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."

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.

This arsenal at 64th Street was already outmoded as a military facility when the Civil War broke out in 1861. Built by Martin Euclid Thompson, it had been an auxiliary headquarters for the Seventh "Silk Stocking" Regiment since 1848. Although it was vacated by them in 1857 when the city claimed the building for its new Central Park, the arsenal continued as a military storage center in the early years of the war. It subsequently became a museum (precursor to the American Museum of Natural History), a weather bureau, and an art gallery. It also served as a makeshift zoo until 1870, when the Central Park Menagerie was given more permanent grounds behind the Arsenal. Today it serves as the headquarters for the Parks Department.

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).

The Delacorte Clock, ca. 1971. Named after philanthropist George T. Delacorte, the Delacorte Clock is located near the Children's Zoo and Wildlife Center in Central Park. Since it was unveiled in 1965, the clock has chimed seasonal songs and nursery rhymes on the hour and half hour everyday from 8:00 am – 6:00 pm. Its design, inspired by the musical clocks Delacorte observed during his European travels, features a tower and rotating band of animal sculptures by Andrea Spadini.

Doorway of the Chemical Bank, ca. 1990.

Elephant Enclosure at the Central Park Zoo, date unknown (post 1934). The Central Park Zoo began as a small menagerie in 1860 when citizens and circuses started donating animals to the city. It was the first zoo in New York State and, when officially chartered in 1864, was the second publicly owned zoo in the United States (after the Philadelphia Zoo). In 1934 the zoo entered a new era when Robert Moses, the city's master planner, built a new zoo. The grouping of new brick and limestone, neo-Georgian buildings were constructed around the new seal lion display. The featured animals included seals, lions, tigers, elephants, and gorillas. This photograph was taken after the new zoo was opened to the public. The zoo was then closed in 1983 and underwent a multi-year, multi-million dollar renovation and expansion under the supervision of the Wildlife Conservation Society, reopening in 1988.

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.

The Henry T. Sloane House, designed by John Mermen Carrere and Thomas Hastings— both had been educated at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and both worked for McKim, Mead & White— demonstrated the viability of a modern French vocabulary for a New York townhouse. Begun before the Panic of 1893, the house was completed in 1894 on the north side of 72nd Street. Elaborate sculptural ornament enlivened the classically organized tripartite faced. Above a rather simple striated base, five engaged columns divided the second and third floors into four bays, each containing French doors surmounted by elaborately framed windows. Above a strong cornice, a mansard roof with four dormers articulated with scrolls and arched pediments completed the facade. The house stood apart from more restrained expressions of wealth. Architectural historian Wayne Craven has described the house as a "classicist's nightmare, a raging terror to the classical purist." At right is no. 15, once the home to the prominent businessman Benjamin Guggenheim, the brother of Solomon R. Guggenheim and father to Peggy Guggenheim. He and his family lived here until his tragic death on the RMS Titanic in 1912. As one of the most famous victims of the accident, his final moments aboard the ship have been portrayed in multiple films and TV series about the sinking. He famously met his death stoically- after helping women and children on to the lifeboats, he and his valet dressed in their finest clothes, poured themselves a glass of the finest brandy, and sat in the foyer of the grand staircase, smoking cigars as the ship went down. He remarked, "we've dressed in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen."

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.

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.

Tiffany House, ca. 1900. This stunning house on the northwest corner of East 72nd Street and Madison Avenue was commission by Charles Lewis Tiffany, the founder and owner of jewelry store,Tiffany & Co. in 1882. Tiffany hired the firm of McKim, Mead and White, who ended up working closely with Tiffany's son, Louis Comfort Tiffany (LCT) on the design and logistics of the massive 57-room home. Designed in a number of styles, the largely Romanesque and Queen Anne architecture suggested it was one single structure, when it was, in fact, four buildings stacked on top of each other around a courtyard. Different family members, such as LCT, his sisters and their families resided in the different "apartments" within the complex. Unsurprisingly the home was extravagantly decorated with stained glass, antique lacquerware, collections of porcelain, decorative metalwork, and exotic ornamentation. The home featured decoration created and designed by not only Tiffany, but his associates: Lockwood de Forest, who directed the production of architectural woodwork; glass worker John La Farge; and the sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The same group had recently finished work on the interiors of the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue. By the 1890s financial issues resulted in a number of the "apartments" being rented out by non-Tiffany family (though still upper class family friends). Louis Comfort Tiffany died in this home in 1933 and the house was demolished in 1936.

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.

2 East 70th Street ca. Designed by Rosario Candela and the firm Walker & Gillette, 2 East 70th Street stands on the site of the Blair Mansion, a marble home built by Carrere & Hastings that survived for less than a decade before being torn down. Candela styled 2 East 70th street to take after the mansion in order to complement the Frick collection across the street. The simple stone clad design and quoined corners intended to leave a classic yet elegant impression.

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.

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.

“The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.” 🏙️

55 East 72nd Street, 1943.

Elbridge T. Gerry Residence, 1901. Designed by renowned architect Richard Morris Hunt, the Elbridge Thomas Gerry residence (1891-1894) on the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 61st Street was built for Gerry and his family. Gerry, a prominent lawyer and philanthropist, eventually gave up his law practice to devote his time to the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, a charity he helped establish in 1874. The house was demolished in 1927, the year of Gerry's death, and replaced by the Pierre Hotel, completed in 1930.

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.

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.

Thanksgiving—comfortable or contentious, there are some things we've come to expect from this day each year. Whether it's the presidential turkey pardon, watching the big game, or eating too much, many families have time-honored traditions and individual ways to celebrate. One of these is The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade! This Story is an abbreviated version, the original can be viewed here.

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.

Josiah M. Fiske Residence, ca. 1901-1902. The Gothic-inspired home on the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 70th Street was that of stockbroker Josiah Fiske and his wife, Martha. John Sloane, partner in the very successful firm of carpet and furniture retailers, W. & J. Sloane, occupied the residence directly adjacent, at 883 Fifth Avenue.

Designed by famed sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward, the Pilgrim Statue of Central Park depicts one of the men who landed at Plymouth Rock in November 1620. It was created for the 75th anniversary of the New England Society. Dedicated in 1885, the work stands atop a pedestal designed by American architectural master Richard Morris Hunt. The base features four bas-reliefs illustrating significant aspects of the Pilgrims’ landing. Pilgrim Hill, which descends from the monument, is a popular and long-standing locale for winter sledding. In 1979 the Central Park Conservancy began their restoration work on the park's impressive statue collection with this piece.

Hotel Pierre Dissatisfied with the "democratization of public manners," French Restauranteur Charles Pierre Casalasco organized a group of financiers to build a hotel. Built on the site of the old Gerry Mansion, the Pierre as it would soon be called, rose 41 stories and cost an estimated 15 million dollars to build (an extravagant sum at the time.) Designed by Schultze and Weaver, its most eye-catching feature is a top is modeled after Mansart's Royal Chapel at Versaille. Society turned out in force for its opening in1930 and the Pierre quickly earned a reputation as one of the city's finest hotels for a time. However, the great depression took a toll on the Pierre and it went into bankruptcy in 1932, just two years after its opening. J. Paul Getty ended up buying it in 1938 and converted some of the hotel rooms into apartments. Since its conception, despite its fiscal travails, the Pierre has attracted many notable inhabitants, including (to name a few) Sumner Redstone, Edward St. Aubyn, and Aristotle Onassis.

Knickerbocker Club ca. 1915 Architects William Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich excelled at interpreting and adapting the architecture of Colonial America and the early Republic. The architects specialized in designing socially exclusive New York City clubs, for whom the Anglo-American past had rich associations. As a young architect, William Delano designed this facility for the Knickerbocker Club, an offshoot of the Union Club, in the Federal style. Delano wrote, “I felt the elaborate façades of the prevalent French School did not fit in New York,” and drew inspiration instead from the more understated expression of his father’s townhouse on Washington Square.

The Mall is a quarter-mile stretch in Central Park, capped off on the south end by the famous Literary Walk. The only deliberate straight line in the park, it contains a quadruple row of American Elm trees, an important feature as the location is one of the few remaining stands of the trees in North America. As one of the most photographed and visited sections of the park, it has been nicknamed the "Promenade."

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).

19 East 72nd Street, 1937. The subtle Art Moderne apartment house that now stands on the lot of the former Tiffany mansion was designed by Mott B. Schmidt and Rosario Candela. Built immediately upon the razing of the old mansion (1936-1937) in the middle of the Great Depression, the limestone upper facade of the apartment house creates simple, clean lines, described by the AIA Guide to New York City as "succulent." The only highly decorative feature is the sculptural stonework around the main entrance, designed and carved by C. P. Jennewien and featuring classical figures and animals.

Inscope Arch, ca. 1910. In the 1870s, the crowds of pedestrians were becoming an annoyance to horseback riders and carriage drivers. The bridge which created the Inscope Arch was one of three suggested and built by Olmsted and Vaux in the 1870s, and it is the only one still remaining. The engineering of the bridge was complicated, as the land it occupied was once a swamp. Though the water had been drained, the soil remained soft and moveable. The resulting structure, rendered in ornamental pink and gray granite, is a half-oval archway, 13 feet 7 inches across at the base and 12 feet high in the middle. Inscope’s underpass is 34 feet long, and it has a 100-foot-long railing on top.

Entrance to the Frick Residence, ca. 1915. The female figure depicted lounging in the relief over the door was modeled on famed early 20th century artist model, Audrey Munson.

Richard Morris Hunt Memorial, ca. 1900. Richard Morris Hunt, the dean of American architecture and the first American to study at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, died in 1895. Immediately upon his death, friends and colleagues quickly undertook an effort to erect a monument to the man. Initially begun by the Municipal Arts Society (of which Hunt was the first president), the cause was soon taken up by other arts and architectural institutions as well the wealthy families for whom Hunt designed homes. The planned memorial was to be created by Bruce Price with the bust of Hunt and the flanking statues sculpted by Daniel Chester French. On October 23, 1898, the incomplete monument was unveiled. It was erected on Fifth Avenue between 70th and 71st Streets, across the street from Hunt's 1877 Lenox Library. The memorial would finally be completed in 1900 with the addition of the flanking female statues. Fun Fact! This was not the first likeness of Hunt in New York City. A bust of the well-loved architect already existed by the time of his death. In the early 1880s, as stone cutters were completing work on the William K. Vanderbilt mansion, the architect discovered that the artisans had created his likeness as a tribute. The statue of Hunt, depicted as a stone-cutter, was installed on the roof over the entrance to the house. With the home demolished in 1926, the fate of the statue is unknown (though likely it was destroyed with the house).

The French flag flying from 9 East 72nd Street looks right at home on this exuberant Beaux-Arts French Renaissance facade. But, this building was not built for French patrons. Though it housed the Lycee Francais from 1964-2002, this structure on 72nd was actually designed by Carrere and Hastings (who designed the New York Public Library), and completed in 1896, for Henry T. Sloane, a carpet magnate, and his wife Jessie.

Dancing Goat sculpture ca. 1962 This whimsical bronze statue is part of a pair of niche sculptures that flank the buildings in the Central Park Zoo. The Dancing Goat stands at the south side, with the Honey Bear at the north. Cast at Roman Bronze Works in Brooklyn and installed in 1937, the sculptures serve as decorative fountains. Placed in basins at the sides of the zoo's Dancing Crane Cafe, both animals stand on their hind legs. Water sprays from five ducks at the feet of the goat, and from five small frogs at the feet of the bear. The lighthearted pieces were created by renowned animal sculptor and Brooklyn native Frederick George Richard Roth. They are among several Roth works acquired by Central Park in the 1920s and 1930s. (Among them is Balto, the statue of the legendary Alaskan husky). Central Park Conservancy refurbished the sculptures in 1993, and today Roth's pieces continue to delight Park and Zoo visitors of all ages.

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.

Josephine Schmidt Mansion ca. 1900 Though now replaced by the blue blooded Knickerbocker Club, this lot was once home to the Josephine Schmidt Mansion. Josephine's husband had been a successful brewer and she built this limestone chateau in 1899 following his death. However, it was not to last long for in 1909 she married the son of an Italian prince and moved to Europe. The Knickerbocker Club purchased the mansion in 1914 and tore it (and its neighbor) down to build their club house.

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.

John Quincy Adams Ward's bronze work titled the "Indian Hunter Monument" was the first statue created by an American artist in Central Park-- and is one of the oldest statues in the park. Lauded for its realism, the original plaster work was so popular that a committee of New Yorkers raised funds in 1869 for a bronze cast.

107th Infantry Memorial, ca. 1935. A bronze figural group depicting seven larger-than-life-sized World War I soldiers in battle, the 107th Infantry Memorial honored the dead of the Seventh Regiment. Created by sculptor Karl Illava (who was a sergeant with the 107th) and placed on a massive base designed by architects Rogers and Haneman, the"doughboys" seems to be advancing out of the woods of Central Park towards the Regimental headquarters a few blocks east. The monument was dedicated on September 27, 1927, the ninth anniversary of a decisive battle at the Hindenburg Line, where the 107th helped secured a victory that turned the tide of the war.

Gapstow Bridge, ca. 1910. The iconic Gapstow Bridge over a small neck of the Central Park Pond is the second bridge on this site. The first structure was an elaborate wood and iron bridge, designed by Jacob Wrey Mould in 1874 that declined to the point that it needed to be replaced in 1896. The second bridge which still stands is constructed of Manhattan schist. The bridge is 12 feet high, spans 44 feet of water, and has a full length of 76 feet. The bridge has been featured in many films set in New York City, including Weekend at Bernies, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, and It Should Happen to You.

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.

Henry Clay Frick House ARCHITECT: Carrère & Hastings DATE: 1913-14 Set in spacious grounds and surrounded by retaining walls, this great mansion presents a striking picture of imposing grandeur and architectural distinction on Fifth Avenue, where it occupies the entire blockfront between 70th and 71st Streets. Built as the residence of Henry Clay Frick, it has been a museum since 1935. The entrance to The Frick Collection is at No. 1 East 70th Street. Adjoining the mansion to the east and connected to it at basement level, is the newer Frick Art Reference Library Building at No. 10 East 71st Street.

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.

Empty lot at the northwest corner of Madison Avenue and East 72nd Street, 1936. The Tiffany mansion had recently been demolished.

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.

Barney's New York, 660 Madison Avenue, ca. 1944. Barney’s has some of the city’s most elaborate and inventive window displays at holiday time. The department store is known to collaborate with big name artists and entertainers, including Lady Gaga, Nick Cave, Rob Pruitt, and Matt Stone. In recent years, they have even implemented “live” performances and aspects to their festive window displays.

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.

Fifth Avenue alongside Central Park is one of New York's most recognizable locales. This walk focuses on the institutions that lend this turf its name: the Museum Mile!

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.

Oliver Gould Jennings Residence (at left), ca. 1975. The Oliver Gould Jennings residence was built in 1898 by Paris-trained architects Ernest Flagg and Walter B. Chambers. Like his father, a founder of the Standard Oil Company, Oliver ranked among New York's wealthiest citizens. He served as the director of several companies, including the National Fuel Gas Company and Bethlehem Steel, and was a former member of the Connecticut House of Representatives. Oliver and his wife Mary lived in the Beaux-Arts townhouse until 1914, when they sold the house and relocated to their new home on Fifth Avenue between 69th and 70th Street. In August of 1960, the Lycée Français, a French high school, leased the mansion as additional space to its main campus on East 95th Street. The school occupied the building for several years before also purchasing the former Sloane mansion next door, combining the two units. In 2010, the school sold the former Oliver Gould Jennings residence and the Sloane mansion for $26 million. The buyer, an Emir of Qatar, has since commissioned architect Thornton Tomasetti to return it to a private residence.

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.

C. C. Auchincloss residence, ca. 1912. Charles C. Auchincloss was a stock broker and book collector, who with his wife, Rosamond, were fixtures of New York society. They lived in this home in the first three decades of the 20th century. In the early 1930s the building, and its neighbor at no. 10 were purchased by the Frick collection and demolished to make way for a new library building. The new Frick Art Reference Library building opened to the public on January 14, 1935. By the time of this demolition and new building, Charles and Rosamond had moved on to 120 East 70th Street, a three-story brownstone house, which they demolished and replaced with a (still standing) five-story neo-Georgian mansion.

834 Fifth Avenue ca. 1946 Designed by Rosario Candela, 834 Fifth Avenue embodies the trend in the early 20th century of luxury apartment buildings replacing townhouses and mansions as residences for the rich. Because Margaret V. Haggin, owner of the house on the corner of 64th Street and Fifth Avenue, refused to sell it to developer Anthony Campagna, Candela originally designed 834 Fifth Avenue as just a mid-block apartment building replacing a row of existing residences. During construction, however, she changed her mind, and the building was redesigned to encompass the corner. Haggin stayed on the site of her former home, occupying a duplex in the new building.

How did the stunning Frick Collection come into existence? A passion for art collecting and hard-nosed business practices of course!

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.

Bronze statue of Robert Burns, Central Park, ca. 1976. The Central Park monument to Burns, the Bard of Ayrshire, was cast by the poet's countryman, sculptor John Steell and dedicated on October 2, 1880. It is one of four casts, with its siblings located in London; Dundee, Scotland; and Dunedin, New Zealand.

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.

24 East 72nd Street, 1895. This five-story brownstone was designed by McKim, Mead & White for Mrs. Ruth Brown. The home was complete in 1895 but Brown sold the house to Alva Vanderbilt before ever even moved in. The freshly (and scandalously) divorced Alva was forced to leave her Fifth Avenue 'Petit Chateau' following the end of her marriage. Despite an initial shunning by the moneyed society after the divorce, Alva was welcomed back into the fold soon when she married her daughter to the Duke of Marlborough. The reception was held at Alva's new brownstone, a brunch for 115 guests. Alva herself also married at this house, a quiet wedding in January 1896 to a friend of her ex-husband, Oliver Belmont. Alva sold the house a few years later. It remained a private residence until 1949. Razed two years later for a simple, boxy two-story building, but the corner lot has recently had a facelift. Between 2008 and 2010 Ralph Lauren erected a new building to house his second flagship store. The Beaux Arts-inspired building was an homage to grand Gilded Age mansions such as Mrs. Brown's House and the James Duke House.

Central Park Casino, during demolition, 1936. It’s 1929 in an Art Deco ballroom. Dancers glide around, dimly reflected in the black glass ceiling while outside on the terrace, the sound of champagne corks popping intersperses with conversations, laughter, and jazz, all floating through the night air. Surrounded by Central Park, the Central Park Casino was the place for rich, fabulous, and socially and politically connected citizens of the late 1920s and early 1930s who wanted to party together and ignore the troublesome 18th Amendment. Yet by 1935, the party was over. How did a political rivalry end the revelry at one of the most exclusive Jazz Age nightclubs? The Central Park Casino began in 1864 as the Ladies’ Refreshment Salon, a quaint Victorian two-room stone cottage designed by Calvert Vaux on East Drive and 72nd Street. Unaccompanied ladies could relax during their excursions around the park and enjoy refreshments at decent prices, free of any threat to their propriety. Twenty years later, the salon had morphed into a far pricier destination, called The Casino, and was open to both sexes. The name was used to invoke the Italian translation of “little house” rather than denoting a gambling joint. Locals and tourists flocked to the restaurant, where one could get a sirloin steak for 75 cents (just under 20 dollars in today’s money) and choose from an extensive wine list. Because it was in the park and had the then rare attraction of outdoor seating, it was the place to see and be seen. Yet after decades of feeding and refreshing wealthy and hungry park-goers, the Casino fell onto hard times and according to an article from the New Yorker from September 20, 1941, by the early 1920’s it was being managed in “a somewhat dumpy nite-club style.” In 1926 New York City was swept up in the Jazz Age. Speakeasies, dancing, and just a general pursuit of good times engulfed the city. To go with this fun-loving era, New York City elected a new mayor, James “Gentleman Jimmy” or “Beau Jim” Walker, who personified this spirit. Walker was a successful songwriter with the 1905 hit “Will You Still Love Me in December as You do in May?” and was generally much more enthusiastic about the excesses of the Roaring Twenties than being the mayor of New York. This worked out well since Tammany Hall was quite content to manage the city while Walker functioned as its dashing figurehead. Walker reportedly never made it to City Hall before noon and when he did and wasn’t feeling up to the task, he had a private “hangover room,” complete with a bed and an exercise bike (the bike was reportedly never used). This is not to say that Walker was a bad mayor. His constituents loved him because he vowed to keep subway ride prices at a nickel, allowed baseball games to be played on Sundays, and promised to improve the parks. Mobsters loved him too since he was such a fan of the nightlife that they ran. On top of that, Walker was a gifted speaker, always ready with a quip, wisecrack or some delightful repartee. He was New York City’s master of ceremonies. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the next incarnation of the Central Park Casino started with a favor. Sidney Solomon, a noted hotelier, had introduced Walker to his personal tailor and that, to the always snazzily dressed mayor, was worth quite a bit. So when Solomon asked to take over the Casino to make it into an “outstanding restaurant instead of the shanty it is now,” Walker (through a series of somewhat sketchy maneuvers) made it happen. After a $500,000 renovation, the Casino added a tulip pavilion, orange terrace, a silver conservatory and, most importantly, a black-glass Art Deco ballroom. There were tables to seat 600 and a parking lot for 300 cars. Solomon said, very humbly, “it is not just a renovation. It’s something that has never before existed so perfectly in the world.” On the night of June 25, 1929, every seat was taken as the Casino opened to select guests, the so-called “fashionable and fastidious” to whom the restaurant now catered to. It was called “Walker’s Versailles,” where the bandleader would immediately start playing “Will You Still Love Me in December as You do in May?” as soon as Walker and his mistress, the actress Betty Compton, walked in the door. For the next few months, parties regularly lasted until 3 A.M., with Tammany hotshots mingling with Ziegfeld Follies’ showgirls. To get around the pesky Prohibition laws, patrons would leave their Rolls-Royces stocked with bootleg champagne parked outside. The maître d kept an eye on the drinks at the wealthiest tables and when they ran low, he would signal their chauffeur, standing near the doorway, to restock the alcohol from the stash in the car. It was the most exclusive playground for the most exclusive set. In the fall of 1929, Walker easily defeated Fiorello La Guardia for a second term as mayor. While the Casino was still dazzling its well-heeled guests, some people saw it as the epitome of...

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.

Links Club, 1937. Nos. 36 and 38 East 62nd Street were originally a pair of brownstones constructed in the 1880s. Famed conductor, Anton Seidl lived in No. 38. In 1916 the lots were sold to the Links Club. The gentlemen's club was devoted to golfing interests and was the brainchild of Charles B. Macdonald. MacDonald was the vice-president of the United States Golf Association, tournament- winning golfer, and the architect of American golf courses. The new Cross & Cross-designed clubhouse, completed in 1917, was a 40-foot fronted Georgian Revival structure with a subtle, nearly hidden entrance, a few steps below the sidewalk. Though plans were discussed for a driving range on the roof, instead, a tradition roof garden was constructed. Famous members of the club have included President Eisenhower, ambassadors, governors, senators, the CEOs of all the major financial firms, and any number of other extremely influential men. It has been called the perhaps the most powerful club in the world. The Links, with no exterior signage that calls out the building as a clubhouse, still occupies this stately structure one hundred years after its construction.

The Frick Collection, ca. 1979. Like many of New York's richest men who supported the arts, Henry Clay Frick amassed his fortune through sharp—and often ruthless—business tactics. Born in 1849 in a rural Pennsylvania town, Frick sacrificed schooling to work as head bookkeeper in the family business. By 1883, when he was 34, he merged his own company with Andrew Carnegie's to form Carnegie Steel, at a capitalization of $25 million and with a labor force of 30,000. Frick opposed organized labor his entire life. In 1892, his efforts to slash costs and keep profits up resulted in the Homestead Strike, one of the 19th century's bloodiest labor conflicts. There was even an attempt on Frick's life. In 1899, Frick and Carnegie parted ways on bitter terms that lasted the rest of their lives. Following Frick's resignation from Carnegie Steel, he sued Carnegie and walked away with a $15 million settlement. Frick's interest in art began in his early 20s, when he filled his clapboard shack with prints and sketches. Though there's little record of Frick's thoughts about the art he went on to collect, it's clear the collections of other New York industrialists inspired him. After attending the Metropolitan Museum of Art's memorial exhibition for J.P. Morgan in 1914, Frick spent more than $3 million (more than $66 million today) to buy up Limoges enamels, Chinese porcelains, Renaissance bronzes, 18th century French furniture and sculpture, and a variety of other objects. The biggest single purchase was a series of paintings by Jean Honore Fragonard that had been commissioned by one of Louis XV's mistresses. While many of the city's elite built their homes around entertaining, Frick built his to house his art, making the picture gallery the grandest room. And when he executed his will he made explicit that the home should be open to the city "for the purpose of encouraging and the developing the study of the fine arts, and of advancing the general knowledge of kindred subjects." Frick died in 1919, just a few months after Andrew Carnegie, and the collection opened to the public in 1935, upon the death of his wife, Adelaide. Many of the rooms look just as Frick left them: the library bookshelves filled, and living room tables topped with Renaissance bronzes and Chinese porcelains.

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.

Knickerbocker Club Building ARCHITECT: Delano & Aldrich DATE: 1913-15 STYLE: Neo-Federal Recognized as one of the finest examples of the neo-Federal style in New York City, the Knickerbocker Club Building was built between 1913 and 1915 by the fashionable architectural firm of Delano & Aldrich. Occupying a prominent lot at the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 62nd Street, the building was designed to fit comfortably into the surrounding residential neighborhood as well as to maintain the club’s historic presence on the avenue.

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.

Sidewalk Excavation for Tree Planting at the Henry Clay Frick House, 1913. Henry Clay Frick commissioned the Beaux Arts masters Carrère & Hastings to design a residence for both his family and his art collection at the site of the former Lenox Library. Looking to create shade along 70th and 71st Streets, Frick had the sidewalk excavated to six feet in depth to install European horse-chestnut trees, which have dense canopies and shallow roots. Each of the trees was carefully selected and brought over on a special train from Germantown, PA, and fertile soil was trucked in from Long Island. Despite the care and attention of Frick’s gardeners, all the trees died less than a year later. The culprit? Illuminating gas was found seeping into the soil from faulty pipe connections from the mansion.

25 East 61st street is the rear extension of 673 Madison Avenue, an Italianate brownstone built in 1871 by architect John G. Prague as part of a project for the developer John McCool which included a row of 5 brownstones on Madison Avenue, and 17 houses on 61st street. B. Harris & Sons was a family-owned, fine-jewelry business established in New York City in 1898 by B. Harris, a Russian immigrant who had been an artisan to Czar Alexander III. Having pilfered a precious stone from the royal workbench to pay for passage out of Russia, Harris and his wife fled the empire, walking across an ice bridge to Finland. The Harrises arrived in New York via London, and by 1926, B. Harris & Sons became the first retail jewelry store on West 47th Street. Harris’s sons Charles and Nathan shepherd the store to East 61st st., where it became one of the city’s leading jewelers (The July 12, 1976 issue of New York Magazine lists clients including Gloria Steinem, Helen Hays, Richard Rodgers and Marion Javits.) B. Harris and sons closed in 1991, when Nathan Harris retired. Interestingly, 25 East 61st Street is currently home to the estate jewelers Stephen P. Kahan & Son.

Situated at the edge of the area known as The Concert Ground, the Naumburg Bandshell is the only Neo-Classical building in the park. It replaced a previous (and acoustically poor) cast-iron bandstand in 1923. It has been the site of many musical performances across genres, with concerts by greats like Irving Berlin, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and The Grateful Dead. The Central Park SummerStage concerts originated at this venue.

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.

William Shakespeare monument, Central Park, ca. 1975. John Quincy Adams Ward (1830-1910) created the sculpture of William Shakespeare located at the south end of the Mall. This was the first sculpture of a writer to be placed on the Mall, which is also known as Literary Walk.

Zoos were not always magical places. Many of the early menageries and zoos collected animals by trapping them in the wild and placing them in cramped cages that looked nothing like their native environment. Today, the Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs the zoos and the aquarium here in New York (with the exception of the Staten Island Zoo; so independent, that Staten Island), works tirelessly to protect wildlife and the natural world. This desire to protect animals is actually something people have been passionate about for years. People - specifically Brooklynites.

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.

The Upper East Side’s three landmarked armories might be the most “commanding” structures in the neighborhood. Among New York’s earliest landmarks, these fortified urban fortresses were built to store arms and to provide training and social space for local regiments whose members served in every major U.S. conflict from the War of 1812 through The Second World War. More recently, these structures have been transformed into schools, park facilities and art spaces. Today, they offer a slice of local history and an impressive catalog of ideas for adaptive reuse. As the conversation continues around reorienting our city’s martial elements toward the communities they serve, the evolution of our neighborhood’s armories reminds us that historic preservation is a tool both for honoring the past and for enriching the present. Scroll on to learn more about the Upper East Side’s armories. Read this story in its original format here.

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.

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.

Replacing the ornate home of Charles Lewis Tiffany at the corner of Madison Avenue and 72nd Street, 19 East 72nd Street was one of the few apartment buildings Candela completed during the Great Depression. Stripped down to simple, stone surfaces with minimal ornamentation, the structure showed the rising influence of Modernism on American architecture and design. The curved profile of the building's lower three floors copied the Austrian Pavilion that Viennese architect and designer Josef Hoffmann had designed for the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris.

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.

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.