250 West 57th Street, 1938.

U.S.S Main Monument, 1913. On February 15, 1898 the USS Maine, sitting in Havana Harbor, exploded, killing 266 sailors. Using the anti-Spanish sentiment, newspapers fanned the flames of horror and anger among Americans. In April of that year President William McKinley declared war on Spain. Newspaperman William Randolph Hearst, whose sensationalist yellow journalism had agitated the negative public opinion towards Spain, initiated a public fund to install a memorial almost immediately after the tragedy . The successful, but drawn out, fundraising campaign included benefits and collections taken up by groups large and small, from school drives to a ritzy Opera House event. The monument itself was created by architect Harold Van Buren Magonigle and sculptor Attilio Piccirilli and was to stand over 60 feet. More than 10 years after the explosion, with more than $100,000 raised, both the design and the location were confirmed. After an earlier rejection (fearing competition with the Columbus Statue), a site just within Central Park near the corner of 59th Street and Central Park West was approved. On Memorial Day 1913 the monument was dedicated in front of a crowd of thousands of the citizens and more than 10,000 sailors and soldiers. As the monument was uncovered, a 252 gun salute rang out from the Navy boats in the harbor.

Columbus Circle ca. 1936 From the ninth floor of the General Motors Building on West 58th Street, Abbott photographed Columbus Circle through the back of the Schenley Rye neon sign mounted on the New York Journal Building. The Circle’s statue of Columbus, erected in 1892 to commemorate the quadricentennial of his ocean voyage, occupies the center of the photograph but is dwarfed by an even more popular landmark, the Coca-Cola sign standing atop the American Circle Building. The dominance of the commercial signs over the Columbus statue emphasizes modern advertising’s subversion of traditional civic imagery. In a variant image, Abbott adopted a horizontal format and boldly superimposed the Schenley sign over the entire cityscape, totally obscuring the panorama. In 1964, Huntington Hartford’s iconoclastic Museum of Modern Art replaced the New York Journal Building. Two years later, the 44-story Gulf and Western Tower replaced the American Circle Building along with the much-loved Coca-Cola sign.

"Broadway, west side, from 60th to 61st Streets. The building in the foreground was built two years before this as a three-story building. Nine stories have just been added, to make it a twelve-story building. Construction work, both exterior and interior, was completed within three months, December 26, 1924."

Lincoln Center, 1986. Lincoln Center, a world-class performing arts center, has had close connections to the LGBT community since planning began in the mid-1950s. It was also the location of the first AIDS Walk, sponsored by the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, in 1986.

Columbus Circle ca. 1918 Max Schreyer traveled around the United States and Europe making a name for himself by riding a bicycle down a wooden chute, launching himself into the air and landing in a tank of water. Photographer William Hassler was there for the event at Broadway and 59th Street on November 27, 1918. Schreyer succeeded on that day, but six months later, performing in Van Cortlandt Park, his famous “Leap of Death” finally proved fatal

55 Central Park West, entrance detail, ca. 1980-2000.

Gainsborough Studios ARCHITECT: Charles W. Buckham DATE: 1907-08 The Gainsborough Studios is a rare surviving example of artists’ cooperative housing, a building type popular in Manhattan for a brief period in the early twentieth century. Built during the heyday of its type, in 1907-08, the Gainsborough provided both living and working spaces. The handsome, distinctive design of the building reflects its unusual purpose. Large, double-height windows provide an abundance of northern light to the artists’ studios. Designed, managed and inhabited by artists, the building was given artistic connotations via its name and the proliferation of exterior ornament.

St. Nicholas Rink, 1898. Designed by the architectural firm of Flagg and Chambers, the St. Nicholas Rink was an indoor ice rink, one of the first to use a mechanical method to freeze ice. Opened in 1896 (and funded by Cornelius Vanderbilt and John Jacob Astor among others) the venue hosted ice sports exclusively until 1906. Later presented boxing and wrestling matches. When it ceased operation in 1962, it was reported that more than 30,000 bouts had taken place at St. Nicks. Closed in the 60s, the large industrial neo-Classical building was not demolished until the 1980s, replaced by ABC television offices.

When one speaks about the historic buildings of New York City, images of the stately brick rowhouses of Brooklyn, the cast-iron office buildings of SoHo, and the elaborate mansions of 5th Avenue come to mind. But the interesting architecture of the city is not limited to buildings constructed before 1900 in a classical style. Buildings built in the modern styles in the middle of the 20th century dot the streetscape and range from tall office buildings, to transportation structures, to private residences. These Mid-Century Modern buildings with their unique shapes, unusual massing, and uncommon materials (at least uncommon compared to architecture that came before) stand out from the earlier masonry buildings and the contemporary glassy structures that surround them.

Century Theatre, 1930. A grand (and hulking) presence on the corner of 63rd Street, the Beaux-Arts theatre and opera house, designed by Carrère and Hastings, opened in 1909 as the New Theatre. The New Theatre produced shows for only two seasons before leasing the space to other theatre managers. The venue reopened as the Century in 1911 and by 1915 was under the management of Florenz Ziegfeld. Buoyed by the success of his roof garden venue and nightclub at the New Amsterdam in Times Square, Ziegfeld opened the Cocoanut Grove on the rooftop here. Unfortunately the theatre had too many strikes against it. And the WPA Guide to NYC was there to call it out as, describing the venue as "New York's most spectacularly unsuccessful theater" and a "Shrine of Snobbism." The locations was too far from the theatre district, the large and ornate building was expensive to maintain, and the acoustics were poor, despite efforts to improve them. In 1931 the theatre was demolished and replaced by the Art Deco Century Apartments, designed by the firm of Irwin Chanin.

55 Central Park West, ca. 1970-1990. Designed by Schwartz & Gross and completed in 1930, this apartment building is perhaps best known for it cinematic history. A location in the film Ghostbusters, the building is portrayed as a super-conductive antenna and portal to the earthly realm for Gozer (an ancient, ultra-powerful, malignant being from another dimension who was summoned to New York City to destroy the world).

Metropolitan Opera House, ca. 1970. Opened in 1966 to replace the original 1883 Metropolitan Opera House at Broadway and 39th Street, this Mid-Century Modern building was designed by Wallace K. Harrison. Plans for a new opera house were discussed as early as the 1920s and plans were made to include a new venue into the development of Rockefeller Center, but financial troubles related to the stock market crash of 1929 halted those plans. In the early 1960s the Met and the New York Philharmonic Society commissioned Harrison, one of the architects in charge of Rockefeller Center, to create their new home and the centerpiece for the larger Lincoln Center complex. The distinctive facade is rendered in a white limestone, and its main entrance (seen here) includes five concrete arches and a stylish glass and bronze facade. Visible though the large glass front, the lobby is decorated with two massive murals by Marc Chagall. The stage technology in the auditorium is some of the most complex in the world. To create the magic of the opera the mechanisms include seven hydraulic, double decked elevators that are 60-feet-wide, three slipstages (that can accommodate a complete stage set), and a 60-foot turntable.

240 Central Park South ARCHITECT: Mayer & Whittlesey DATE: 1939-40 STYLE: Art Deco This is a significant and innovative complex that represents the transition between 1930s Art Deco style apartment towers with courtyards (characteristic of Central Park West) and post-World War II “modernist” apartment houses. The architects were particularly skillful in adapting their plan to a highly prominent and complex site, with frontages along Central Park South, Columbus Circle, Broadway and West 58th Street. The complex consists of a 20-story, C-shaped-in-plan building (with an 8-story tower), facing Central Park, connected by ground-story lobbies and rounded shopfronts (following the diagonal of Broadway) to a 15-story building to the south.

The young men's club opened in March of 1930, costing a grand 3,250,000 dollars. According to a New York Times article from March 30th, 1930, "the boys' department contains several novel rooms including a forge and workroom and a "Totem Room," which will house a large original Alaskan totem pole." The log cabin was part of this set of novelties, which also included a "Pirate Ship's Cabin," of which we can only imagine. Of the more typical fixtures of a recreational facility, the building also housed three gymnasiums, two swimming pools, twenty large entertainment and activities rooms, a technical school, theater, and dormitory of 600 rooms. The branch reportedly had around 14,000 members.

The monument to Christopher Columbus in what we now call Columbus Circle was one of the dozens of monuments erected in the Americas and Europe to mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage, but this one was especially significant to New York’s growing Italian American population. Led by Carlo Barsotti, publisher of the newspaper Il Progresso Italo-Americano, the Italian American community raised funds and paid for the monument itself. At the time, Columbus, born in Genoa, was perhaps the most widely celebrated figure of Italian descent in the United States. As Italian immigrants faced discrimination and struggled to forge an identity in their new home, many found in Columbus a symbol of both Italian heritage and American pride. At the unveiling, on October 12, 1892, Luigi Palma di Cesnola addressed the 10,000 people in attendance: "The countrymen of Columbus, the Italians resident and citizens in the United States, conscious indeed that his true monument is this great land, its institutions, its prosperity, its blessings, its lessons of advance for all humanity, have yet desired to testify, to at least the present generation, their full and unfailing sense of their great peculiar debt. They have procured, in contributions great and small, but uniformly large in spirit, the execution of this monument; and they have erected and presented it in token of their affection and gratitude to this great and beloved country; the country in which they have found a permanent home, a more congenial form of government, and better and freer facilities honorably to earn their livelihood."

1790 Broadway, 1915. Completed in 1912 for the United States Rubber Company, this building stood on the stretch of Broadway from Times Square to 70th Street known as "Automobile Row." U.S. Rubber, desiring to make a statement in this automotive center, commissioned architects Carrère and Hastings, having just completed the Fifth Avenue New York Public Library, to design their headquarters. The result is the dignified building that remains today, faced with Vermont marble. Unfortunately, a 1951 sale of the building to the West Side Saving Banks prompted the destruction of the facade of the bottom two floors in favor of an incongruous international style infill. Though a later restoration did not end up restoring the lost facade as planned, the rest of Carrère & Hastings building remains historically intact.

The Century apartment building, 1936. The Century towers, which take their name from the theater which previously occupied the site, are an Art Deco apartment complex designed by architect Irwin S. Chanin and completed in 1931.

The Hearst Magazine Building was designed by Joseph Urban and George B. Post for William Randolph Hearst between 1926 and 1927. The building would be Hearst's many publication's headquarters in Columbus Circle, what he considered the up-and-coming theater district in Manhattan. The project marks Hearst's ambitions to turn Columbus Circle into an urban center parallel to Times Square. Hearst moved to New York in 1895 after a successful overhaul of his father's publication, the San Francisco Examiner. His techniques of yellow-journalism made the paper sell quickly, and Hearst carried this style of work to his newest purchase in New York, the Morning Journal. He quickly outran his competitor, Joseph Pulitzer, by decreasing the price of his paper and eventually picking up a share of Pulitzer's employees. When he wanted to design a new headquarters for the Journal and his 72 other acquired companies, he hired the architect of Pulitzer's World Building, George B. Post. Hearst had amassed 150 million dollars in profit by 1926 when he set out to build his grand headquarters. Joseph Urban, the other architect of the project, was a Viennese theater designer who had decorated the Abdeen Palace in Cairo when he was just 19 years old before studying under secessionist architect Otto Wagner. Urban had been introduced to Hearst after designing the set of "Follies," which he had seen years prior. George B. Post, the "commercial architect" of the project was to guide it to become the grand and tall structure Hearst had desired for his company. The building is moored with Art Deco, Secessionist, and Baroque tones, as well as Classical allusions. It encompasses an entire city block. Its six "sculpture groups" decorate the fourth floor of the building, and were designed by German immigrant Henry Kreis. The allegorical figures are meant as representations of the disciplines which the building housed: Comedy and Tragedy, Music and Art, Sport and Industry, and Printing and Sciences. The building's auditorium would showcase a variety of musical and theatrical events, as per Hearst's interest. The six-story building had been planned from the beginning as a base to a larger tower. This is reflected in the structure of the building and the fact that it contains six elevator shafts - double what was typical for a building of this height. The tower addition was prepared by George B. Post in 1946, but the plans were never realized. It wouldn't be until 2004 that a tower, designed by Sir Norman Foster, would top off the Hearst Magazine Building.

In October 1892 the Italian government dedicated this granite monument with its depiction of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria, to the people of America. The statue of Columbus which now tops the monument was placed there two years later. The Tichenor Riding School, prominent in this card, was one of the many Upper West Side riding stables whose close proximity to Central Park made the location ideal for horseback riding. The building was razed in the late 1960s.

Century Theatre, ca. 1912. The elegant Beaux Arts structure opened as the New Theatre in November 1909, but immediately encountered challenges: while the building was acclaimed for its architecture, the cost of maintenance was high and the acoustics of the performance space were poor. Combined with a location some distance from Manhattan’s established Theater District, the New Theatre closed after just two seasons. The space was reopened as the Century Theatre in 1911 and continued to cycle through new management regimes — including the Cocoanut Grove, a rooftop nightclub — until its demolition in 1931. The Century, a 29-story apartment building now occupies the site.

Central Park Apartments, 59th Street ca. 1828 The Central Park Apartments, otherwise known as the Spanish or Navarro Flats for its developer Jose F. De Navarro, was praised as “the most vast, complete, and permanent apartment houses ever as yet erected in any country.” Stretching 425 feet along the southern edge of Central Park on 59th Street, east of Seventh Avenue, the massive 10-story complex “in the “Moorish style” was composed of eight smaller separate buildings, each named after a Spanish city. Navarro financed his project creatively, according to American Architect and Building News, intending “to erect the buildings in his own name, and sell the apartments absolutely to those who wished to occupy them by means of trust-deeds and perpetual leases.” The buildings could be constructed one by one, and the sale of the finished apartments paid for the construction of the next. The first four buildings—the Madrid, Lisbon, Barcelona, and Cordova—were built in 1883, and the Valencia, Granada, Salamanca, and Tolosa were completed in 1885. The complex was designed by French-born architect Philip Hubert and his firm, Hubert Pirsson & Co., who were credited with originating the cooperative apartment system as well as the duplex-apartment layout in New York. The cooperative apartment system, commenced in 1880, allowed residents to partially and collectively invest in ownership of the building. Each building contained twelve apartments, some of which included up to three floors and up to six bedrooms, a parlor, living room, dining room, and library. Apartments sold for $15,000 to $20,000 with annual maintenance fees from $1,000 to $2,000. The complex was arranged around a system of courtyards that gave light, air, and access to the buildings and the interior of the block.

Church of Paulist Fathers, ca. 1910. The history of the Church of St. Paul the Apostle provides a case study of the birth and growth of a missionary parish in the years immediately before and following the Civil War. The parish had its origins in an 1858 agreement with Archbishop John Hughes, in which the new Paulist Fathers community was given the responsibility for a territory initially extending on the west side of Manhattan from 59th Street to 109th Street. Isaac T. Hecker, C.S.P. (1819-1888), a New York-born Catholic convert of German heritage, was both the first pastor of St. Paul's and the first leader of the Paulists. In 1858, Hecker received Papal authorization to found the first male religious community organized within the Archdiocese of New York and the United States, the Congregation of Missionary Priests of St. Paul the Apostle (better known as the Paulist Fathers). Establishing both a community and a parish required immediate fundraising. The Paulists sought pledges toward the erection of a parish church and community house, with an initial contribution from Archbishop John Hughes, and the largest donation coming from Isaac Hecker's brother George, developer of "Hecker's Self-Rising Flour." The Paulist Fathers acquired land at 59th Street, west of Ninth Avenue, which remains the parish center. As the building rose from its foundations using stone recycled from the old Croton Aqueduct, the Greenwich Elevated Railroad reached Ninth Avenue and 59th Street. In 1876, the north boundary of the parish was reduced from 109th to 75th Street. The Catholic population of the neighborhood increased, until it peaked at some 27,000 in the 1890s. In 1890, artist John Lafarge directed the redecoration of the interior of St. Paul the Apostle. New altars were fashioned from rare Numidian marble, Mexican onyx, and porphyry. Derricks, with their blocks and tackle, were used to lift the altars into position. Harper's noted that the church never closed; work proceeded while "service at St. Paul the apostle never ceases." In the early 20th century, the Paulist Fathers' Church was known for its music as well as for its preaching. Its choir of men and boys achieved a national reputation when the Paulist Choristers toured widely and performed regularly on the Paulist radio station WLWL. Seats for festival Masses such as the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass were reserved for ticket holders.

Majestic Theater Interior ARCHITECT: Herbert J. Krapp DATE: 1926-27 STYLE: Modern Spanish This theatre was part of an unusual multi-use project including three theaters and a hotel. The “stadium” configuration of the auditorium represents an attempt at bringing democracy to theater seating. The auditorium’s segmental-arched proscenium, narrow floor-to-ceiling arched openings on the side-walls, and broad shallow domed ceiling, and the broad coved ceiling of the inner lobby are among the most prominent design features of the interior.

Audrey Munson (1891-1996) was once the most famous artist’s model in the United States and her likeness can be found in a dozen public sculptures in Manhattan and Brooklyn. In 1913, her likeness had become so prominent in public spaces that the New York Sun dubbed her "Miss Manhattan." For an in-depth look at the rise and tragic fall of America’s First Supermodel, we recommend “The Curse of Beauty: The Scandalous & Tragic Life of Audrey Munson, America’s First Supermodel” by James Bone and “Miss Manhattan” (Episode 200) of the 99% Invisible podcast.

My Archive Summer 2019

The Century Apartments ARCHITECT: Irwin S. Chanin DATE: 1931 STYLE: Art Deco The Century Apartments, built in 1931, is one of the major Art Deco style apartment buildings in America. It stands today as a testament to the vision of its architect and builder Irwin S. Chanin and is one of his finest works. With its twin-towered form, enabled by the 1929 multiple dwelling law, it is one of a small group of related structures that help give Central Park West its distinctive silhouette. The Century is a sophisticated essay in Art Deco design, exhibiting a complex balance of horizontal and vertical elements that creates a dynamic design tension. This is expressed in the manipulation of such structural features as brickwork, windows, bays, and balconies. The towers with their crowns are one of New York City’s major architectural adornments. The Century Apartments continue to symbolize the high quality of residential design on New York’s Upper West Side.

Childs Restaurant, 1939. The first Childs Restaurant was opened in 1889 by brothers Samuel S. Childs and William Childs, on the ground level of the Merchants Hotel (current site of One Liberty Plaza, also previously the Singer Building), at 41 Cortlandt Street. By 1932 there were more than 20 Childs Restaurants in the five boroughs. The location at 300 West 59th Street was leased to the Childs Company in 1910 and occupied by the restaurant by September 1911. This location was well-known by the gay community in the early 20th century. The convenient location between the theatre district and Central Park, as well as its reputation for a tolerance of diverse patrons, made it popular among gays who were forced to hide their nature in most public venues. It was also a busy pre-dawn spot for actors, writers, and prizefighters, who toiled late into the evenings nearby. The restaurant closed after 42 years in December of 1953. It was mourned by many of its regulars and long-time employees. The restaurant building and its neighbors were demolished and replaced in 1956 by the New York Coliseum, a Modern style convention center.

Liberty Storage Company, 1938. In 1902 the Liberty Storage Company had placed on the roof of its 8-story building a 47-foot-tall replica of the Statue of Liberty. Cast in Ohio, the statue was moved to New York in two on a flatbed train. It must have been quite a sight for a neighborhood that did not have that much height in its architecture in 1902. Originally there was a spiral staircase to the top but it closed in 1912. The mini lady liberty survived here until 2002 when the building's owners wanted to add four floors to the structure. After 100 years the statue was removed from the building and in 2005 it was installed in parking lot of the Brooklyn Museum.

Grace Institute ca. 1929 Founded in 1897 with funds provided by former mayor William R. Grace and his family, Grace Institute opened in 1898 in a remodeled mansion on West 60th Street. The Sisters of Charity provided instruction within a nonsectarian framework. By its second year of operation, the Institute enrolled 500 girls and women in cooking, sewing, millinery, stenography, and bookkeeping classes. Although no longer administered by the Sisters of Charity, Grace Institute continues to provide practical tuition-free education for women.

Leon Lowenstein Academic Building, Fordham University Lincoln Center Campus, ca. 1974. This 14-story Modernist building was constructed as the second building of the Fordham University Lincoln Center campus in 1969. The facade is raw concrete and the repeated rectangular windows give the building a utilitarian look, described by one modern writer as, " look\[ing] like a prison or socialist government building...uninviting, boring and generally ugly eye sore." Though it should be noted that many a modern building has inspired equal or more vitriolic criticism.

My Archive Spring 2019 "This is a photo of my mother that was taken in Central Park in 1974. My parents had just begun dating." —Melissa D'Lando

West side Y.M.C.A. South exterior. June 1, 1930. Architect Dwight James Baum’s West Side YMCA more resembles a Medieval Italian fortress than a recreational facility completed in 1930. Baum’s 14-story structure was designed to accommodate the needs of 10,000 members and was at the time of its construction the largest YMCA facility in the world.

Majestic Theater ARCHITECT: Herbert J. Krapp DATE: 1926-27 STYLE: Modern Spanish This theater ’s facade is a fine example of the romantic “Modern Spanish” style with which Herbert Krapp, the architects, adorned later theaters. Among its significant architectural features are its balcony with simulated Spanish-style tile roof, blind stylized Palladian window, and rusticated base.

New York Athletic Club, 1929. Founded in 1868, the New York Athletic Club is a private social and athletic club. The 180 Central Park South location, known as The City House, includes two restaurants, a cocktail lounge, library, ballroom, billiard room, meeting rooms, rooftop solarium, eight floors of guest rooms, in addition to its sports facilities. The athletic floors boast swimming pools, basketball and squash courts, fencing and wrestling rooms, and a judo floor. A Long Island location, known as Travers Island, hosts larger outdoor sporting facilities. The elite club has not existed without controversy. Since its conception, the NYAC was a men-only club. It wasn't until 1989, with pressure from both the city and the United States Supreme court, that the club allowed women to join. The New York Times wrote: "a symbol of masculine exclusivity has bowed to the forces of change and feminine scorn and agreed to accept women as members."

Are you ready for a closeup? Try your hand at re-creating these historic photos at Columbus Circle! This challenge is only available to our iOS app users. If you don't yet have the Urban Archive App, download it here. Each location in this challenge has an address and a historic image tied to it. Check-in at each location by tapping the lock icon to the left of the clue. If you’re in the right place, it will turn green. Your challenge today is to take as many then-and-now photos as you can. Tap the image, and then the recreate button to line up the historical image with your present-day view. Once you're happy with your photo, hit save to add it to your camera roll. Please share these photos with team@urbanarchive.nyc once you've completed the challenge. Happy snapping!

Harperly Hall, 1925. This twelve-story Arts & Crafts building, designed by architect Henry Wilhelm Wilkinson, was the first Central Park West housing cooperative when it opened in 1911.

American Circle Building, February 10, 1936. By the 1920s William Randolph Hearst was the largest property owner in the area surrounding Columbus Circle. He had purchased a plot of land in 1915 on the north side of the circle. The lot between Central Park West and Broadway was formerly occupied by a horse-riding academy and a ballfield. Hearst, unsurprisingly had grand plans for the lot. Envisioning a 30-story office tower, the American Circle building topped at out two stories when the U.S. entered the First World War. The renderings for the larger building exist and the architect James C. Green had planned a five store base with a soaring tower. The two-story resulting building did have an ornate terra cotta facade and interior, giving it the look of a cathedral. Despite not matching up to its original plans, it did become well known in its own right. The American Circle Building was home to WINS Radio for many years and on the roof of the building (depicted here) sat a large Coca-Cola thermometer, well known to the neighborhood. In the 1960s the building was demolished and replaced with 1 Central Park West, a 43-story office tower. That building would go through a massive overhaul in the 1990s before opening as the Tr\*mp International Hotel and Tower in 1997.

West Side YMCA The YMCA on 63rd street just west of Central Park, popularly known as the “Westside Y,” was designed by Dwight James Baum in 1930. This 16 story building, the largest of 20 YMCAs in greater New York, houses a school for 300 boys and a dormitory for 600 men looking for “leisure, hospitality, and job training” through programs that “build spirit, mind and body.” The exterior is a light South Carolina pastel brick with Romanesque and Gothic detailing, the mass is set back for an intimately scaled entrance despite the grand metropolitan scale reminiscent of the popular commercial clubs of the era.

Horn & Hardart Automat, February 10, 1936. Horn and Hardart was Philadelphia-founded food service company. They were the first non-Europeans to receive patented vending machines from Max Sielaff's Automat factory in Berlin. The first Automats were opened in Philadelphia and New York City in 1902 and 1912, respectively. The pre-packaged foods were extremely popular, especially during the Depression. By 1950 more than 50 Horn & Hardart restaurants were operating in New York City. Later they branched out to sit-down waitress service restaurants, cafeterias, and bakery shops. The men in this photograph could not only find cakes and pie at the Automat but other staples including macaroni and cheese, baked beans, and creamed spinach.

St. Nicholas Rink was an indoor ice-rink that was of the first to use mechanically frozen ice in North America. However, seasonal affairs like skating and hockey proved to be less popular than sports like boxing and wrestling. By the 1920s, St. Nicholas was exclusively a venue for fighting.

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Holy Trinity, ca. 1910. The 1904 Gothic Revival Church, designed by the Schickel & Ditmars firm, is known for its Sunday night Bach Vespers series: recitals of Bach cantatas performed according to the Lutheran liturgical calendar.

The monument at Columbus Circle's dedication was a moment of triumph for New York City's immigrant Italian population.

Hearst Magazine Building ARCHITECT: Joseph Urban; George B. Post & Sons DATE: 1927-28 STYLE: Art Deco Stretching a full block along the west side of Eighth Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets, the building remains the expectant six-story base of an office tower that was not constructed until 2006. It is a stylistic synthesis of Art Deco ornament, Secessionist influence and Baroque theatricality. Further enriched by classical allusions which are both imposing and dramatic, the building survives as a relic of unrealized plans to transform greater Columbus Circle into New York’s new cultural and commercial center as well as the corporate headquarters of Hearst’s vast publishing empire.

Take a walk in the beautiful Upper West Side. Start at Columbus Circle and discover the cultural and religious landmarks and the extravagant apartment buildings of this affluent neighborhood.

General Motors Building, 1937. The General Motors Building was designed by Edward Durrell Stone & Associates with Emery Roth & Sons at the height of the International Modernism architectural era. At the time of construction, the tower was one of the only in Manhattan to occupy a whole city block. When the building opened in 1968, it replaced the much-loved Savoy Plaza Hotel, which stood on the site since 1927. Over the past few years, the General Motors Building has undergone many changes. In 1998, the company sold its office, making it home of CBS's The Eary Show from its inception in 1999 to its end in 2012. The building was sold again in 2003 to the Macklowe Organization for a record $1.4 billion and again in 2008 for $2.9 billion– the largest real estate transaction of that year. While the building's design has many critics, its location on Fifth Avenue and next to Central Park is what makes it one of the most enviable properties in New York City. In 2015, the tower again broke records by becoming the first commercial property in the city to command starting rents of more than $200 per square foot.

924 Seventh Avenue, date unknown.

The Prasada ca. 1913 Just after the turn of the century as Central Park West was flush with new apartment house development, builders commissioned architects Charles W. Romeyn and Henry R. Wynne to design them an apartment house. The appropriately ornate Beaux-Arts building with a two-story-high mansard roof was opened as a luxury apartment house in 1907, marketed to high-class tenants. Each floor had three apartments with 8 to 12 rooms and rented for $190 to $300 a month. Within the building's first decade two of its tenents were killed in famous disasters. Henry B. Harris, a prominent theater producer, died on the Titanic after pushing his wife to take a seat on one of the last lifeboats to depart the ship. Three years Charles Fowles, an art dealer, who had just moved out of the Prasada died in the sinking of the Lusitania. In the mid-1910s the building was bought by new owners who had the mansard replaced and renovated the building so that it was "practically a combination of club, hotel, and apartment evolved to meet modern conditions." Each apartment had an electric dumbwaiter installed which connected to a large, staffed kitchen. Also, butler and housekeeping services could be rented by the hour. (For those wealthy enough to live there but who perhaps kept only one servant! The horror!) Over the few decades, the facade lost some features including the stone balustrades on the fourth and tenth floors and the iron railings on the window. The building turned coop in 1988 and remains a well-respected address on CPW.

United States Rubber Company Building ARCHITECT: Carrère and Hastings DATE: 1911-12 STYLE: Beaux-Arts This elegant, Beaux-Arts style, twenty-story office building was constructed in 1911-12 for the United States Rubber Company at a time when the automobile was beginning to exert a powerful influence on American society. Located on Broadway, along the section known as “Automobile Row,” the U.S. Rubber Company Building was one of the most prominent and important of the many automobile-related structures concentrated here. The design features a distinctive rounded corner and vertically-grouped windows with metal spandrels and thin, continuous piers. In this building, as in their other works, Carrere and Hastings used their training at the French Ecole des Beaux-Arts to create an impressive design for a tall building where the skeleton construction is expressed by the thin stone veneer which is obviously non-weight-bearing. The two lowest floors of this building were remodeled in 1959 for a bank.

Check out some of the sites in the lower half of Central Park! 🌳

Durland’s Riding Academy, 1903. Long before carriage rides were a maligned Central Park tourist trap, riding was a common Central Park leisure activity. The Durland Riding Academy was established in 1887, with stables at Columbus Circle. In 1900, that structure was condemned, and a new, massive riding facility was built on 67th Street, off of Central Park West. The central building (at left, with multi-story arched windows) included a 600-spectator riding ring, club rooms and boarding facilities for the horses belonging to the city’s elite families. In 1949, the former riding club was purchased by ABC and converted into television studios. The buildings have been significantly modified, but the distinctive arched windows of the Durland Club are still visible.

1774 Broadway, the old General Motors Building, unknown date.

Church of St. Paul the Apostle ARCHITECT: Jeremiah O’Rourke DATE: 1875-85 STYLE: Medieval Revival The Church of St. Paul the Apostle is one of the largest and most monumental religious buildings in Manhattan. It was built for the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle, commonly called the Paulist Fathers, between 1875 and 1885 and is an austere and imposing Medieval Revival style structure, reflecting both Gothic and Romanesque sources.

B. F. Goodrich Company Building ARCHITECT: Howard Van Doren Shaw; Ward & Willauer DATE: 1909 STYLE: Elizabethan, Jacobean 1780 Broadway was constructed in 1909 as the New York headquarters of the B. F. Goodrich Company, a leading American manufacturer of automobile tires and other rubber products. Since the late 1880s the company had operated a Manhattan office and this project coincided with the company’s reincorporation in New York State. Clad with mostly red brick and limestone, the 12- story facade is distinguished by abstract, stylized ornament that suggests the influence of Elizabethan and Jacobean sources, the English Arts and Crafts movement, and the Vienna Secession.

Broadway, west side, north from 61st Street, ca. 1895. Broadway, north of Columbus Circle, was called the "Boulevard" during the second half of the 19th century. It was a favorite street for cyclists. The Boulevard was "opened" in 1869 after being specifically designed. Modeled after the Champs Elysées in Paris, the thoroughfare was a 60 foot-wide right-of-way, with double rows of elm trees on each broad sidewalk, and 30 foot-wide landscaped medians with pedestrian walkways in the middle. The Empire Hotel (visible at center), was on the southwest corner of 63rd Street. It was replaced in 1923 by a larger (15-story) hotel, topped by the now iconic 'Hotel Empire' red neon sign.

Majestic Theatre ca. 1903 One of almost ninety theater buildings documented by Byron, the Majestic's first year-1903- was tremendous success, with such popular productions as The Wizard of Oz and Babes in Toyland. Located at Columbus Circle, not far from the current location of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, it was the northernmost Broadway house at the time. Sadly, it was too far from the theater district and within five years motion pictures- not theater- were the mainstay here. Despite attempts by the Shuberts, Florenz Ziegfeld and the Minsky family to revive the Majestic with legitimate theater, it continued to decline, and in 1954 it was demolished for wider pedestrian access to the equally unsuccessful New York Coliseum. In 1998 a plan to redevelop the site with a glass-and-steel tower was approved.

Brooklyn-born Aaron Copland (1900-1990), known as the “Dean of American Music,” was one of the most influential and popular figures of 20th-century classical music. He grew up in an apartment at 628 Washington Avenue (demolished) in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn and heard his first symphony at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) when he was 16. In between extensive travels abroad, Copland lived in a number of Manhattan apartments, including his first at 135 West 74th Street from 1924 to 1926. His most significant city residence was a modest tenth-floor studio – furnished with a piano – at the Hotel Empire from 1936 to 1947. He also rented and worked in a nearby loft at 113 West 63rd Street (demolished for Lincoln Center). During this incredibly prolific period, Copland completed a number of important works, some of which are among the cornerstones of 20th-century American music. A selection of compositions completed while in residence at the Hotel Empire include Billy the Kid (1938), Fanfare for the Common Man (1942), Lincoln Portrait (1942), Rodeo (1942), Appalachian Spring (1944), and Symphony No. 3 (1944-46). Copland was given New York Music Critics Circle Awards for the latter two works; Appalachian Spring, composed for choreographer Martha Graham’s ballet in 1944, also earned him a Pulitzer Prize in Music.

As the Great Depression wore on, the Socialist Party organized protesters who demonstrated against unemployment and demanded immediate government aid. The Forward called for its readers to march in support of this demonstration by publishing the date and locale atop its masthead.