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

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.

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.

Central Park Reservoir ca. 1947 One of the Park's most picturesque landscapes, the reservoir is 40 feet deep and holds a billion gallons of water. It was built in the 1860s as a temporary water supply for New York City, while the Croton Water system was shut down for repairs two weeks each year. The reservoir was decommissioned in 1993, deemed obsolete because of the Third Water Tunnel. President Bill Clinton, Madonna, and Jackie Kennedy Onassis (for whom the reservoir was named in 1994) have all run on the 1.58-mile track.

In 1977, the City created a new agency to manage its water supply and wastewater treatment and to regulate air quality, noise, and hazardous materials: the Department of Environmental Protection. DEP inherited the infrastructure, responsibilities, and documentation of many predecessor agencies dating back to the 1840s. That documentation comprises the bulk of the DEP archives and is still used in planning capital construction and rehabilitation projects, as well as watershed land management, facilities maintenance, and other operations.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

Central Park Reservoir ca. 1931 Built between 1858 and 1862, the 106-acre reservoir is 40 feet deep and holds over a billion gallons of water. Once a critical part of the city’s fresh water system, it received water from the Croton Aqueduct and distributed it throughout Manhattan. The reservoir was decommissioned in 1993, deemed obsolete due to the new water main under 79th Street that connected with the Third Water Tunnel, and because of growing concerns about contamination. In 1994, the reservoir was renamed for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in recognition of her contributions to the New York City, and because she enjoyed jogging along the 1.58 mile running track that surrounds it. In 2003, an unsightly seven-foot chain link fence was replaced by a four foot tall steel fence with cast-iron ornamentation, based on the design of the fence that was installed when the reservoir was completed in 1862.

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.

Central Park is one of New York's beloved public spaces. Sculpted by Olmstead and Vaux, millions have sheltered under its trees and walked its roads. But in the creation of this magnificent park, a Black community was destroyed. The destruction of Seneca Village shows the complicated legacy of even our most treasured spaces.

West Drive, Central Park, ca. 1910.

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.

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.

Sandhogs are urban miners and underground construction workers who’ve been tunneling through sand, mud, and bedrock for well over a century. They dug New York’s subway, traffic, sewer, and water tunnels, as well as foundations for structures like the Woolworth Building. The term “sand hogs” originated with workers digging the sandy bottom of the East River inside caissons to build the Brooklyn Bridge. Over time, the term expanded to describe any laborer working underground in the City, and became specifically tied to the Local 147 Sandhogs Union. NYC built three deep pressure tunnels through bedrock to carry water throughout the five boroughs. Placing them hundreds of feet underground kept the water supply safely below any utility and subway tunnels, and the depth required laborers who could work under often grueling and dangerous conditions.

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?"

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.

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.