Chatsworth Apartments and Annex ARCHITECT: John E. Scharsmith DATE: 1902-06 STYLE: Beaux-Arts Prominently sited on the south side of West 72 Street at the foot of Riverside Park on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the Chatsworth Apartments and Annex are two exceptionally handsome apartment buildings that were constructed early in the twentieth century as luxury “housekeeping apartments” for an affluent clientele. Both structures were designed by architect John E. Scharsmith in the Beaux-Arts manner and feature exuberant French-inspired classical and Beaux-Arts detailing. The Chatsworth Apartments (1902 – 1904) at 344 West 72 Street, the older of the two structures, consists of two twelve-story blocks sharing a common base that extends through the block from West 72 Street to West 71 Street. The smaller Annex (1905 – 1906) at 340 West 72 Street, is a separate eight-story tower linked to the earlier building at its base. These two buildings, which are examples of the early twentieth-century luxury apartment building, are also notable for their Beaux-Arts inspired design.

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.

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

Sculptor Bill Tarr’s welded steel memorial, an enduring tribute to King, can be found at the entrance to the Martin Luther King Jr. Educational Campus at West 66th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Tarr’s 63-ton sculpture was completed in 1973 and named the “best monument in New York” by New York Magazine in 1985.

115 West 68th Street, January 9, 1931.

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.

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.

144-140 West 64th Street, ca. 1911. The Amsterdam Houses are a 13-building public housing complex that covers 61st Street to 64th Street between West End and Amsterdam Avenues. Planned prior to the Second World War, they were begun in 1947. In the process of construction many rowhouses were demolished (including the two in this photograph).

Camp Thomas Paine was what you'd call a "Hooverville," a shantytown set up during the Great Depression. Its name, as you might suspect, was aimed as a criticism of President Herbert Hoover, who offered little aid to struggling Americans after the Crash of 1929. This camp was one of many throughout New York City that were built on parkland or abandoned construction sites. Others included "Hoover Valley" on what today is Central Park's Great Lawn, "Packing Box City" on Houston, "Hardlucktown" in the East Village, and "Tin City" in Red Hook. While most settlements only allowed male residents, Camp Thomas Paine differed in only allowing World War I veterans to board.

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.

Founded on a site where Washington supposedly camped (the accuracy of this has since been refuted,) the Colonial Club was nominally aimed at preserving artifacts and apocrypha from the Colonial and Revolutionary periods. It had also had a secondary purpose: to fill a club sized void. Most of the men's clubs in Manhattan were much further downtown. The Colonial Club (originally chartered as the Occidental Club) was founded by the wealthy businessmen who had moved up to the Upper West Side and found themselves far from their favorite haunts. Fittingly designed by Henry F. Kilburn in the colonial style, the Club provided its members with plenty of amenities. The club had a cafe, a bowling alley, billiard rooms, a restaurant, ample wine cellars, reception rooms, and ballrooms. Unlike its many contemporaries, it allowed women entry, and their entrance was a graceful as that of the men's. Opening in 1892, the club did not last long. Though it held many a lavish party and seemed to be used thoroughly by its members, its distance from the heart of the city sunk its hopes. Floundering financially and unable to afford its clubhouse, the Colonial Club folded, and, in 1902, it was sold at auction. The interior was broken up and converted into office spaces. Some of the ornament from the outside was stripped as its street-facing facade was turned into storefronts. However, much of the old Colonial Club remained for the next century. In 2006, it was stripped of all of its surviving detail and its facade was replaced by aluminum and glass.

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

Public School 94, ca. 1920. This large public school building was constructed during the last decade of the 19th century and survived into the late 1950s. The current building that occupies this lot is the Lincoln Square Synagogue. The undulating glass facade was designed by local firm CetraRuddy and completed in 2013.

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."

“Three modernized brownstones,” Wurts Bros., 1936. The Gristedes supermarket chain was founded by German brothers Charles and Diedrich Gristede in 1891. By 1948, their business had grown from a storefront at Second Avenue and 42nd Street to include 141 locations in New York, Westchester County and Connecticut.

Phipps Houses, May 28, 1944. Henry Phipps was a steel magnate and the partner of Andrew Carnegie in the Carnegie Company. In 1901 he sold his holdings in the firm to J. P. Morgan for more than $50 million. With these funds, he built himself a couple of homes in New York, one more splendid than the last. But he also used this money to establish a fund for the creation of model tenements to be called the Phipps Houses. These tenements (four six-story buildings) on 63rd Street were the second project to utilize the fund. Completed in 1906 or 1907 the apartments were rented to African Americans, who suffered increasingly from housing discrimination. The look of these plainly designed buildings (the work of architects Whitfield & King) differed from the earlier Phipps Houses on 31st Street, which had varied brickwork, overhanging tile roofs, and elaborate central roof pergolas. The Phipps Houses organization still exists, but their earliest project, including this still extant one, were sold off to finance other developments in the mid century.

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.

Riverside Branch, NYPL, June 10, 1928. The Riverside Library actually dates to 1897 when the Riverside Association donated its collection to the New York Free Circulating Library. That library merged with the New York Public Library in 1901 and the Riverside Branch moved into its new Carnegie-funded home a few years later. Designed by Carrère & Hastings and opened in 1905, this Carnegie library survived until 1969 when it was replaced by a new library building on the same site. The library remained in the mid century building at 190 Amsterdam Avenue until 1992. That year it moved to new building at 127 Amsterdam and the (glaringly mid century built) library was purchased by the West End Synagogue who have retained most of its 1960s facade, including the NYPL signage.

Lovera Cigar Shop, 1913.

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.

Broadway and 72nd Street Subway Entrance, ca. 1905. At left is the headhouse for the subway station below. The station opened in October 1904 as a part of the original route of the new subway system (traveling from City Hall to 145th Street). This fare control building was constructed 1904 by Heins & Lafarge, the architects responsible for the early subway station design and art. This station has been inadequate in size from its first day, with narrow platforms and stairs. In 2002, a second headhouse was completed across the street, designed in a modern style influenced by this original structure.

Spencer Aldrich Mansion, ca. 1975. An elaborate Romanesque Revival mansion designed by Gilbert Schellenger for the family of Spencer Aldrich, a real estate developer, President of the Real Estate Exchange, and society figure. Construction was completed in 1897. During the 1950s, significant alterations were made to the building’s entrance and lower floors: the stoop was removed and the ground floor was converted to include retail storefronts.

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.

"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.