222 East 79th Street James Brown Lord, 1902; renovation: Gwathmey Siegel & Associates 1986 NYC IL, NR-P The very first of the Carnegie-funded branches of the NYPL, the Yorkville Branch officially opened in December of 1902. The three-story building has a limestone facade, divided into three bays with elegant arched windows on the main floor and Ionic columns on the second. At the turn of the century, Yorkville was a densely populated German immigrant neighborhood, and as such, the third floor of the original building housed only German language publications. At the end of World War I, Thomas Masaryk used the Yorkville library to conduct the research that led to his founding of the Czechoslovakian state. The library’s interior was renovated in the late 1980s with funds donated by the Rose family. Once again the place of a pioneering event, the renovation was the first time a branch library was overhauled using private resources. The current library occupies two floors within the original ornate Palladian-inspired façade. The building was designated a landmark in 1967, only two years after the enactment of the New York City Landmarks Law. The library is an New York City Individual Landmark and listed on the New York City and State National Register of Historic Places.

Phillips Presbyterian Church, Madison Avenue between 73rd and 74th Street. Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church (organized in 1839) merged with Phillips Presbyterian Church (organized 1844) in 1899. Together, the two congregations constructed a new, neo-Gothic style building to replace the R.H. Robertson Building that was donated to the Madison Avenue congregation in 1972 by philanthropist James Lenox. The resulting structure includes an 800-seat sanctuary, and was designed by architect James E. Ware.

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.

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.

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

Doorway of the Chemical Bank, ca. 1990.

Yorkville Branch, NYPL 222 East 79th Street James Brown Lord, 1902; renovation: Gwathmey Siegel & Associates 1986 NYC IL, NR-P The very first of the Carnegie-funded branches of the NYPL, the Yorkville Branch officially opened in December of 1902. The three-story building has a limestone facade, divided into three bays with elegant arched windows on the main floor and Ionic columns on the second. At the turn of the century, Yorkville was a densely populated German immigrant neighborhood, and as such, the third floor of the original building housed only German language publications. At the end of World War I, Thomas Masaryk used the Yorkville library to conduct the research that led to his founding of the Czechoslovakian state. The library’s interior was renovated in the late 1980s with funds donated by the Rose family. Once again the place of a pioneering event, the renovation was the first time a branch library was overhauled using private resources. The current library occupies two floors within the original ornate Palladian-inspired façade. The building was designated a landmark in 1967, only two years after the enactment of the New York City Landmarks Law. The library is an New York City Individual Landmark and listed on the New York City and State National Register of Historic Places.

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

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

Whitney Museum of American Art, ca. 1974. Designed in the Brutalist style by Marcel Breuer in 1966, the building was the third location for the Whitney Museum of American Art. (The first two locations were on West Eighth Street and West 54th Street, respectively.) The modernist building with gray granite and reverse ziggurat facade was (and still is) a stark contrast to the surrounding 19th century brownstones, brick row houses, and postwar apartment buildings. The facade is made of 1,500 granite slabs with each weighing between 500 and 600 pounds). Ada Louise Huxtable, the New York Times architecture critic, said of the design, “the taste for its disconcertingly top-heavy, inverted pyramidal mass grows on one slowly, like a taste for olives or warm beer.” The museum always struggled with not enough space and finally in 2015 moved into a new building in the Meat Packing District. In 2016 the Metropolitan Museum of Art moved into the uptown building to display exhibitions that focus on modern and contemporary art.

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.

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.

820 Park Avenue, ca. 1922. This Park Avenue building is a glorious reminder of New York's past. It was built in 1927 for the flamboyant publisher of the Hearst organization, Albert J. Kobler, who got his start in the business selling newspaper ads around 1910. Kobler hired Harry Allan, the architect behind the Friars Club and many lavish residential projects, to erect what was then a "modern concept" in apartment living: multiple mansions stacked one upon another. With time, the duplex and penthouse triplex house that Allan constructed for Kobler has come to represent the last gasp of the old, extravagant ways of Manhattan living. The duplexes, however, have since been divided into single floor-throughs with only a few today that have returned to their initial grandeur.

55-57 East 75th Street, ca. 1911. Nos. 55 and 57 were both constructed in 1881-82 by architect John Prague. Both building have been renovated in the 20th century. In the late 1930s, the building on the left (no. 55) was renovated into brick front neo-Federalist style building that can be seen today. No. 57 had a much more dramatic facelift later in the century. In 1979 architect William Glickman completed a new Brutalist facade for the building, with angled concrete and projecting balconies on the second and third floors. The now nine-story building towers over its neighbors. The writers of the AIA Guide to NYC say this, " a curious former row house transformed into an early "sliver building. As an object it is abstractly handsome. As a citizen of the block it's inciting a riot."

St. Jean Baptiste Church, 1913. The parish of St. Jean Baptiste dates to 1882 when it was founded to serve the long -established French Canadian immigrant population of the Yorkville section of the Upper East Side. The community first worshiped in the hall above a stable on East 77th Street, referred to as the “Crib of Bethlehem.” A purpose-built church was erected between 1883 and 1884 in a simple Gothic style. The church became both popular among the larger Catholic New York community and the home of eucharistic worship in the decades surrounding the turn of the century. The community recognized the need (and desire) for a larger and more "worthy" (in pomp and decoration) structure and their prayers were answered with the entrance of a benefactor in 1910. Financed by American tobacco, insurance and transportation tycoon, Thomas Fortune Ryan, the present church building was designed by Nicholas Serracino, an Italian architect, and completed in 1913. The domed church (one of only a few Catholic churches in the city that feature a dome) was rendered in a combination of Italian Renaissance Revival and Classical Revival architectural styles. The main dome reaches a height of 172 feet. The interior is richly decorated with stained glass windows brought in from the glass studios of Chartres, Frances.

Architect Robert AM Stern designed this townhouse from an existing 1897 carriage house in 1975, when he was just starting his career as an architect. What began as one of three private stables was converted into a 10,000-square-foot townhouse. Unfortunately, a fire destroyed the 70’s interior in 1992. Of the design, Stern told Metropolis magazine: “The design has what I thought were pretty daring \[features] in those days— classically derived pilasters and proportions with ornaments…all of which I think fall into the Postmodern sensibility that was emerging at the time.”

55 East 72nd Street, 1943.

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

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

My Archive Spring 2019

151 East 74th Street, 1943. The brownstone rowhouse at no. 151 was constructed between 1877 and 1878 by architect John B. Snook for speculative developer W.H.Browning. Between 1919 and 1922, the home was owned by Captain Kermit (!) Roosevelt, son of TR. While a fourth story (not visible on the front facade) was added in 1906, the building underwent a drastic facelift in 1923. Then owned by New Yorker Magazine co-founder and publisher Raoul H. Fleischmann, the facade was updated to a sleek Colonial Revival style by architect Henry Lion. This move was in line with the popular practice in the 1910s and 1920s of updating New York's aging rowhouses. While some respected the styles and ornamentation of the decades old homes, many other drastically altered the look of the facades (and the interiors as well). The most common changes included removing the now passè stoops in exchange for ground floor entrances, discarding the window and door surrounds, and striping the facades of any Victorian adornments in favor of Colonial Revival or Mediterranean styles. (For more on this trend check out Andrew Dolkart's “The Row-House Reborn: Architecture and Neighborhoods in New York City, 1908-1929.”) The home had one more well-known resident. In 1955, actor Henry Fonda purchased no. 151 from Fleischmann. Two years later he wed a 23-year-old Italian countess Afdera Franchetti in a ceremony in the home. Although that marriage only lasted four years, Fonda resided in the nearly 6,000-square-foot house until his death in 1982.

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).

829 and 823 Park Avenue, date unknown. The three tall gleaming white residential towers (no. 829 has two towers, while no.813 has only one) were constructed in 1911 and designed by Pickering and Walker. Currently no. 823 (the mid block building) had only 11 apartments: ten full floor residences and a duplex penthouse.

Construction on East 78th Street, February 2, 1928. At left is the entrance to No. 163-165 East 78th, the easternmost of five landmarked 1861 row houses. At right is the excavation site for No. 169 East 78th, a ten story apartment building completed in 1928.

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

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.

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

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

Yorkville Public Library, date unknown. The Yorkville branch of the New York Public Library was the very first Carnegie library to be constructed in New York City. It opened to the public in December of 1902. The grant of just over $5 million by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, for the construction of these civic institutions, was gifted to the city only three years earlier in 1899. The Carnegie funds would assist in the creation of 67 libraries in the five boroughs. This three-story structure, designed in a classically-inspired style, is notable as a fine example of Palladian architecture. Inspired by Venetian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580), who himself was inspired by the temple architecture of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the architect created a library with strict symmetrical design, minimal ornamentation, and four tall Ionic columns that frame the upper floors. The large, arched windows on first floor allowed for plenty of natural light, especially important as the library sits mid block. While some of the other firms (Carrère & Hastings and McKim, Mead & White) designed a number of Carnegie libraries, this was the only library designed by James Brown Lord, who passed away at the young age of 43, just before the library opened.

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

Eberhardt's House of Vienna, date unknown. In the 1960s this spot at 320 East 79th Street was bar and restaurant called Eberhardt's House of Vienna. Then it became Ma Pomme, a French restaurant. By 1972, it was the Neopolitan Noodle which was the scene of a mistaken mob hit on August 11, 1972. Here is the story: To avenge the death of Joseph “Crazy Joe” Gallo, a member of the Colombo crime family, a hitman was hired to kill four men who had supposedly set up Gallo's murder. They were Colombo family acting boss "Little Allie" Persico and three mob lieutenants. (This was an intra-family crime wave.) The man arrived and sat at the bar, where his marks were supposed to be sitting as well. Instead, they had moved to a table, and the hitman mistook four kosher meat sellers for his targets. He pulled out two long-barreled pistols and began shooting. Two of the meat sellers died while the others were seriously injured. The gunman was never found. Today, the building that housed these restaurants as well the others that followed (Chez Z and Vienna ‘79) is the Albanian Consulate. Thanks to UA user Anne Raso for this tip about this spot's interesting history.

Row houses on East 78th Street, August 2, 1930. The row of five houses starting at center-left with No. 157 East 78th Street share party walls with their immediate neighbors, and were as a group designated a New York City Landmark in April, 1968. The row was built in 1861 for John Turner, a painter, who sold the residences to four separate buyers, with Mary Jane Maguaran purchasing the two easternmost structures, nos. 161 and 163-165 (both with window awnings). According to photographer P.L. Sperr, a "Mrs. Anna Drewnick in 1929 combined these buildings into a single spacious dwelling with a garden at the rear, at a cost of $175,000." However, this renovation is absent from the LPC designation report.

770 Park Avenue ca. 1930 Primarily made up of duplexes, this apartment building matched the exuberant asymmetrical massing of its Candela-designed neighbor across 73rd Street. Together, they demonstrate architect Rosario Candela's capacity to use similar materials, window treatments, and ornamentation to create buildings that synchronize with each other to create a harmonious urbanism, without being monotonous.

820 Park Avenue, ca. 1942.

Architect Rosario Candela designed 780 Park Avenue before the stock market crash of 1929, but construction came to a halt in the summer of 1930 due to the worsening depression. When construction resumed in 1931, its new developers changed the address to 778 Park Avenue to eliminate the odor of its former failure.

Saint Jean Baptiste Church ARCHITECT: Nicholas Siracino DATE: 1910-13 STYLE: Church The principal facade on Lexington Avenue is a masterpiece of lively symmetry with a tasteful and intelligent statement and restatement of architectural motifs. A temple-front portico screens the central door of the three that gives access to the Church. Four free-standing Corinthian columns, on a high plinth, support a full entablature and pediment.

Lot on East 79th Street being prepared for the construction of No. 229; February 2, 1928.

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