Van Dyck and Severn Apartments, ca. 1910. This set of twin, 12-story apartment buildings were designed by the, now largely forgotten, firm of Mulliken & Moeller. The firm created large apartment houses and hotels on the Upper West Side and Midtown South, often employing the same formula: structures clad in contrasting flat brick and ornately sculptured cream-colored terra cotta. These two building, constructed between 1905 and 1907, tweaked the firm's winning formula slightly, with the oversupply of terra cotta. The apartments (Severn at left and Van Dyck at right, pictured here) rented initially for $160 to $320 a month. The Van Dyck included slightly more luxurious residences of eight to eleven rooms and two or three bathrooms. Another feature noted in early advertisements are seven magnetic hand-controlled elevators used for both passenger and freight service.

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.

Ansonia Apartments Strolling along upper Broadway, we are startled at this evocation of Paris with its gay towers and great mansard roofs. Yet there is one great difference: where such a building in Paris might not stand more than six of seven stories high, here, in its American version, it towers to a height of seventeen stories. Designed by the firm of Graves & Duboy for W.E.D. Stokes, it is a happy contribution to our street architecture.

Charles M. Schwab Residence, ca. 1920. This massive, extravagant mansion was the home of steel magnate Charles Schwab. Designed by a relatively unknown French architect, Maurice Hébert, it would take four years to build (1902-1906) and cost of six million dollars. The 75+ room home, called "Riverside" was an eclectic mix of styles both inside and out. The interior included a gym, a bowling alley, a pool, three elevators and furnishing in the styles of Henry IV, Louis XIII, Louis XV and Louis XVI. The exterior was inspired by a number of French chateaus. The home was so massive that Andrew Carnegie (who had a large mansion of his own on Fifth Avenue) supposedly said, "Have you seen that place of Charlie's? It makes mine look like a shack." Schwab lost his fortune nearly overnight at the start of the Great Depression in 1929. He remained in the home for another ten years, before dying penniless while living in a small apartment on Park Avenue in 1939. In his last years he had attempted up unload the structure, trying to sell it for $4 million and offering it to the city as the mayoral residence (LaGuardia refused). Finally in 1948 the mega mansion was demolished and two years later an 18-story apartment building went up in its place.

John and Mary Sutphen House, ca. 1920. Among its important qualities, the Sutphen Residence, designed in the Beaux-Arts style by noted architect C.P.H. Gilbert and built in 1901-02, is an elegant, limestone-fronted townhouse with an American basement plan located on a prominent site near the southern end of Riverside Drive at West 72nd Street. The residence, designed and built in accordance with restrictive covenants in an area long intended for high-quality residential development, is an excellent example of an impressive townhouse designed for that area. Its design, featuring curved bays, stone and copper ornamental details, and a slate mansard roof enlivened by large dormers, as well as its sitting, give it a striking presence at the gateway to Riverside Drive.

Kleeberg Residence, ca. 1975. Described as a "delirium of French Renaissance Revival details" and "like the top tier of a Gothic wedding cake," 3 Riverside Drive was the product of architect C.P.H Gilbert. Perhaps the most ornate of townhouses on the Upper West Side, the building has four terraces, eight and a half bathrooms, nine gaslit fireplaces, and is topped with gargoyles and cherubs. Built between 1896 and 1898 for lace merchant, oil broker, and calculator inventor, Phillip Kleeberg and his wife, only the wife, Marie, would ultimately live in the home. Phillip kept a separate house elsewhere on the Upper West Side. It was here that Maria committed suicide in 1903. During the 20th century the house would be used as a sleep sanitarium, apartment house with rooms rented to showgirls for some time, and finally as a single family home, once again. The home came on the market in 2012 with a $40 million price tag. It finally sold for $17 million in early 2017.

Frederick and Lydia Prentiss ARCHITECT: C. P. H. Gilbert DATE: 1899-1901 STYLE: Beaux-Arts The Prentiss Residence, designed by noted architect C.P.H. Gilbert and constructed in 1899-1901, is an elegant Beaux-Arts style townhouse located on a prominent site at the intersection of West 72nd Street and Riverside Drive and is one of four grand townhouses remaining at that corner. Designed and built in accordance with restrictive covenants in an area long intended for high-quality residential development, it is an excellent example of an impressive townhouse designed for that area. A townhouse with an American basement plan, the Prentiss Residence is faced in limestone and has curved bays at the front and side facades and a mansard roof enlivened with a turret. These features, combined with the siting of the building, give the townhouse a striking presence at the gateway to Riverside Drive.

Ansonia Hotel ARCHITECT: Paul E. M. DuBoy DATE: 1899-1904 STYLE: French Beaux-Arts This apartment-hotel in the grand French Beaux-Arts style occupies the entire blockfront on the West side of Broadway between 73rd and 74th Streets. It rises on its conspicuous site to a height of seventeen stories. Built at the turn of the century, with over three hundred suites, it was at that time one of the largest apartment-hotels in the world. The Ansonia is a symbol of an era of opulence and elegance, and still stands as one of the truly grand buildings of Manhattan’s West Side. The most striking features of this vast structure are the corner towers on Broadway, with their domes and railings, which rise slightly above and repeat the theme of the three story convex mansard roof that crowns the building. Another noticeable feature, the result of a plan which provides maximum light and air, is a series of recessed courts: two on the north side, two on the south side and one on Broadway.

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.

The architects demonstrated their appreciation for the organization that characterizes Beaux-Arts planning in their adaptation of the Central Savings Bank’s great banking hall and its accessory spaces entrance vestibules, foyer, stairways, and mezzanine passages and loggia, to the bank’s irregular four-sided site. The Central Savings Bank’s interior displays the architects’ skill in manipulating scale to create effective transitions between successive spaces.

Ansonia Apartment, ca. 1905. The Ansonia was built as a residential hotel by William Earle Dodge Stokes, one of nine children born to a banker and a copper heiress. When his father died, he contested the will and sued his brother – a move that netted him a $1 million inheritance. In 1895, Stokes married teenaged Rita Hernandez de Alba de Acosta, older sister to Mercedes de Acosta. Less than four years after their lavish wedding ceremony, she filed for divorce – the same year of the Ansonia’s groundbreaking. Stokes’ hotel opened on April 19th, 1904, comprising 1,400 rooms and 340 suites, and standing 17 stories tall. Pneumatic tubes snaked through the walls for the easy conveyance of messages between residents and staff. The luxurious apartments featured multiple bedrooms, parlors, libraries, and formal dining rooms. In the building’s basement, residents swam in what was, at the time, the world’s largest indoor pool. They also cooled off in the privacy of their own homes – the Ansonia was the first “air-conditioned hotel” in New York City, with a system in the walls pumping a freezing briny mixture. The hotel even had its own art curator, who collected around 600 paintings for the building to display. And today’s urban agriculture enthusiasts would be interested to know the Ansonia once featured a rooftop farm with chickens, duck, and goats – although it was eventually shut down by the health department. Famous residents of the hotel throughout the years included Babe Ruth, writer Theodore Dreiser, the leader of the Baha’i Faith \`Abdu’l-Bahá, conductor Arturo Toscanini, composer Igor Stravinsky, fashion designer Koos van den Akker, and Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld. Stokes, who remarried in 1911, became a particularly notable resident himself after he became embroiled in scandal later that year. A young starlet with whom Stokes had allegedly been involved shot him, and he was found clinging to a balcony at the Varuna hotel, bleeding. The scandal brought droves of reporters to the Ansonia, even though Stokes refused to leave his room. The hotel also played host to Chicago White Sox first baseman Arnold “Chick” Gandil. It is said that on September 21, 1919, a group of Chicago White Sox players assembled in his room to plot the throwing of the World Series for the cost of roughly $10,000 per person. Stokes died in 1926 at age 74. His son eventually sold the building in 1945 to Samuel Bronxmeyer, a man widely regarded as a crooked landlord. In 1968, Bronxmeyer rented its abandoned basement pool to a man named Steve Ostrow, who turned it into the famous Continental Baths. This gay bathhouse operated an incredible cabaret to entertain its towel-clad denizens. Over the years it featured future stars like Bette Midler, Barry Manilow, and Patti Labelle, as well as established stars like Cab Calloway, Lesley Gore, Peter Allen, and even the Andrews Sisters. The bathhouse closed its doors in 1977 and was quickly converted into Plato’s Retreat under the ownership of Larry Levenson. At this membership-based swingers club, “committed heterosexual couples were the base of support,” according to the New York Times. Levenson explicitly forbid homosexual activity between men. The city shut the club down in the wake of the HIV epidemic; it served its final patrons on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve in 1985. The Ansonia was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and still accepts tenants today.

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.

The Hotel Belleclaire, built in 1902, is an individual landmark building located at the corner of Broadway and West 77th Street. Designed by the famous architect Emery Roth, it is unique because it is one of very few art nouveau style buildings in the city and was one of Emery Roth’s first designs. This elaborate style gives the building a grand, luxurious look. Like rowhouses, apartment buildings, and tenements, apartment hotels were another common building type on the Upper West Side and in New York City. Wealthier people often lived in them for a long time because they provided the comforts of a hotel, with the privacy of separate apartments.

Beacon Theater ARCHITECT: Walter A. Ahlschlager DATE: 1927-28 STYLE: Greek, Roman, Renaissance, Rococo The Beacon Theater is a lavish space with stylistic effects drawn from the traditions of Greek, Roman, Renaissance, and Rococo architecture. The rotunda lobby, whose design echoes that of the now-demolished Roxy Theatre, was designed to contrast with the low-ceilinged ticket lobbies and create “the spell of the theater.” The auditorium is rich with exotic and decorative effects including vast murals. The Beacon Theater was designed with technical and stage features which now allow it to function as a multi-purpose performing arts center

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

2100 Broadway ARCHITECT: York & Sawyer DATE: 1926-28 STYLE: Neo-Italian Renaissance The design of the Central Savings Bank is six stories high including the monumental story of the banking room, and it is faced with exceptionally handsome blocks of rusticated limestone. As a freestanding building, it is visible from all four sides, and three sides are accented by the tall arched windows which light the main banking room. The Central Savings Bank is one of the outstanding neo-Italian Renaissance buildings in New York City. It is exceptionally well adapted to the shape of its site. Its dignified exterior and great windows are expressive of the bank for which it was built.

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.

234-236 West 74th Street, ca. 1911. In this photograph its seems that the home on the right (no. 236) is empty, evidenced by the covered and darkened windows. Both homes have had major alterations in the century since the photo was taken. No. 234 has had it stoop and mansard roof removed. The staircase on no. 236 has been straightened, but it also looks like the door from the 1911 photograph might, in fact, still be in place, or, at least, a very purposeful replacement.

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.

Jackson Residence, ca. 1907. This townhouse was built for a C.D. Jackson in 1906 was designed by Trowbridge and Livingston. This firm is better known for their commercial, civic and cultural buildings including the St. Regis and Knickerbocker Hotels, B. Altman & Company department store, the Bankers Trust Company building, and the 1935 Hayden Planetarium at the Natural History Museum.

What do Stravinsky, the Black Sox, Bette Midler, and a swinger’s club have in common? At one point they were all inside New York City’s Ansonia Hotel.

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.

Level Club, 1928. Organized by a group of Freemasons called the The Levelers, the Level Club was a Mason social club. Opened at first only to The Levelers, quickly the club was opened to all Free Masons. In 1923 the club purchased four brownstones and razed them for a new building. Designed by the firm of Clinton Russell Wells George and Holton, the Art Deco the hotel and club opened in 1927 and featured luxury amenities, including a grand dining, lounge and club rooms, a 1,500-seat theater, an Olympic size pool and a roof garden. The set backed facade of the building was designed with Mason iconography in mind. A number of building features reflect biblical descriptions of the Temple of Solomon and the facade includes carvings of important Mason symbols such as the all-seeing eye, the hourglass, the level, the hexagram, the beehive and the Bible. Following the financial crash of 1929 the club and hotel was opened to anyone, regardless of their Mason affiliation, but the money issues persisted and the building was foreclosed on in May 1931. The Level Club was a series of hotels (with various reputations) over the next few decades. In 1984 it became a condominium complex.

My Archive Spring 2019 "This is my young son in front of the building we lived in being a "businessman". I think he was selling his old toys. One of our neighbors is making a purchase." —Stephen Harmon

Orphan Asylum ca. 1899-1900 The oldest of its kind in the United States, the Orphan Asylum Society was founded in 1806, according to the 1893 King's Handbook of New York, to "minister to the wants of the parentless children of the community, and train them up in the paths of virtue." The Riverside Drive site was secured in 1835, and accommodated 250 children. Only children under age ten were admitted, and they were sent on to "Christian homes" when they reached age fourteen.

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.

Belleclaire Hotel ARCHITECT: Emery Roth; Stein Cohen & Roth DATE: 1901-03 The Hotel Belleclaire, one of a number of luxury apartment hotels constructed on the Upper West Side at the turn of the century, was the first major commission awarded to Emery Roth, at the time a struggling young architect. Roth went on to specialize in apartment house design, and during a career spanning more than forty years and well over two hundred projects, was to play an important role in the shaping of the Manhattan skyline. Best known for his towered apartment buildings on Central Park West, Roth’s early work has gone largely unrecognized.

"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.