Sailors in front of the College of Pharmacy, July 1917.

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

115 West 68th Street, January 9, 1931.

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.

Sheep Meadow ca 1910 Sheep Meadow is the best example in today’s Park of the pastoral vision that Olmsted and Vaux intended for Central Park’s meadows. Their design called for peaceful expanses of green that inspired calm and refreshing thoughts just by looking at them, not necessarily walking upon them. The fifteen-acre meadow holds true to this intention today as Central Park’s largest lawn without ballfields and as a designated quiet zone. No organized sports or gatherings are allowed on Sheep Meadow to preserve the space for quiet picnicking and relaxation. Originally a rocky and swampy terrain, Sheep Meadow was the most expensive landscape in the Park to construct. Its transformation to a pastoral meadow required the blasting of rock outcrops and the installation of four feet of soil. The landscape was first known as “the Green” or “the Commons,” but became known as “Sheep Meadow” in the early twentieth century due to the ever-present flock of pedigree sheep that grazed the meadow. For nearly fifty years, the sheep spent their days on the meadow and their evenings in the nearby Sheepfold, which is now the landmark Tavern on the Green restaurant. In the 1960s, Sheep Meadow became the iconic gathering spot for New York’s counterculture, including anti-War protests, peace rallies, love-ins, be-ins, draft card burnings, Earth Day celebrations, and popular concerts. These events, and the lack of management and proper maintenance led to severe damage and erosion on the lawn. By the late 1970s, it was a virtual dustbowl. The restoration of Sheep Meadow was one of the first projects undertaken by the Central Park Conservancy in 1980. The newly lush and well-managed lawn was the first green space that many New Yorkers had ever seen in Central Park. Public excitement over the newly opened lawn inspired and an outpouring of support for the nascent Conservancy that empowered its first decade of success. -Central Park Conservancy

Camera Club New York, ca. 1896-1919. As one of the oldest art institutions in New York, the Camera Club New York was the result of the merger of two other photography institutions. The New York Society of Amateur Photographers, which provided more accessibility to the medium by providing shared darkrooms, materials, and space to work was joined by the Camera Club New York in 1896. The merger was negotiated by Alfred Stieglitz, who became the organization's vice-president. Stieglitz changed Camera Club's newsletter into a magazine, entitled "Camera Notes." The publication sought to elevate photography to a form of fine art. Stieglitz published articles on art and aesthetics side-by-side with the work of American and European photographers. The New York Camera Club was not only a venue for photographers to work, but it also became a space of lectures on new advancements in the field. X-ray photography, the Autochrome Lumiere process, and first Leica camera were demonstrated at the club. Notable lectures include Aero Photography by Edward Steichen, Bernice Abbott's lecture on Eugéne Atget, and Richard Avedon on fashion photography.

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).

21-31 West 73rd Street, 1925. Image above shows the south side of the Park Royal building from West 73rd Street. The Park Royal is a 15-story red brick prewar apartment building designed by architect George F. Pelham. Built around the time of the Dakota, which is just a block south on 72nd Street, the Park Royal was of the first “apartment hotels” constructed to appeal to the wealthy, to attract people out of their downtown townhouses and to the Upper West Side. Leases in the Park Royal included full-time staff, and individual units were sprawling. To preserve the view of Central Park, developers originally purchased a row of brownstones on either side of the building to prevent construction. In 1985, the building underwent conversion into a Cooperative.

Majestic Apartment ARCHITECT: Irwin S. Chanin DATE: 1930-31 STYLE: Art Deco The Majestic is one of five-towered skyscraper apartment buildings which define the impressive skyline of Central Park West. Erected in 1930-31 by the Chanin Construction Company, headed by architect and developer Irwin S. Chanin, it is an excellent example of the Art Deco style in its streamlined later phase. Chanin had attended the highly influential 1925 Paris exposition of decorative arts, and returned a convert to the “modernistic” style. The Majestic was the Chanin organization’s first “experiment” in applying the Art Deco style to residential building. The Majestic successfully adjusts the city’s housing laws to the new style; its soaring twin towers are a response to new regulations enacted in 1929. Although built during the Depression, it belongs to the luxury apartment building genre of the 1920s. While the Majestic’s sparing use of ornament and simple materials reflect its date of construction, the resulting austerity is an integral part of the building’s stylistic imagery

Dakota Apartments, ca. 1975. Considered the city’s first luxury apartment building, the Dakota Apartments were constructed between 1880 and 1884 and designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh for the real estate investor Edward Clark. The imposing German Renaissance style structure was an architectural revelation at the time when the Upper West Side was largely barren, far from the bustling downtown centre of New York City at the time. At eight stories, with 65 apartments (no two of them alike), the building featured a number of desirable and innovative amenities meant to lure prospective tenants who were unaccustomed to the idea of luxurious multi-family buildings. (Rich people in early 19th century New York lived nearly exclusively in single-family private mansions.) Some of these comforts included apartments of up to 16 rooms, newfangled service elevators, and uber quiet living spaces created by heavy interior partitions and double think concrete floors. The Dakota was long thought to be the “most famous apartment building in New York City,” (though perhaps that superlative has changed in the era of the supertalls, like 432 Park). It was well-known as the home of celebrities, most notably John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The Dakota is also a major plot device in the 1980 novel "Time and Again," in which the building proves to be a portal for time travel to historic New York.

Shearith Israel Synagogue ARCHITECT: Brunner & Tyron DATE: 1896-97 STYLE: Neo-Classical This synagogue is a striking example of the monumental neo-Classical style, popular at the turn of the century for public and ecclesiastical architecture. The imposing front facade facing Central Parle West is composed of four large, engaged Composite columns that embrace three round-arched openings, enclosed by elaborate bronze gates, and three round-arched windows with balustrades. The openings, which produce the effect of a loggia, lead into a porch containing the two primary entrances which are located at either side. The front columns are surmounted by an entablature with a modillioned cornice, which is also found above the two smooth ashlar surfaces flanking this central area. Above the entablature is a high attic with smooth-faced pilasters, positioned to correspond with the columns. They enframe panels with classical wreath motifs.

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.

Dorilton Apartments ARCHITECT: Janes & Leo DATE: 1900-02 STYLE: Beaux-Arts Architecturally the Dorilton is one of the finest Beaux-Arts buildings in Manhattan and displays exceptionally handsome detail. It is twelve stories high, built of brick and limestone, and expresses the theme, popular at that time, of base, shaft, and capital, reminiscent of the column. The base consists of two stories of rusticated limestone surmounted by one floor of alternating bands of brick and limestone, crowned by a balustrade carried on heavy brackets which are paired for vertical emphasis at certain points, above which rises the higher shaft portion of brick trimmed with limestone cornerstones, or quoins, thus establishing three vertical pavilions expressed by the greater height of their roof lines. This portion is, in turn, crowned by the ninth floor which repeats the horizontal banding of brick and limestone which is also found directly beneath it. Above this a transitional floor, emphasizing the vertical, forms a base for the capital, or top portion of the building, a very high two-and-a-half story convex mansard roof replete with copper crestings at the tops of the three corner pavilion section

My Archive Summer 2019

Dorilton Apartments, ca. 1975. This 1902 apartment building, designed by Janes & Leo, is an opulent Beaux-Arts structure. Prominent architectural features include a limestone and brick facade, decorative terra cotta, richly balustraded balconies, and a three-story, copper and slate mansard roof. The 71st Street entrance is monumental; the large gated opening leads into a courtyard that is bridged by an arch at the ninth story. Architectural historian Andrew Alpern remarked on its "overblown ostentation" in his 1996 book, Historic Manhattan Apartment Houses. When the building was completed one critic complained of the "detestable spirit that reigns throughout...\[and] sets the sensitive spectator's teeth on edge."

The Daniel Webster Monument was commissioned when Gordon W. Burnham came upon Sculptor Thomas Bell's statuette of Webster. Bell had made a bust of the famed Massachusetts Senator and used that for the basis of a extremely popular and mass produced statuette. Burnham commissioned Bell to make a much larger version for the Central Park Mall to commemorate the Senator's commitment to American unity. Cast at the von Miller Foundry in Munich, the statue ended up being initially much larger than expected and couldn't be placed on the Mall. This resulted in its place on the West Drive where it was dedicated in 1872.

"On December 11, 1858, Central Park welcomed its first official visitors, the ice skaters. Roughly 300 people showed up on that first Sunday. A week later, 10,000 descended on the park. New York, suffering through the latest in a series of unseasonably cold winters, fell quickly into an ice-skating swoon... The Lake, the site of future ice skating, was in reality a low-lying piece of swampy ground. Before park construction began, it existed only on Olmsted and Vaux’s ten-foot blueprint, where the squiggly, naturalistic contours of its shoreline were rendered in india ink. To fill it, clay pipes carried rain runoff from the carriage paths and other spots in the park. To drain it, a series of sluices could be opened. Some of the sluices fed into natural springs running under the parkland, and certain springs, in turn, emptied into New York’s East River... As the winter drew on, sometimes as many as 100,000 people a day visited the park. Skating proved so popular that the park was kept open well into the night. The Lake’s icy surface reflected the glow of newly installed calcium lamps. Vaux went skating. There is no record that Olmsted did." For more on Central Park Lake, check out this excerpt Justin Martin's biography of Frederick Law Olmstead in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.

Dakota Apartments ARCHITECT: Henry J. Hardenbergh DATE: 1880-84 STYLE: German Renaissance Clearly unique in its architectural character in New York, the Dakota, the City’s first luxury apartment house, continue s to be a conversation piece. This imposing structure of eight stories with attic reflects the romanticism of the German Renaissance style and combines a superb blend of formalism and picturesqueness into a unified composition, with dignity and serenity. The design of each elevation is treated in an individual manner, without repetition or symmetry inhibiting the free use of a historical style. Monumental in scale and impressive in appearance, this building, massively constructed of yellow colored brick with stone trim and terra cotta ornament, has the indestructible quality and undeniable grandeur reminiscent of a large, European chateau. It was designed by Henry J. Hardenbergh, who later designed the Plaza Hotel .

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.

Congregation Shearith Israel, ca, 1980. Congregation Shearith Israel is the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States, established in 1654 by newly arrived Spanish and Portuguese Jewish. Between 1654 and 1825 all Jews in New York City belonged to this community, as it was the only one. Before 1730 the community was not allowed to built a structure for worship, and as such, leased rented space on Beaver and Mills (now South William) Street in lower Manhattan. The first purpose-built synagogue was on Mills Street, where the community remained until 1834; the original synagogue was rebuilt and expanded in 1818. They then moved to 60 Crosby Street and a location on 19th Street, before building their now 120-year-old building (seen here) on West 70th Street. Designed by the firm of Brunner and Tryon, the neo-Classical limestone temple held to a traditional architectural style, eschewing the Moorish, Romanesque, and Gothic designs of other contemporary synagogues. The interior spaces were designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, whose stained glass windows complete the facade.

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.

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.

San Remo Apartments ARCHITECT: Emery Roth DATE: 1929-30 STYLE: Apartment, Skyscraper The San Remo is one of the finest apartment buildings designed by Emery Roth, a noted New York architect who specialized in apartment house design, and whose work played a key role in the creation of Central Park West, one of New York’s grandest residential avenues. It is one of Manhattan’s last great luxury apartment houses built in the pre-Depression era, and was the first twin-towered residential skyscraper in New York.

Majestic Apartments, 1932. The 29-story Art Deco apartment building was constructed in 1930-31. Designed by Irwin S. Chanin, the futuristic sculptures on the facade were created by Rene Paul Chambellan (who also created some of the sculptural art at Rockefeller Center). It is one of the four two-towered apartment houses that line Central Park West. The Majestic was once the home to members of the Genovese crime family, including Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello, and Meyer Lansky. It was also the venue for an attempted mafia hit when Vincent "The Chin" Gigante shot Frank Costello in the lobby.

The Knights of Pythias are a fraternal order (or perhaps better described as a secret society) established in 1864 by Justus H. Rathbone, an upstate New York-born actor, composer, and teacher. Inspired by Irish writer John Banim’s 1821 play 'Damon and Pythias,' Rathbone founded this order on the principles extolled in the drama: friendship, loyalty, and honor. And as with most secret societies, pageantry, rituals, and costumed ceremonies were also important aspects of membership. The Manhattan lodge began assembling lots on West 70th Street for a clubhouse. Similar to other fraternal orders, the Knights of Pythias were interested in exotic architecture and turned to famed theatre architect Thomas Lamb for their Egyptian-themed home. Situated among the brownstones of an UWS side street, the tall building bedecked with cast stone reliefs, polychrome full-sized pharaoh figures, and an over-the-top entrance embellished with Egyptian symbols certainly was eye-catching. As ornate on the interior as the exterior, the building featured a gymnasium, a bowling alley, billiards room, 15 lodge rooms decorated in Aztec, Egyptian, and Moorish motifs, and two large auditoriums. The building served not only the Knights but hosted sermons for large synagogues and churches, dances and concerts, and political conferences and meetings (including by the 1940s civil rights groups, the Socialist Labor, and the West Side Committee of American-Soviet Friendship). One of the main auditoriums also served as a recording studio for Decca Records in the 1950s. New York Institute of Technology bought the foreclosed building in 1957 and discovered the kinds of strange props like wands and skeletons, both plastic and human! After functioning as an education space for NYIT, the building was converted into apartments between 1983 and 1986.

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.

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.

“People ice skating on the Lake in Central Park. The Hotel Majestic and Dakota residence are visible in the background at 72nd Street & Central Park West,” 1894.

Lovera Cigar Shop, 1913.

It’s no secret that New York is one of the Jewish capitals of the world. The city alone is home to 1.1 million Jews. That makes the city the largest Jewish community outside of Israel - larger than Tel Aviv and Jerusalem combined! The city's Jewish communities are not only multiple but diverse – they are Ashkenazic and Sephardic, Hasidic, and secular. The city owes this diversity to various waves of Jewish immigration over time, but did you know that Jewish geography today still in many ways reflects these immigration eras? Indeed, when and from where your Jewish ancestors immigrated may actually inform where you live in NYC today!

LANDMARK WEST! is the proud curator of the over 3,500 designated landmarks between West 59th and West 110th Streets, Central Park to Riverside Park (up from only 337 when we began our work in 1985). We promote public awareness of these landmarks and the urgent need to protect them against insensitive change and destruction for the sake of our community quality of life. Here, we take you through a number of the building types that make up the Upper West Side.

On October 25th, 1917, New York City celebrated "Liberty Day," a massive attempt to raise funds for the United States entry into World War I. The campaign drew a crowd of thousands to watch a parade of military vehicles fill the streets of Fifth Avenue. Bomber planes flew low over the city, dropping a message in paper pamphlets: "A Liberty Bond in your home will keep German Bombs out of your home." But the real sight to see was the German captured submarine, renamed "U-Buy-A-Bond" in honor of the occasion.

Congregation Shearith Israel, now located at 2 West 70th Street, takes pride in being the very first Jewish congregation in North America, where something like half the world’s Jewish population now lives. It was founded in 1654 by 23 Jews of Spanish and Portuguese descent who had been living in a Dutch colony in Brazil. When the colony changed hands and the Portuguese took over, the Jewish community fled to avoid the imposition of Inquisition policies, which had previously pushed their families out of Portugal and Spain in the late 15th and early 16th centuries

103 (left) and 101 (corner) West 73rd Street, 1941. This pair of brick Renaissance Revival buildings was designed by Henry Hardenbergh in 1879-1880. No. 103 was once in a row of 25 similar rowhouses designed by Hardenbergh for the developer Edward Clark; it is the only remaining structure of the row. No. 101 (also known as 280-284 Columbus Avenue) is a small apartment building with grey stripes painted on the ground level. These are the oldest surviving Hardenberg-designed buildings in New York City.

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.

James Baldwin Residence, unknown date. Literary icon and civil rights activist James Baldwin owned this Upper West Side remodeled rowhouse from 1965 until his death in 1987, using it as his residence when in New York City. Although he did not like to be labeled in terms of sexuality, politics, religion, and so on, Baldwin wrote several novels that featured gay and bisexual characters and spoke openly about same-sex relationships.

Church of the Blessed Sacrament, ca. 1919. This Catholic parish was established in 1887. The very first mass was celebrated on Easter Sunday of that year in a stable building on 72nd Street. Only a few months later, ground was broken for the first church, an Italianate red brick structure. The moderately sized building quickly outgrew the expanding congregation. The first church was demolished in 1917 and its replacement completed in 1920. The neo-Gothic building is elaborate inside and out and has a large colorful rose window directly above the entrance.

While New York is the setting of an enormous amount of films, some scenes define a space and some spaces define a scene. Either way, they happened in New York. 🎬

Sculptor George Blackall Simonds (1844-1929) created The Falconer, which is located to the south of Cherry Hill at Terrace Drive.

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.

Sailors in front of the College of Pharmacy, July 1917. The College of Pharmacy was an independent educational institution founded in 1829 and chartered in 1831 by a group of New York City chemists. Early on the school graduated six to twelve new pharmacists a year, but, by the turn of the century, more than 100 men graduated every year. In 1879 the institution became a branch of the University of the State of New York, and in 1904 it was annexed by Columbia College (later University). This process created academic ties, but retained the College of Pharmacy's financial independence. During most of the 19th century, classes met in a variety of locations including classrooms at Columbia College and within City Hall. In 1895 the College moved into the ornate building on 68th Street. In the 1960s, the college proposed a move to a new building on the Morningside Heights campus, but the plan was never realized. In 1976 the school closed under severe financial burden (despite, or perhaps because of, their purchase in 1967 of the lot massive lot to the west, which ran all the way to to Broadway). The College of Pharmacy building was demolished sometime in the decade after closing, as the building that now occupies this lot (2000 Broadway) was constructed in 1986. There is no reason presented as to why the sailors would pose in front of this building.

Dakota Apartments The first of the great super-block apartments with central drive-in courtyard, this building was virtually without precedent. It was designed in the early eighteen-eighties by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh in the high manner of the nineteenth-century German Renaissance. He would later design the Plaza Hotel.

Mineral Springs Pavilion ca. 1880 The Mineral Springs Pavilion was constructed due to the popularity of a health craze that was sweeping 19th-century New York. It was thought at the time that mineral water was essential to a healthy constitution (which at a time before the Croton Aqueduct supplied fresh water to most New York households it may have been.) Drinking mineral water was thought to be the cure for a number of ailments. Thus, Carl Schultz, the owner of a mineral water company successfully petitioned the Board of Health to have a pavilion, designed by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wray Mould, that would sell mineral water in the park. It was for a time quite popular, serving as a spot for socialization, however, the supply of readily available clean water meant that the Mineral Springs Pavilion lost its uniqueness and by the 1960s the pavilion was torn down.

"Broadway Series. Looking north from 69th Street. The Ansonia Apartment Hotel is seen in the distance center of the picture, located on the N.W. corner of 73rd Street.” Arthur Hosking, May 28, 1920.