roman Catholic parish dating to 1867. Andy Warhol, an East 66th Street resident for 13 years, regularly attended daily mass.

601 Park Avenue Designed by Walter Lund & Julius F. Gayler, 1919-20 – NYC HD 601 Park Avenue, a neo-Federal mansion with 100 feet of Park Avenue frontage, was built for sugar wholesaler Thomas A. Howell. A long, half-elliptical stair hall occupies the center of the house and all of its rooms face the avenue. Interestingly, this house was left on the market for almost two decades, unable to find a buyer from 1989 to 2008.

Residences on East 66th Street, March 20, 1947. Andy Warhol purchased No. 57, the townhouse partially visible, at left, in 1974, and lived there until his death in 1987.

Park Avenue Armory, as viewed from Lexington Avenue and 66th Street, 1937. The Park Avenue Armory (also known as the Seventh Regiment Armory) is a massive 1880 Gothic Revival structure. The main entrance fronts Park Avenue between 66th and 67th Streets. (This photograph depicts the back end of the building on Lexington Avenue.) Designed by Charles Clinton, the huge structure was the headquarters and administrative building for the 7th New York Militia Regiment. The most well-known feature (certainly in its current use as an arts space ) is the 55,000 square foot drill hall. This regiment, from its beginnings, had a majority of members from the city's wealthy and elite families– it was known as the Silk Stocking Regiment. While all armories included additional rooms such as a reception hall, library, veterans room and staff offices, the interior of these rooms here were particularly spectacular and the work of some of the periods most well known designers and artists. Louis Comfort Tiffany designed (with a 24-year old Stanford White assisting) the Silver Room or "Trophy Room" and the Veterans Room, which is decked out in hand carved wood panelling, a coffered ceiling, and stained glass windows. Today the building is still used by a detachment of the New York National Guard, Veterans of the 7th Regiment and the Park Avenue Armory Conservancy, a non-profit that programs unconventional performing and visual arts.

Saint Vincent Ferrer Priory and School ARCHITECT: William Schickel DATE: 1880-81 STYLE: Victorian Gothic, Church The St. Vincent Ferrer Complex consists of four buildings; the church (a designated New York City Landmark), the priory, the Holy Name Society Building, and the school, all of which display elements based on the Gothic style and form a unified ensemble. The Dominican Fathers, the Roman Catholic order who developed the complex, purchased the site two years after the close of the Civil War in order to serve the spiritual and educational needs of the community. The priory (1880-81), the oldest of the four, is a late, simple rendition of the Victorian Gothic by William Schickel, a noted 19th-century New York architect. The church (1916) is by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue and was considered by him to be his finest work in the ecclesiastical field. The Holy Name Society building was built in 1930 from designs by Wilfrid Edwards Anthony and harmonizes sympathetically with the two earlier structures. The school was designed and built in 1948 by the firm of Elliot L. Chisling-Ferrenz & Taylor.

The Seventh Regiment Armory 643 Park Avenue Designed by Charles W. Clinton 1877-79 NYC HD, NYC IL, NYC INL, NR-P, NHL The Seventh Regiment was formed in 1806 from four volunteer militia companies, and served in the War of 1812, the Civil War and both World Wars, as well as aided in subduing numerous civilian disorders. In 1880, after years of using various buildings, its own grand armory, designed in the style of a fortified castle, opened to much fanfare. Often referred to as the “silk stocking regiment,” its members were socially prominent. As such, the building features lavish interiors designed by noted artists and architects, including Louis Comfort Tiffany, Stanford White, the Herter Brothers and Pottier & Stymus, among others. Much of the first and second floor interiors are protected by landmark designation. Because the drill hall was used for maneuvers, the 55,000-square-foot space required very high ceilings. Normally used for train sheds, enormous iron trusses span the enclosure to support the roof. It remains one of the largest unobstructed spaces in the city, and has been used for a variety of functions. From 1900 to 1963, the National Indoor Tennis Championships were held here, and since 1902, the Knickerbocker Greys, a junior cadet corps for school boys, has used the space for drills.

720 Park Avenue ca. 1938 Completed one month before the stock market crash of 1929, 720 Park Avenue represented the opulent excesses of the Jazz Age's giddy conclusion. Disparagingly dubbed "a disturbing pile" by the New Yorker magazine, the building featured asymmetrical massing of bay windows, terraces, and chimneys, among other architectural motifs. Jesse Isidor Straus, of the family that led R.H. Macy's department store, owned a duplex with a 40-foot entrance gallery and a large library. He had bought the land on which the structure sat and built the building because other high-end properties restricted Jews from living there.

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

17 East 70th Street ARCHITECT: Arthur C. Jackson DATE: 1909-11 STYLE: French Classical This house at 17 East 70th Street was built in 1909-11 and designed in the French Classical manner, one of the prominent styles during this period. The architect, Arthur C. Jackson was with the prominent New York City architectural firm of Heins and LaFarge when he designed this building. He was later noted for his public and commercial buildings in New York City

855 Fifth Avenue, 1891. From 1885 until the mid-1890s, this home was the residence of one of the most prolific members of Hispanic society in New York. Born Francisca Aparicio y Merida in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, Aparicio had served as the First Lady of Guatemala from 1874 until 1885. Her husband, President Justo Rufino Barrios, trusted her with duties of the state. When Barrios was killed on the battlefield in an attempt to re-form the Central American Union, Aparicio moved to the United States with her seven children. Upon moving to New York City, the former First Lady purchased a building at 855 Fifth Avenue. She soon made her home widely known for lavish entertainment. A column in an Ohio newspaper of the time claimed, "of all New York's young widows and matrons she receives the most attention." The article describes "Mme. de Barrios," wearing a Cleopatra costume, herself in the possession of "a selection of jewels so great that if she wore a new parure each day there would be more than enough for all the days in the year." Aparicio's home became a social destination for Spanish-American society in New York. The residence became a lavishly decorated mansion full of Latin American Art, where Aparcios hosted classical music performances, private operas, costume balls, and dancing (a skill in which she was supposedly very talented). On one of her trips with her family to Europe, she met Jose Martinez de Roda, a member of the Spanish Congress of Deputies. They were wed in her Fifth Avenue home. As was to be expected, this ceremony was full of pomp and circumstance, with the civil service performed by New York City's mayor Hugh J. Grant and the religious ceremony by the archbishop of New York, Michael Corrigan. The couple moved to Europe shortly after they were married. One-time minister to the court of Spain Perry Belmont took over the residence after the newly-weds moved out.

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.

NYPD 19th Precinct Station House ARCHITECT: Nathaniel D. Bush DATE: 1886-87 STYLE: Rundbogenstil, Renaissance Revival, Neo-Grec The midblock station house, five stories high above a basement, was constructed with a cross-shaped plan with one-bay wings and is faced in red brick and gray granite with contrasting buff-colored stone detail. The design combines elements of the Rundbogenstil and the Renaissance Revival and neo-Grec styles. The three-bay main facade, articulated as a grid formed by continuous rusticated stone piers and intermediate cornices, successfully affirmed the authority of the Police Department in the rapidly expanding Upper East Side neighborhood.

Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo House ca. 1912 The Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo House was constructed for its eponymous creator in 1898. The heiress had bought the property in 1882, with the idea that she would create a mansion for herself there. However, she moved into a row house with her sister across the street from the Rhinelander house and lived there for many years. Indeed, construction wouldn't start until 1894 when Gertrude had moved to the Savoy. She sold some other properties she had inherited and used the proceeds to begin construction. The architecture firm Kimball & Thompson designed the homes based on a French chateau in the Loire Valley, and upon its completion, Gertrude filled it with antiquities and expensive furniture. However, she never moved in herself, and most of the furniture and material was never unpacked. She would never move into the homes, nor did she want to sell. Rhinelander would even go as far as backing out of a possible sale in 1910, and, when debts forced the property to go to auction in 1911, repurchasing it. Eventually, she was forced to sell one of the homes in 1912 and gave the other to her sister. She would die in debt in 1914 (partially due to the costs of building the home) and the Rhinelander properties would remain empty until 1920.

Southeast corner of Fifth Avenue, ca. 1912. The building at no. 856 was constructed in 1881-1882—the corner building in a set of four townhouses (three of which faced Fifth Avenue and one at 2 East 67th Street). Designed by the firm of Lamb & Wheeler, the home was built for H.O. Armour, a meat-packing industrialist, who ran the New York syndicate of the well known Chicago firm. Armour died in 1901 and his wife sold the home in 1910. The 19th century home on this very desirable lot (of considerable size, 30 foot by 120 foot) was quickly demolished. The new construction was a mansion for Judge Elbert Gary.

131-135 East 66th Street Apartment House ARCHITECT: Charles A. Platt; Simonson, Pollard & Steinam DATE: 1905-06 STYLE: Italian Renaissance Vertically the facade is divided into four sections separated by band courses or cornices. The first division or base, three stories high, is rusticated and accented at the fourth floor by a wide band course. The second section is only one story. The third section of two stories is surmounted by a cornice at the level of the seventh floor window sills with another smaller cornice below it at the fifth floor window sill level. An added accent is achieved in these two cornices by having Them projected forward above all the framed windows. On these two floors art the windows, except the end ones, are joined together by eared frames with keystones and have decorative spandrel panels between them. The next section above is four stories high and has windows set in a plain wall and is separated by a band course from the attic windows, which are set in the architrave of the entablature.

19 East 70th Street ARCHITECT: Thornton Chard DATE: 1909-10 STYLE: Italian Renaissance This extremely elegant and architecturally distinguished residence was designed by Thornton Chard (1873-1951), a New York architect, in a simplified but sophisticated version of early Italian Renaissance style. Chard had attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1901 and, upon his return from Europe, opened an architectural office in the city. His small but selective practice in this city and state spanned some three decades. His client, for whom the house was built in 1909-10, was Dave Hennen Morris and his wife Alice. Mr. Morris later served as United States Ambassador to Belgium during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term.

Colony Club Ca. 1944 In 1903, a group of women led by Florence Harriman founded the Colony Club in order to provide women with a space comparable to many of the city's men only clubhouses. Raising $500,000, helped by the club's treasurer Anne Morgan, one of the richest women in the world, the Club commissioned Stanford White to build a club house at 120 Madison Avenue. Completed in 1908, the Colony Club only inhabited this property until 1913 whereupon it commissioned it current clubhouse at 564 Park Avenue (seen here). Designed by Delano & Aldrich in the Colonial Style, the Colonial Club's Park Avenue Clubhouse was completed in 1916. Seven stories high, it contains three dining rooms, two ballrooms, 25 guest rooms and full athletic facilities. One of the city's most exclusive social clubs, the membership remains entirely female. Men are permitted to enter as a guest of a member, but must adhere to its strict dress code.

Barbizon Hotel ARCHITECT: Murgatroyd & Ogden DATE: 1927-29 STYLE: North Italian Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance Designed by the prominent hotel specialists Murgatroyd & Ogden, the 23-story Barbizon Hotel is an excellent representative of the 1920s apartment hotel building, and is notable for the high quality of its design. Its vigorous stepped-back massing reflects the influence of the 1916 zoning resolution. The Barbizon’s design is distinguished by the complex arrangement of setbacks and recessed courts, which create subtle transitions between the various elements of the design, and by the masterful handling of its eclectic mixture of North Italian Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance ornament. The richness of the building’s exterior brickwork that varies considerably in hue and texture, the careful proportioning of its details, and its dramatically massed roofline with its 18th story Gothic arcades and chapel-like crown have also won critical acclaim.

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.

580 Park Avenue, date unknown (post 1923). This elegant 14-story apartment building was constructed as a cooperative in 1923. During the 1910s a number of older single family and tenement dwellings were demolished to make way for large apartment houses. This neo-Renaissance building that occupies the entire blockfront replaced ten tenements building that had been constructed in 1877-78.

H.O. Havemeyer Mansion ca. 1901 Henry Osborne Havemeyer was the president of the family's sugar refining business until his death in 1907. Designed by Charles C. Haight, the architect of the similarly turreted New York Cancer Hospital which still stands at 106th Street and Central Park West, the Havemeyer mansion was built between 1890 and 1891 on the north east corner of Fifth Avenue and 66th Street. The home was best known for its sumptuous interior decoration by Louis Comfort Tiffany and Samuel Colman, commissioned by Havemeyer and his wife Louisiana in 1890. The interior design provided a distinctive setting for the Havemeyer's collection of Impressionist and Old Master paintings.

Percy and Maud H. Pyne House ARCHITECT: McKim, Mead & White; Charles F. McKim DATE: 1906-12 STYLE: Neo-Federal This house is a part of that outstanding group of neo-Federal townhouses which extends along the west side of Park Avenue, between East 68th and 69th Streets, sometimes referred to as the “Pyne-Davison Blockfront” due to the uniform architectural quality of these houses. No. 680 Park Avenue, formerly the handsome townhouse of Percy Rivington Pyne, occupies a conspicuous site at the northwest corner of East 68th Street and Park Avenue. It was designed in the neo-Federal style by the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, and built in 1909-11. Percy Pyne was a New York financier and philanthropist; he resided here until his death in 1929. The house was sold in 1947 to the Chinese Delegation to the United Nations which in turn sold It to the Soviet Mission to the United Nations.

120 East 65th Street, ca. 1911. No. 120 (the farthest building on the right) was originally built in 1874 as one a series of speculative brownstone-fronted homes (nos. 120-130). Because of the locomotives that once traveled down the middle of Park Avenue (previously called 4th Avenue) the homes east of Park were originally not hugely desirable. Once the railroad was moved underground in 1875, the value of these attractive homes increased greatly. No. 120 was the home to a series of well-to-do merchants. In 1897 is became the St. Joseph’s Home for Babies, an orphanage run by Dominican nuns. By 1902 the structure was a private home again and undergoing a massive renovation. Owners Isaac Chauncey McKeever and his wife Julia commissioned architect S. E. Gage to transform their Victorian rowhouse into a neo-Federal house. The most striking new feature was the stoop turned sideways with dogleg configuration (meaning it included a sharp bend). Today the home, with the unique stairs, still sits directly next to a series of Victorian rowhouses that look exactly as it once looked.

Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo House ARCHITECT: Kimball & Thompson DATE: 1895-98 Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo was a member of one of New York’s old and established families. She was a descendant of Bernard Rhinelander who in the 1840s was described as “among the richest of the rich” in the city. At the age of thirty-four, Gertrude married Francis William Waldo. The couple had one son, Rhinelander Waldo, who served in the Philippine campaign of the Spanish American War, and was later a controversial figure in New York City government, first as Fire Commissioner and then as Police commissioner under Tammany administrations.

R. Livingston and Eleanor T. Beeckman House ARCHITECT: Warren & Wetmore DATE: 1903-05 STYLE: French Classic Although this small townhouse is sandwiched between two large apartment buildings, their overpowering size cannot overshadow the palatial scale nor the elegant grandeur of its architecture. Designed by an architect educated in the finest tradition of the French Beaux-Arts School, this house, in its character, reflects the influence of the Eighteenth Century classic period of Louis XV. Two windows wide, the three-story masonry facade, with steep mansard roof containing two floors with dormers has an impressive dignity and restraint.

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.

George Gould Residence, ca. 1900. George Gould was the son of millionaire railroad man Jay Gould. In 1892 George had built a new mansion for his growing family. The mansion, built in a French Neo-Gothic style, was made of dark brownstone and was ornamented with turrets, balconies, and peaked gables. It was the location of the 1895 wedding of George's sister Anna to a French count, where the social elite of New York and European royalty arrived by carriage, and New Yorkers lined the street to try and glimpse the guests. In 1906 the dark, Gothic style mansion was terribly out of fashion with the new mansions of the Upper East Side. So George had his home razed and constructed a new building on the site.

Lay nurses and aides as well as Sisters of Charity of New York worked at the Foundling. The Foundling housed an average of 600 women and 1800 infants at a time, and also provided day care for working mothers. The largest institution of its kind in the nation, the Foundling was the only one in New York City that provided care for all children and women who requested assistance, regardless of race, creed, marital status, ethnicity, or ability to pay.

Blumenthal House, ca. 1915. George Blumenthal was a German-born financier, philanthropist, and art collector who made the bulk of his fortune in foreign exchange on Wall Street. Blumenthal built two homes in New York City. The first was a 1903 midblock mansion on West 53rd Street. The second was this four-story limestone mansion designed by Trowbridge & Livingston on the former site of the Union Theological Seminary. The large home was laid out to house Blumenthal's large collection of art, including an interior patio complex originally produced for the castle of Vélex Blanco in Spain (and a working fountain from Florence). Blumenthal died in 1941 bequeathing the home and much of his collection to the Metropolitan Museum, of which he was President of the Board at his death. Today the museum has the interior patio on display, while the home itself was demolished in 1943 for a 20-story apartment building.

775 Park Avenue ca. Built in 1927, 775 Park Avenue served to cement architect Rosario Candela's reputation for creating ultra luxury apartment buildings. Containing no less than 4 maisonettes (each with their own street level entrance), this limestone and brick structure's Italian Renaissance design falls in line with Rosario Candela's style of a restrained exterior hiding the vast apartments and homes within.

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.

Mount Sinai Dispensary ARCHITECT: Buchman & Deisler; Brunner & Tryon DATE: 1889-90 STYLE: Neo-Italian Renaissance This very handsome neo-Italian Renaissance-style building at 149-151 East 67th Street was built in 1889-90 to serve as a dispensary for Mount Sinai Hospital. The hospital originally faced the dispensary from its site on the south side of East 67th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues. The dignified and elegant architectural expression of the clinic, itself very much a product of late 19th-century social ideals is an important element in the group of stylistically diverse monumental civic and institutional buildings on this East Side block.

W.C. Whitney ca. 1901-1902 William Collins Whitney and his second wife were the third owners of this mansard-roofed brownstone mansion. Mrs. Whitney died just prior to the 1899 completion of its three-year interior renovation, and her husband died in 1904 of appendicitis. Built by architect William Schickel in the early 1880s, the house passed through several hands over the years, until its 1942, just nine months after the death of its final occupant, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney.

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).

125 East 65th Street, undated. This Neo-Georgian Townhouse was designed by Charles A. Platt for Dr. Frederic S. Reed in 1904. Platt was a notable architect whose clientele included Vincent Astor and Sara Delano Roosevelt. Henry R. Luce purchased the home in 1944, eventually gifting it to the China Institute, who remained at this address for 70 years. More recently, the building was the Kips Bay Decorator Show House, which invites 24 designers to reimagine the interior of the five-story home.