Isaac Vail Brokaw Residence ca. 1901 This little castle on its corner site was one of the few remaining town houses which could boast such splendid isolation. Romanesque in many of its details, this mansion was basically of French Renaissance inspiration in its fenestration and roof lines. The marble interiors clove to the Romanesque Revival and were some of the finest and most original work of the style.

Couple on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ca. 1974.

Storefronts at The Marion, a Lexington Avenue Apartment building. November 8, 1911.

William Starr Miller House (Neue Galerie), ca. 1915. In 1912, the industrialist William Starr Miller commissioned Carrère & Hastings — then in great demand, having just completed the New York Public Library’s main branch — to design his Fifth Avenue residence. The firm produced a 64-room Louis XIII style mansion with a red brick and limestone facade recalling a pair of local landmarks: Andrew Carnegie’s mansion at 91st Street, and the original facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, directly across Fifth Avenue. In 1994, the building was purchased by the art collector and philanthropist Ronald Lauder, who, with fellow collector Serge Sabarsky, founded the Neue Galerie for 20th century German and Austrian Art.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum ARCHITECT: Frank Lloyd Wright DATE: 1956-59 STYLE: Museum Among its important qualities, the Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, America’s preeminent architect, is internationally recognized as an important example of twentieth-century architecture. It is Wright’s most visited building and his only major commission in New York City. In many critics’ eyes the museum is the crowning achievement of the architect’s later career and he himself called it “My Pantheon.” The design, in its prominent spiraling form, synthesizes Wright’s philosophy of an “organic” architecture, that is, buildings conceived and built according to the principles found in nature. Wright unified the building’s construction method, its appearance, and its use, in accordance with his design philosophy. The museum appropriately fulfills his goal of promoting a democratic society through its didactic and inspirational purposes. The building contrasts boldly with its urban environment on Fifth Avenue. The Guggenheim Museum Interior is internationally recognized as a seminal example of a twentieth-century interior space. The design, in its prominent spiraling form and its dramatic spatial qualities, manifests Frank Lloyd Wright’s philosophy of an “organic” architecture, that is, buildings conceived and built according to the principles found in nature. The design of the interior of the museum demonstrates the inherent unity of its construction method, spatial character, and use. Unified through ivory-colored walls and ceilings and a circular patterned terrazzo floor, this monumental skylight space is enlivened by the ever-changing quality of light and by the contrast between illumination levels in the central atrium and in the adjacent exhibition alcoves.

The Brokaw Mansion, ca. 1900. Constructed between 1887 and 1890 for the millionaire clothing manufacturer Issac Vail Brokaw, the opulent mansion was modeled on the 16th century Chateau Chenonceaux in France’s Loire Valley. Built along "Millionaire's Row" on the east side of Fifth Avenue, the mansion lavishly designed inside and out, with a marble entrance, stained glass, carved wood decoration, mosaics, murals, and even a moat! Brokaw also had constructed on the property a number of homes for his children, including 7 East 79th Street and the 1905-built Gothic twin buildings at 984 and 985 Fifth Avenue. The main house remained in the family until Brokaw's son George sold it in 1946 to the Institute of Radio Engineers (they would later also purchase two of the other Brokaw residences). In 1963 the organization, now called the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, sold the buildings to Campagna Construction Corporation, who announced in the fall of 1964 that they planned to demolish the buildings. This announcement, paired with interest from the press public, and citywide organization, caught the city's attention and resulted in ardent calls for landmarks legislation. Nonetheless, despite the articles and rallies, the buildings were quickly and somewhat stealthily demolished in February in 1965. A year later, a 26-story cooperative apartment building was erected on the site. The events surrounding the end of the Brokaw Mansion were a warning shot. The threat to the mansions moved the landmarks legislation off the Mayor's desk and into the City Council committee. It was the loss of the buildings that then pushed the legislation to a vote and the eventual signing into law on April 19, 1965.

Park Avenue scene at 96th Street, March 22, 1927. Across Park Avenue is a large apartment building, completed in 1926, and the Park Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church. Note the diversity of vehicular traffic: bus, streetcar (blurred, at left), and horse-and-carriage vehicles are all pictured — and the New York and Harlem Railroad tracks run beneath the Park Avenue median.

Girard Residence ca 1910 Row houses were generally two to four stories and were usually built in groups, of identical design, often covering an entire block or more. The upscale version of the row house- the townhouse- was custom designed and sometimes as tall as six stories (servants occupied the higher floors), but still filled the entire width of the lot. Alexander McMillan Welch was known for his townhouse commissions on Fifth Avenue and along the fashionable side streets of the Upper East Side of Manhattan. This townhouse, at 1014 Fifth Avenue, across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was one of many elegant mansions and townhouses built by wealthy New Yorkers on the Upper East Side. One of few survivors of a rash of demolition to accommodate apartment house construction in the 1960s and 1970s, the townhouse remains protected by the Metropolitan Museum Historic District. The building served as the Goethe House, headquarters of the American Center for Cultural Relations with Germany for many years.

Carnegie Mansion, ca. 1905. In 1898 Andrew Carnegie began purchasing lots that would result in his owning two full blockfronts on Fifth Avenue between 90th and 92nd Streets. His choice of this land so far uptown—and away from his society peers—was purposeful. Commissioning the firm of Babb, Cook & Willard, he had built a massive 64-room mansion in the style of a English Georgian country house. The property included 30,000 square feet of outdoor space. The house, constructed between 1899 and 1902, features a number of engineering and technological innovations. It was first private residence in the United States to have a structural steel frame and the first in the city to have a residential Otis passenger elevator. The huge house was warmed with central heating. Alas, most were not impressed, The New York Tribune noted that "many people are disappointed by the plainness of the house." (Actually, that is exactly what Carnegie wanted.) The house was occupied by Carnegie's wife until her death in 1946 (Carnegie had died in 1919). The surrounding neighborhood became known as Carnegie Hill. The home remained in the holdings of the Carnegie Corporation and served as Columbia University School of Social Work for a few decades in the mid century. Since 1976, when the Corporation donated it to the Smithsonian who opened the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt Museum. After an extensive renovation that had the museum closed between 2011 to 2014, it was reopened as the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

990 Fifth Avenue ca. 1927 Built on the site of the grand Woolworth Mansion in 1927, 990 Fifth Avenue, designed by Rosario Candela, is only slightly less luxurious. 14 stories high, Candela designed the building to have only six apartments (5 duplex, and 1 triplex.) With a limestone facade and elegant detailing in a neo-Italian Renaissance design, 990 Fifth Avenue served as the epitome of how in the 21st century lavish homes were moving skyward.

The Immanuel Lutheran Church was founded by German immigrants in Yorkville in 1863. The congregation initially settled on East 87th Street near Lexington Avenue. Its current building at 122 East 88th Street, seen in this 1937 photo, was designed in 1886 in a Gothic Revival style by Arthur Crooks. Its 200-foot granite tower houses bells given to the church as a gift from the Empress of Germany in the later nineteenth century. By the turn of the twentieth century, the church was one of the largest Lutheran churches in New York City and was devoted exclusively to German-language services.

Phipps Mansion, 1905-1930. Wealthy entrepreneur Henry Phipps Jr. had this marble mansion built on the corner of 87th Street and 5th Avenue in 1905. It rubbed shoulders with the other mansions that lined Fifth Avenue until Henry died in 1930. At this time, Henry's wife sold the property to a developer and began stripping the building of the Vermont marble that was used extensively both inside and outside the house. In fact, the entirety of the building's marble facade was carefully removed to be sent to an empty field in Brookville, New York. This is where their daughter, Amy, meant to build her country estate known as the "Templeton." Little is known about what came of the Templeton, but the stone sat untouched in Brooksville for over 100 years. It eventually drifted around the shores of Long Island, where it then sat underneath the Roslyn viaduct for over 80 years. The Phipps lost the lease to their land after many years went by, and the stone went up "for sale" to anyone with the means to retrieve it. In an interesting case of restoration, the stone was collected by architect Ronnette Riley and repurposed to repair the balustrade of the de Seversky Mansion in Old Westbury.

Immanuel Lutheran Church, April, 1961. The Immanuel Lutheran Church, a Gothic edifice designed by Arthur Crooks, features a 200-foot bell tower at the corner of 88th Street and Lexington Avenue. The tower houses three bells, presented as a gift from Empress Auguste Victoria of Germany at the church’s 1886 dedication, in recognition of the German heritage of many Immanuel congregants. In June 1969, blasting for the construction of a new Gimbel’s department store one block south caused Immanuel’s vaulted plaster ceiling to collapse, damaging the church interior and stained glass windows. Luckily, the altar and hand-carved Black Forest reredos (the carved, wooden decoration behind the altar area) were unharmed.

Louis Stern Mansion, 1884-1929 Louis Stern was the president of the Stern Brothers Department Store. He opened the successful retail company with his brothers, Isaac and Benjamin. The brothers were an important merchandising family who were born to German Jewish immigrants in New York City. In 1884, Louis Stern purchased a 27-foot wide lot between 80th and 81st street on Fifth Avenue. This lot was opposite Central Park. His palace was designed by German architect William Schickel in a French-Gothic inspired fashion. The mansion's ornate facade rose four stories, complete with a stone oriel that supported a stone-balustraded balcony. The doors of the home were clad in bronze and glass. The house quickly became a social hub, hosting parties and social gatherings that brought prominent New York society members to the home. The house was sold to an Adolphus Busch, of St. Louis, in 1911. The mansion was a gift for his daughter Edmee who married art collector Hugo Reisinger. When the couple moved in, Hugo's collection filled the many rooms of the mansion. Paintings of Childe Hassam, Whistler, Carl Melchers, Menzel, Zuegel, and Boecklin lined the walls. The United States entry into World War I prompted suspicion of the Busch's and Reisingers, two wealthy German families. In 1917, an illegal radio receiving station was found on the roof of the mansion. According to a mortified Edmee, their servant Alexander Hugo installed this powerful radio equipment in secrecy under the instruction of her father. The station included a De Forest audion detector, which allowed for the receiving of long-distance messages - likely from Germany's capital in Nauen. Edmee sold the house to a realty company after the war ended. A sixteen-story apartment was constructed a decade later.

1100 Madison Avenue, ca. 1911. Completed in 1911 by the firm of Schwartz & Gross, the Schermerhorn (now called Gerel) is a 12-story apartment building. It sits just outside the Metropolitan Museum Historic District. The land on which it was constructed was purchased from the prominent Schermerhorn family.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the great landmarks, and the great institutions, of New York City, the nation, and the world. With more than two million objects in its collection, it is by far the largest museum in both New York and the country. Covering what would be several city blocks, stretching nearly a quarter-mile long, and housing over 2,000,000 square feet of space, it’s roughly the size of the Empire State Building. This story is adapted from a Village Preservation blog, which can be viewed here.

Park Avenue storefronts at East 88th Street, 1938. At left, businesses No. 1080 include Boghen Pharmacy and Park Avenue Jeweler. At right, at No. 1082 are an unlikely pair: The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., at street level; and the J.P. Linahan Casket Display showroom one store above.

ARCHITECTS: Pennington & Lewis DATE: 1929-30 The workday water tank soars to architectural heights when enclosed by inventive designers like Pennington and Lewis. Atop this Moderne apartment house, several enormous stone heads on tall brick piers gaze serenely at Central Park and Carnegie Hill. The architects may have taken their inspiration from depictions of Greek kourioi (freestanding figures of young men) or from the goddess-like caryatids supporting the Erectheion on Athens's Acropolis. The effect here is one of the most striking in New York City.

Speyer Mansion, ca. 1929. Constructed by the wealthy banker, James Speyer, the large Louis the XVI style structure had more than 40 rooms. The home was often used in the early 20th century for gatherings and fundraisers for Mrs. Speyer's charity work in advocating for working children and animals. Mr. Speyer was a benefactor of the University Settlement and President of the Provident Loan Society. Speyer passed away in 1941 and left the house to the Museum of the City of New York. The museum removed the art and artifacts but later sold the home. It was eventually demolished and a 19-story apartment house was constructed in 1951 on the site.

Phipps Mansion, 1933. Henry Phipps was the partner of Andrew Carnegie in the Carnegie Steel Company. When the company sold in 1901 he made a profit of approximately $100 million. As generous as Carnegie, Phipps funded hospitals for TB patients and working-class housing. In 1901, Phipps purchased a number of lots on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 87th Street. He commissioned the firm of Trowbridge & Livingston to design a massive Italian Renaissance style mansion. Four stories (though it looked to be only three) and set far back from 87th Street, the home was reached via a semi-circular carriage drive. Largely complete after many years of work around 1909, the family then moved into the home that had cost Phipps $2.5 million. Less than 10 years later the mansion was sold to Daniel Guggenheim. In the 1920s apartment house development came to Fifth Avenue with gusto. Developers purchased the mansions of millionaires who had moved on or passed away and quickly replaced them. The Phipps Mansion was demolished in 1927 and replaced with a 13-story apartment house, completed in 1928.

Grafton W. and Anne Minot House ARCHITECT: A. Wallace McCrea DATE: 1929 STYLE: Beaux-Arts This elegant residence, built in 1902-03 for M. Louise McAlpin, was designed by the New York City architectural firm of Barney & Chapman. In keeping with their training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the architects’ design was inspired by the classical traditions of the 18th-century French Hotel particular.

When Andrew Carnegie purchased the land for his new home in 1898, one magazine described the area as "only one remove from goatville"-with almost half the lots on the adjacent block still empty. Rather than continue the march of millionaires up Fifth, Carnegie decided to leap more than ten blocks past the northern most mansion to the avenue's highest point. The location made sense for a man who stood apart. In an era filled with big businessmen and philanthropists- he was bigger than them all. Born in 1835 in a one-room cottage in Scotland, Carnegie became the richest man in the world. He made his hundreds of millions through the steel industry- at one point his company, Carnegie Steel, produced more steel than all of Britain. Then later in life he decided to give most the money away. This philanthropic bent, as one historian notes, paradoxically made him a more ruthless boss. Though he had once supported unions, in the mid-1880s he cut wages and lengthened the eight-hour workday to 12. And in 1892, decisions by him and manager of his steel plant, Henry Clay Frick, led to one of the bloodiest labor battles the country had ever seen. The mansion's design-overseen by Carnegie's wife, Louise- reflected Carnegie's priorities in his retirement years: family, friends, and philanthropy. He and his wife loved nature and wanted a place for their five-year-old daughter Margaret to play. So they installed a garden more than half the size of the mansion and filled it with azaleas, rhododendrons, roses, and fully grown trees uprooted and transported from Connecticut and New York State. Louise sized the dining room to suite Carnegie's appetite for entertaining. His most frequent guests were writers, statesmen, and scientists and he asked them to sign the tablecloth, which servants then embroidered. Among them were several U.S. presidents, Madame Curie, Henry James, and Mark Twain, one of Carnegie's closest friends, who regularly received whiskey form the seventy-five gallon cask Carnegie kept in his basement. The greatest attention, however, was lavished on his libraries , where he indulged his lifelong love of books. A private elevator dropped him right in from of the family library on the second floor, also called the "teak room" for its intricately carved paneling from India. There, Carnegie enjoyed reading Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and the Bible and listening to Scottish ballads and American folksongs on the Victor Talking Machine.

By Margaret A. Brucia On March 10, 1921, Julia Gardiner Gayley, wrestling with seating plans for her upcoming parties, wrote to her daughter Mary from Washington Square. "I have two big lunch parties with which I am now struggling. Perhaps you would like to know who is coming. Friday I have both men and women as follows: Besides G\[ano] and myself there will be Mr. and Mrs. Billy Delano— both charming—Mr. and Mrs. Walter Maynard, Mr. and Mrs. Murray Young, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Rosen, an English painter, Mr. McEvoy coming with Rosens (she was one of the Bigelows), Mrs. Lucy Hewitt, Lucy \[Frelinghuysen], Edith Morgan, Frances Rumsey, Louise Sands, Paul Dana, Larry White, Archer Huntington, the man who gave all the Spanish museum, church, etc., to New York and whose wife ran away last year with the play writer Granville Barker. So everybody is trying to give him a nice time. I may add Frances Blodgett and Lord Carrington who she has in her train. Horne is attending to the luncheon for me with two extra men." And that was only the first of her two parties. Julie’s guests were a diverse group of architects, musicians, painters, authors and philanthropists; Protestants, Catholics and one Jew. The litany of names attests as much to the broad scope and range of Julie’s friends as to her ability to create a lively and interesting mix of people. Although each invitee had a notable backstory, Julie singled out just one for comment: the victim of a recent social scandal, around whom his friends loyally closed ranks. Who was Archer Huntington? What did “all the Spanish museum, church, etc.” mean? Why did his wife jilt him? And how was he handling the aftermath? Read this in its original format here.

Andrew Carnegie Mansion ca. 1901 The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum at 2 East 91st Street is a renowned museum and institution, the only of its kind in the United States, born of a long history and connection between philanthropy and industry. The landmarked building is an exemplary bit of ornate, turn-of-the-20th-century architecture, and today we explore its history and ties to the Village. In 1898, Andrew Carnegie and his wife Louisa purchased land for their family’s home “far north” of the center of New York City and where they had previously been living. This new space would allow them a mansion of much greater size, along with a private garden. Designed by the firm Babb, Cook & Willard, the Carnegie family moved into their grand new home in 1902. The mansion put its neighborhood on the map — the lower 90s west of Lexington Avenue is still called Carnegie Hill to this day. The Georgian style Mansion boasted a modern steel-frame construction, the first private residence in the United States to use this method. It was technologically advanced, too: multiple electric Otis elevators, a fully electrified laundry, an extremely sophisticated air conditioning system capable of heating, cooling, and humidifying individual rooms, and a cellar coal car that traveled over a miniature train track to transfer fuel from a storage bin to enormous twin boilers were installed. The mansion had 64 rooms on five floors, the top of which was for servants’ quarters. There were multiple libraries, parlors, sitting rooms, bedrooms, halls, pantries, and skylights. The family library on the second floor, known also as the Teak Room, was made entirely of intricately carved Teak wood, from India or Myanmar. Andrew Carnegie spent 20 years in his mansion before he died in 1919. His wife, Louise Carnegie, remained in the mansion until she died in 1946. Louise left the mansion to the Carnegie Corporation, which leased the building to Columbia University’s School of Social Work in 1949. The school remained in its grand home until the mid-1960s. In 1966, the Carnegie Mansion was named a national historic landmark, bestowing upon it a great honor, but not protecting it from potential demolition. Like many great Historic New York City buildings in the 1960s, when tastes and uses were rapidly changing, the Carnegie Mansion’s fate was in doubt. Some worried it would go the way of Penn Station and other no-longer-used mansions, succumbing to the wrecking ball.

St. Ignatius of Loyola, 1929. The Church of St. Ignatius was dedicated on December 11, 1898 (and completed two years later). The new Schickel & Ditmar-designed edifice replaced the modest brick structure of the former St. Lawrence O’Toole Church. The parish dates from 1851, and in 1898 the congregation sought permission to change the patron saint of the parish from St. Lawrence to St. Ignatius. The Italian-Renaissance edifice, rendered in limestone, is monumental in scale while austere in character. The plans for the church originally included a pair of towers that would rise 210 feet above the street. Alas, that feature was abandoned early in the process, but the resulting copper-capped tower bases on either side of the central pediment hint at the original intent.

St. Ignatius Parochial School, ca. 1905.

John B. and Caroline Trevor House ARCHITECT: Trowbridge & Livingston DATE: 1909-11 STYLE: French Smoothly finished limestone faces the handsome five-story house which is crowned by a mansard roof. The rusticated ground story acts as a base to set off the upper stories. A cornice slab supported on brackets crowns the entranceway with its dignified carved door. When open it reveals an elegant vestibule with classical details and a glass and wrought-iron inner door. Three deeply recessed high round-arched windows set with radial voussoirs and keystones emphasize the second floor and add to the elegance of the facade. The French casement windows open onto a ledge protected by delicate wrought-iron grilles.

Mansion at 15 East 84th Street, August 19, 1949. This extra-wide 84th Street mansion was constructed in 1899 for Adam Lanfear Norrie, a business executive and the son of Scottish-born high society financier Gordon Norrie. The original mansion, designed by architect and James Renwick protege J. Lawrence Aspinwall, was substantially altered in the late 1920s, after it was acquired by New York Herald Tribune editor Ogden Reid. The Italian Renaissance facade visible today dates to this renovation. The mansion was acquired by the Leon Levy Foundation in 2004. The property was included in a 2006 gift to New York University for the establishment of the Institute of the Study of the Ancient World.

Mayor John Purroy Mitchel Memorial, Central Park Reservoir, ca. 1975. This bronze bust was designed by the prominent German-born sculptor Adolph Alexander Weinman, honoring Mitchel, New York's 95th Mayor. The Bronx-born politician served a single term at City Hall, notable for police reforms and an assassination attempt in April 1914. Mitchel, viewed as too cozy with the city's upper crust, failed to win re-election, losing in the Republican primary. Out office, Mitchel enlisted in the Army's Air Guard but died in a training flight accident over Louisiana. The former mayor fell from his airplane when it entered a sudden tailspin; his seatbelt had not been fastened.

Northeast corner of 87th Street and Lexington Avenue, October 13, 1911.

1071 (second from the corner) In 1943, the Museum of Non-Objective Painting commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design its new home. Three years later the museum purchased a townhouse at 1071 Fifth Avenue. With the new building delayed by 1948, the museum moved into the Beaux-Arts former residence. While here in 1952 the museum was renamed after its founder, Solomon R. Guggenheim. The collections were moved out of the building (the Guggenheim archive has a great short clip of the move) in 1956. Soon after the townhouse and its neighbors were razed and ground was broken in August of the same year for the new building. The iconic museum finally opened to the public in October 1959, after more than 15 years of planning and the death of its architect only a few months before.

17 East 79th Street (at right), ca. 1917.

"It took New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met), founded in 1870, a remarkable twenty-one years to convince its board of trustees to open the museum to the public on Sunday… On May 19, 1891, the issue was finally addressed during a three-hour meeting of the Met’s board. At this boisterous gathering, described as a 'series of cloudbursts,' a sharply divided board passed the following resolution: 'Resolved, that… the museum be opened free to the public every Sunday from 1 P.M. till half an hour before sunset.' A gentleman representing the World attended the meeting with a check in hand to help offset the additional costs of opening on the extra day. Later the World’s headline proclaimed, 'THE PEOPLE TRIUMPH.' The New York Times trumpeted, 'VICTORY IS WON AT LAST.' …More than a century later, in 2007 the Met’s Visitor’s Service Department reported an average Sunday attendance of between 16,000 and 18,000, with a peak of 40,000 visitors on one Sunday during the Christmas holidays. Whatever may be said about the individual motives of the Met’s founders, it is clear that they did the right thing." For more on the history of the Met, check out this article by Jerri Sherman in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, ca. 1978. The history of the Guggenheim Museum begins more than 20 years before Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic museum building opened. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was established in 1937 and had its first New York venue, called the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, open two years later in a space on East 54th Street that had previously been an automobile showroom. By the early 1940s, the museum's founder and director believed that the collection required a permanent home. Famed American architect Frank Lloyd Wright was hired for the commission in 1943. The Non-Objective Museum moved into a townhouse at 1071 Fifth Avenue in 1947 and was renamed for its founder in 1952. The new museum building would take more than 16 years, 700 sketches, and six sets of working drawings to complete. Wright's creation was, by his own words, an "inverted ziggurat" with an interior continuous spiral ramp. Though he preferred that audiences might take a glass elevator to the top and view the art as they descended, negotiations over costs and safety-code stipulations prolonged the design and construction process and forced Wright to compromise on his original intentions. Today the art is generally viewed as visitors ascend the ramp. The exterior of the building also suffered, in Wright's opinion, from compromise. He wished for a stone exterior, but it was rendered in the more cost-effective concrete. He wanted the building to be red, it was completed with a white facade. His planned skylight was not included in the original construction, though it was opened up, as Wright intended, during the 1992 renovations. The museum opened in October of 1959, six months after Wright's death and was met with contradictory reviews. Critic Ada Louise Huxtable sang the building praises, describing the visitor's experience: "As he enters the building, he experiences what Wright promised him — a luminous, soaring, unified space, the circling ramp leading his eye to the delicately detailed, handsome skylit dome ninety-five feet above the terrazzo floor on which he stands. Concrete ribs descending from the dome divide the circular wall into bays; two pylons containing utilities and exits interrupt the smooth spiral rhythm with punctuating sculpturesque shapes. The warm ivory color of the court and the ramp frame the sharp white inner wall on which the paintings "hang," for actually they do not "hang" at all. Nor do they rest casually, at a romantic easel-angel specified by Wright." In the 60 plus years since the museum opened, the Guggenheim had become one of the most recognizable museum buildings in the world and an icon of modernist architecture.

Emily Trevor House ARCHITECT: Mott B. Schmidt DATE: 1927-28 STYLE: Neo-Federal This charming neo-Federal house was built in 1927-28 and designed by architect Mott B. Schmidt. Schmidt had also used this popular style several years earlier in the Sutton Place development. The area in which the house is located acquired the name “Carnegie Hill” soon after Andrew Carnegie erected his mansion at Fifth Avenue and 91st Street at the turn of the century. Although middle-class residences had been built in the area in the 1880s and 1890s, Carnegie’s move uptown inspired other well-to-do business and professional people to build here. Emily Trevor ‘s brother, John B. Trevor, built a house at 11 East 91st Street in 1909-11. Miss Trevor acquired the 90th Street property in 1926 and had an earlier house-dating from the 1880s on the site demolished. She moved into her new house in 1929 and lived there until her death in 1943 at the age of 70. The house is presently occupied by her nephew, John B. Trevor, Jr.

Central Park Obelisk, 1899. The obelisk, affectionately known as “Cleopatra’s Needle” (though its construction was not related to the historical Cleopatra), was a gift to the United States in recognition of friendly relations. The obelisk was installed in February 1881.

1021 Park Avenue ca. 1942 The L shaped plan of 1021 Park Avenue stems from the days when the Upper East Side real estate was dominated by mansions. The Pinchot family, having built themselves a lavish abode, sold some of the lots surrounding their mansion to other families, requiring them to be used as private homes. Eventually, they sold their home to Edward Stettinus, who continued to purchase land, but (due to the Pinchot's earlier sales) had to wrap around some lots, creating the curious L shape. In 1928, the developer Anthony Campagna bought Stettinus' land and planned to erect an apartment tower, bringing in his frequent partner: Rosario Candela. Candela, created a neo-gothic design for the building's street faced that was atypical of his normal style, incorporating features like the shields and gargoyles. For the non street facing facades, he used light brick an irregular window pattern due to the interior combination of duplex and simplex apartments. The building was a massive success with the majority of the apartments selling in almost a month.

Carnegie Hill residents revere their neighborhood for its proximity to Central Park as well as for its architectural treasures. Residents and visitors alike also appreciate and enjoy the diversity of Carnegie Hill’s fine homes, apartment houses, and cultural attractions, many of which lie along the stretch of Fifth Avenue known as Museum Mile.

Park Avenue, south from East 84th Street, ca. 1910. At center-right is No. 970 Park Avenue, with signs advertising 8 and 10 room apartments (two apartments per floor). The building went up in 1912 at the southwest corner of 83rd Street. The Georgian Revival apartment building, originally twelve stories, was designed by Schwartz & Gross for the developer Bing & Bing. Today, it is part of the Park Avenue Historic District, created in 2014. St. Ignatius Loyola Church is visible at right.

Cleopatra’s Needle, as it has long been known, stands approximately 70 feet high on the east side of Central Park, behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art near 83rd Street. It is the city’s oldest man-made public sculpture. Cleopatra’s Needle is one of a pair of granite obelisks (the other today sits on the banks of the Thames in London) from the Temple of the Sun in Heliopolis (modern-day Cairo) built to commemorate the 40th year of the reign of Thothmes III (1476-1425 BCE). In 12 BCE, Roman Emperor Augustus moved the obelisks to Alexandria. In 1869, the Khedive of Egypt gave Cleopatra’s Needle to the United States after the opening of the Suez Canal. Because of the challenging logistics, it took over a decade to arrange its transport, which was overseen by Lieutenant Commander Henry Honneychurch Gorringe (1841-1885). The project included the construction of a specially-designed railroad track, for which William H. Vanderbilt donated over $100,000, for transport up the Hudson River. When the obelisk was officially installed in New York City in January of 1881, tens of thousands of people turned up to see it in person, and manufacturers and retailers responded to this enthusiasm by producing souvenirs and memorabilia related to the event. One such example, a bronze model of the obelisk, is included in the Museum of the City of New York’s collection. The model was designed by Gorringe and cast and retailed by Tiffany & Company. Its lengthy inscription honors Henry George Stebbins (1811-1881), president of the Central Park Commission in 1880-1881 and a founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vanderbilt’s donation, and Gorringe’s leadership in engineering its transport and erection. Since the obelisk’s installation, the City of New York, its caretaker, has made efforts to preserve its structure and make its history accessible to the public. In 1940, then-Parks Commissioner Robert Moses commissioned The New~York Historical Society to create a permanent plaque commemorating the monument’s history. Throughout the twentieth century, the surface of the obelisk degraded. In early 2011, Egypt’s then-Minister of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, wrote to the Parks department imploring it to take measures to protect the obelisk from environmental factors that he believed were contributing to its degradation. He went as far as to imply that Egypt’s government would move to have the obelisk returned to Egypt if no action was taken. In 2014 the Central Park Conservancy worked on a half-million dollar conservation program for the monument which cleaned and stabilized its structure so it may “endure as a testament to the genius of a vanished civilization, an awe-inspiring tower holding its own on an island of modern skyscrapers.”

Otto Kahn Residence ca. 1917 One of the largest private houses ever built in Manhattan this Italian palazzo, including a drive-in for automobiles, has a modest self-effacing quality, due to the uniformity of its architectural effect, which makes it possible to pass and repass it many times without realizing what it is. In this respect it represents the epitome of restrained good taste.

There is no place in the world quite like New York City. While this collection might not represent the best and the brightest of history or architecture, it captures some uniquely New York moments.

Emily Trevor House, May 20, 1930. A stately neo-Georgian townhouse by architect Mott B. Schmidt, built between 1927-8 for Emily Trevor.

Spence School ca. 1931 The Spence School, an 8 story independent college-preparatory day school for girls kindergarten through 12th, located on East 91st street, was designed by John Russell Pope in 1929. It was founded by Clara B. Spence in 1892 to “educate girls and young women to the highest academic and personal standards necessary for responsible, effective citizenship and for the successful pursuit of higher education. " More like a club than a house or apartment block, Pope’s elegant but restrained Georgian design took advantage of the adjacent gardens of the Andrew Carnegie mansion to permit windows on the inventively composed west façade of his mid-block building.

995 Fifth Avenue ca. 1928 Though now a residential cooperative, 995 Fifth Avenue began its life as the Stanhope Apartment Hotel. Its architect, Rosario Candela crafted an elegant Georgian facade for the building and laid out the graceful apartments that would ensure the Stanhope's success. Though the ownership of the building was transferred multiple times, The Stanhope quickly acquired a reputation of luxury that remains to this day.

Church of the Heavenly Rest, December 14, 1929. When Andrew Carnegie decided to build his Fifth Avenue estate at 91st Street, he purchased adjoining parcels of land in order to secure his role in the neighborhoods development. In 1926, seven years after Carnegie’s death, his widow Louise Whitfield Carnegie sold the site south of 90th Street to the Church of the Heavenly Rest, an Episcopal congregation founded by Civil War veterans in 1865. The neo-Gothic church, designed by Hardie Phillip, opened on Easter Sunday, 1929. Phillip’s design incorporated Arte Moderne elements and was to include significant architectural sculpture, before the turmoil of the 1929 market crash imperiled funding. A 1993 fire badly damaged the church organ and parts of the sanctuary, but fast-acting firefighters were able to salvage the original stained glass.

William Starr Miller Residence ca. 1920 One of the most attractive phases of French Classic architecture was that of the period of Louis XIII, which we see in the Place des Vosges in Paris. This style retained a quality of domestic warmth which disappeared with the frigid elegance of the all-limestone creations of late periods.

1009 Fifth Avenue ARCHITECT: Welch, Smith & Provot DATE: 1899-1901 STYLE: Beaux-Arts This handsome Fifth Avenue mansion, prominently located at the southeast corner of Eighty-second Street, was built during the years 1899 to 1901. It is one of the few surviving houses which once formed part of an almost uninterrupted series of palatial residences facing Central Park. In recent years the majority of these grand townhouses have fallen victim to rising property values, and have been replaced by apartment buildings. No. 1009 is exceptional, as it remains in the possession of the family of the original owner, and today provides us with a fine example of turn-of-the-century architectural opulence.

Cultural Medallions are porcelainized enamel plaques affixed to the exterior of buildings, in order to commemorate an individual (or occurrence) that has made a significant contribution to New York City’s rich cultural heritage. These are the Cultural Medallions in Manhattan. See more from the Historic Landmarks Preservation Center here.

East 82nd Street and Lexington Avenue, view of the northwest corner, October 29, 1912. Joseph Richardson was a wealthy contractor who had constructed portions of the Union Pacific Railroad. Despite work and wealth, he is best known as the builder of one of New York's only spite houses. In 1882 the small sliver of land at the northwest corner of 82nd Street and Lexington Avenue (102 feet long and 5 feet wide) was owned by Richardson's wife. Patrick McQuade and Hyman Sarner purchased the adjacent lots for the construction of apartment houses. They offered Richardson $1,000 for the small lot, which he felt was too low, and countered with an ask of $5,000. The developers refused and proceeded to break ground on their structure without the corner lot. During construction they approached Richardson again, offering the $5,000 he had originally desired. This time he declined. He stated that," he never gave a man more than one opportunity to buy anything from him, and that the strip was no longer for sale." Instead, a few weeks later, Richardson himself broke ground on a narrow structure on his lot, built with the express purpose of blocking the windows of McQuade and Sarnar's apartments. The resulting building (which gave the impression of being a single resident, but was actually a few tall houses) was completed five months before its neighbors. Richardson even moved into one. According to the New York Times: "Every room is less than five feet wide, and the dining table is only eighteen inches wide. Gas is unknown above the first floor, and water has to be carried by hand all over the building.” The bay windows, which were allowed on corner buildings, added for a slightly wider portion of the home. Richardson died in 1897. In 1905, C.A. Stein, then-owner of the corner structures, requested permission to fill in the area between the bay windows to widen the structure to nine feet for ground-floor retail. His request must have been approved, as this 1912 photograph depicts a tailoring business in a commercial space. The building caused some consternation in the planning for the IRT Lexington Avenue Line, as contractors worried about the cost and safety of shoring up the narrow buildings during the cut and cover street excavations. They needn't worry. Stein sold the lot to real estate developers Bing & Bing in 1915 and the structures were soon demolished. In 1915 an 11-story apartment building designed by Emery Roth replaced both the spite house and the apartments it was built to spite.

James B. Clews Mansion, not dated. In the late 19th century this section of Fifth Avenue was lined with lovely (but conservatively sized) brownstones. But as the wealthiest of New York City society began moving uptown, the rowhouses (built on land owned by the New York and Harlem Railroad Company) were soon to be a thing of the past. In 1908 as the railroad company was liquidating its real estate assets, the plot here at the northeast corner of 85th Steet and Fifth Avenue was bought up by James Clews, a millionaire from a banking family. The planned house—a gift to his new bride— was to be designed by Philadelphia architect Horace Trumbauer at the cost of $200,000. According to contemporary sources, the architect planned to eschew traditional plans for these type of corner buildings and place the entrance on the shorter avenue facade, instead of the longer 85th Street facade. The resulting mansion (completed in 1911) had its door on the street side, so plans must have changed. The Clews family were well-known for their fancy society events. The home had two large halls, a grand staircase, eight family bedrooms, and accommodations for a staff of 12. Meta Clews died in 1919 and James remarried at age 62 in 1926. The new newlyweds lived in the home for only three more years and then sold the lavish home. It was demolished and replaced in 1930 by a large luxury apartment house by Rosario Candela.

Hook & Ladder 13, October, 1960. In the 1860s, the cities of New York and Brooklyn moved to professionalize firefighting, combining the volunteer and independent firefighting companies into a single Metropolitan District. The newly-established Hook & Ladder Company No. 13 moved into its East 87th Street firehouse in January, 1868. In 1961, the company moved to a new firehouse on East 85th Street, leaving their former home vacant — but not for long. In 1962, a young, unknown artist named Andy Warhol rented the second floor studio for $150/month.

By Jerri Sherman It took New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met), founded in 1870, a remarkable 21 years to convince its board of trustees to open the museum to the public on Sunday. In the post-Civil War years, during what was called the Gilded Age, America’s greatest city experienced momentous social, cultural, and economic change, which led to an increasingly unrestrained environment. New ideas from many sources jeopardized traditional values, and the business and political frenzy acted as a magnet for masses of immigrants who came to America and settled in New York, hoping for a new and better life. By the 1880s, the city was both reeling from the onslaught of violent labor unrest and financial depression and struggling to accommodate a million people, fully two-thirds of whom lived in 32,000 overcrowded tenement buildings. Native-born New Yorkers felt their way of life threatened by the influx of these newcomers and their “foreign” ways. With a worsening urban crisis, it became clear that many aspects of social behavior required change. The development of rival doctrines also brought serious challenges to Christian religious conservatism. Sabbatarianism, one of Protestantism’s traditional moral crusades, found that it had lost touch with the labor movement, whose members chose in increasing numbers to avoid church attendance. The idea of a day exclusively for religious dedication was supplanted by the need for a secular day of rest. Thus the old boundary of the Sunday Sabbath needed to be broken. Read this in its original format here.

Metropolitan Museum of Art ca. 1908 The enormous scale of this facade is reminiscent of the main hall of a Roman public bath and forms a dramatic setting for the entrance to this great museum. The huge blocks of stone above the columns were intended for sculpture which was never executed. Richard Morris Hunt, dean of New York architects, designed it and once remarked that he would wish to have it considered his monument.

Constructed for a German-Jewish Reform congregation, Park Avenue Synagogue, seen here in 1927, the year it was dedicated, was one of the last Moorish-Revival Jewish houses of worship built in the United States. The Moorish style offered an alternative to the Greco-Roman or Gothic-Revival silhouettes that were often used for churches. It was a style that had been used for synagogues in Germany as early as the 1830s and remained widely popular for Jewish sacred spaces until the First World War. With its mix of German language, Jewish religion, and Mediterranean accents, the Park Avenue Synagogue was a uniquely American place: when the Synagogue was dedicated in March 1927, Mayor Jimmy Walker, the Episcopal Bishop of New York City William T. Manning, and New York Supreme Court Justice Thomas C. T. Crain were all in attendance. Congregants, who had originally founded the Synagogue in 1882 in a converted church at 115 East 86th, now had created a dramatic new space for themselves in the city. The Upper East Side’s stunning array of ecclesiastical architecture offers many more instances of immigrant communities announcing their arrival in New York through beautiful houses of worship. In each of these spaces, congregants could come together not only to strengthen the bonds of their communities but also to assert their collective American ambition and success.

John Henry and Emily Vanderbilt Sloane Hammond House ARCHITECT: Carrère & Hasting DATE: 1902-03 John Henry Hammond, a New York lawyer, banker and corporation director, married Emily Vanderbilt Sloane; in 1901 her father, William D. Sloane of W. & J. Sloane, purchased the 91st Street property from Andrew Carnegie and then transferred the property to Emily as a wedding present. Mrs. Hammond, an heiress to the Sloane and Vanderbilt fortunes, devoted much of her time to philanthropic activities including the restoration of the Theodore Roosevelt House at 28 East 20th Street. The Hammond house is now occupied by the 9 East 91st Street Hospital. The five-story house with its impressive limestone facade harmonizes extremely well with the distinguished Landmarks buildings immediately to the west, the Otto Kahn and James Burden Houses. The boldly rusticated base is pierced by a high round-arched central entrance, flanked by arched windows. The entrance doors are fine examples of wrought iron. Rising above the base are three floors faced with smooth limestone, clearly defined at the edges by exceptionally wide quoins.

The Cutting Houses, East 89th Street, ca. 1920. This row of three neo-Georgian townhouses was built in 1919-20 for Charles Suydam Cutting, a naturalist, and photographer who accompanied his friend Teddy Roosevelt on his expedition to Southeast Asia, where he became the first Westerner to enter the city of Lhasa, in Tibet. A seven-bay arcade at street-level creates the impression that the adjacent townhouses are part of the same structure, though, at the time of this photograph, the buildings had not been connected. Between 1950-52, No. 12 was converted to St. David’s School. By 1964, all three Cutting townhouses had been absorbed and renovated for classroom use.

\*Ada Louise Huxtable (1921-2013), a native New Yorker, was a pioneer in architectural criticism, and a champion of livable cities. As the first full-time architecture critic at a major American newspaper (The New York Times created the position specifically for her in 1963), she won the first Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism in 1970, and helped redefine architecture in the public consciousness as “a very real and important art \[because] it affects us all so directly.” Her writing on architecture, urban design, and planning helped bring those topics into the popular consciousness, and encouraged New Yorkers to see the buildings around them as part of their lives. She championed “humanity of scale,” and buildings that were “integrated into life and use,” writing: “what counts more than style is whether architecture improves our experience of the built world; whether it makes us wonder why we never noticed places in quite this way before.” Huxtable helped us do exactly that. On this virtual tour of her New York, we will learn about her life, see buildings she praised and those she decried, and consider her legacy as a writer, an urbanist, and a champion of the collective work of city-making. \*Lucie Levine

Otto and Addie Kahn House ARCHITECT: J. Armstrong Stenhouse; C. P. H. Gilbert DATE: 1913-18 STYLE: Italian Renaissance Among its important qualities, the Otto Kahn House is the finest Italian Renaissance style mansion in New York City. It belonged to a great patron of the arts, and was almost unique at the date of its erection in its simplicity and purity of detail, and that, although it is prominently located on a Fifth Avenue corner site, it is most notable for its restrained and quiet dignity.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1903. When the Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870, New York had no major art museum. In the mid-19th century, the city's biggest cultural destination was PT Barnum's American Museum, where up to 15,000 people per day flocked to see attractions ranging from Siamese twins and live whales to performances of Shakespeare and opera by the singer Jenny Lind. The founders of the MET wanted to create something entirely different-an encyclopedic collection of high art that would ultimately compete with Europe's greatest museums. The city's industrialists joined the board, along with esteemed painters and architects. They also gave the Museum its foundational collections. In less than 20 years, by the late 1880s, the Museum was earning widespread attention. Works by Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Rembrandt, Leonardo and Vermeer hung on its walls. And gifts from the city's rich-many from the individuals whose homes you stop at on this tour- would keep flowing in for decades. There were drawings by Albrecht Durer from Felix Warburg, Marie Antoinette's furniture from William K. Vanderbilt and Italian lace from Mrs. John Jacob Astor. Then there were the thousands of medieval and Egyptian objects from the collection of J.P. Morgan, who served as a trustee and then president. The Museum intended not only to build a world class collection of art, but also to teach visitors how to appreciate it. At first, it excluded the working class by closing on Sunday, the day they had off. Once the MET decided to stay open that day, curators, and directors stood watch in the galleries. Director Louis di Cesnola boasted of the results: "There is no more spitting tobacco juice on the gallery floors...no more whistling, singing or calling aloud to people from one gallery to another." One story circulated about Mark Twain's protests when asked to leave his belongings in the cloak room: "Leave my cane! Leave my can!" he purportedly exclaimed. "How do you expect me to poke holes through the oil paintings?"

John Henry Hammond House, ca. 1910. When Andrew Carnegie built his Fifth Avenue residence at 91st Street, he also purchased several adjoining lots in order to ensure that new neighbors would meet his standards. Hammond, a banker, and his wife Emily Vanderbilt Sloane, received the 91st Street plot as a wedding gift, and enlisted the firm Carrère & Hastings to build a Renaissance Revival palazzo. The Italian palazzo style was very popular in the opening decade of the 20th century. Indeed, several Carnegie libraries in Upper Manhattan were built in a similar style by McKim, Mead & White. (Perhaps the philanthropist next door was an admirer of the Hammond residence? Within the decade, Carrère & Hastings would be enlisted to build the New York Public Library’s main branch). In 1975, the Soviet Union purchased the Hammond mansion and renovated the building for use as its sole American consulate. The consulate opened in 1978, but closed abruptly in 1980 after President Carter ordered the expulsion of Soviet diplomats in response to the invasion of Afghanistan. Thereafter, the consulate fell into disrepair. Between 1992-1994, the Russian Federation restored the building, officially reopening it as the Consulate-General of New York City in January 1995.

When the Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870, New York had no major art museum. In the mid-19th century, the city's biggest cultural destination was PT Barnum's American Museum, where up to 15,000 people per day flocked to see attractions ranging from Siamese twins and live whales to performances of Shakespeare and opera by the singer Jenny Lind.

Church of St. Ignatius Loyola 980 Park Avenue parish hall/rectory: Patrick C. Keely, 1881-83 church: Schickel & Ditmars, 1895-1900, NYC IL school: Schickel & Ditmars, 1899-1900 – NYC HD, NR-P, NR-D One of the first institutions on Fourth Avenue was the parish of St. Lawrence O’Toole, which initially acquired property on both sides of the railroad tracks at East 84th Street. Its first building was erected in 1854. The parish, later incorporated as St. Ignatius Loyola (founder of the Jesuits in 1541), expanded in the 1880s, beginning with the construction of a four-story parish house and residence hall. The church itself was designed in the Italian Renaissance Revival, in homage to the architecture that was popular during St. Ignatius’ lifetime. It was one of the first houses of worship in the city to use steel roof beams and trusses for fireproofing. Its two upper towers were never realized. In 1899, the Loyola School was established to educate the sons of wealthy Catholics (it became co-educational in 1973), for which the limestone building at the corner of East 83rd Street was built.

Church of St. Ignatius Loyola ARCHITECT: Schikel & Ditmars DATE: 1895-1900 STYLE: Seventeenth-Century Rome Monumental in scale and impressive in appearance, the Park Avenue facade of this dignified Twentieth Century Church reflects the classical style of Seventeenth-Century Rome. The symmetrical masonry exterior of Limestone, severely austere In character, is generously enriched by the carved decoration of the highest quality.

Park Avenue Christian Church Bertram Goodhue of Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson 1909-11–NYCHD, NR-D This magnificent French Gothic Revival style church is clad in grey Manhattan schist, and features a pointed arch stained glass window and a 70-foot lead fleche, cast in Birmingham, England, by Henry Hope & Sons to emulate the one at Sainte Chapelle in Paris. Goodhue also designed the adjacent rectory in the same style of the same grey schist. In 2014, the controversy over its demolition led to the designation of the Park Avenue Historic District.

1083 Fifth Avenue ca. 1929 Originally built in 1901-02 in the Beaux-Arts style for Archer Milton Huntington, 1083 Fifth Avenue was remodeled and enlarged for Huntington with the current French Second Empire details in 1913-15. The renovation was done by architect Ogden Codman in conjunction with the addition of a wing at 3 East 89th Street. Archer Milton was the stepson (or possibly biological son) of railroad magnate and industrialist Collis P. Huntington. Known for his philanthropy, Archer Milton founded The Hispanic Society of America in New York City. He was also a generous benefactor to the American Geographical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Numismatic Society, Brookgreen Gardens sculpture center in South Carolina, and the Mariners’ Museum in Virginia, which is one of the largest maritime museums in the world. In 1940, he and his sculptor wife, Anna Hyatt Huntington donated 1083 Fifth Avenue along with two adjoining townhouses and a fund for alterations to the National Academy of Design (NAD), which moved in two years later. NAD was the first institution in the United States established by and under the exclusive control of professional artists. Since its founding, NAD has pursued a simple yet powerful mission: to promote the fine arts in America through exhibition and education. The founders of NAD believed that the practice and exhibition of art and architecture could flourish outside of the aristocratic patronage system. Their new egalitarian institution aimed for the highest echelons of artistic expression with an inclusive philosophy, enriching and educating new generations of artists and architects while preserving and sharing their work with the public. In 2018, after 78 years, NAD, citing financial pressures, sold its 15,000 sq. ft., six-story, five-bedroom headquarters at 1083 Fifth Avenue for $25 million.

1040 Park Avenue Delano & Aldrich, 1923-25 – NYC HD, NR-D 1040 Park Avenue made distinctive with its eclectic ornament includes a frieze with sculpted tortoises and hares. Interestingly, the building does not have a cornice, which is unusual for a Renaissance Revival style building. It did, however, have one of the Avenue’s earliest penthouse apartments, which became fashionable in the 1920s. Though intended as servants’ quarters, the top floor was transformed by famed magazine publisher Condé Nast into a 5,000-square-foot duplex designed by actress and interior decorator Elsie de Wolfe. The building was also briefly home to Jacqueline Kennedy after she left the White House