Van den Heuvel Mansion, ca 1900. In 1792 a Dutch merchant who was becoming wealthy in the trade and finance markets of New York purchased a plot of land on what is now the Upper West Side. The large plot and small complex of buildings had earlier belonged to Charles Apthorp, whose land still abutted this property to the north. Jan Cornelius Van den Heuvel was long credited with building the mansion on the land, though it was likely there in some form since the mid 18th century. The home was a grand house two stories tall with a steep gabled roof. Van den Heuvel, despite his recent immigrant status, was named director of a U.S. Branch Bank in 1801 and his family moved to a lower Manhattan home as their "city dwelling" while the uptown manse remained their "summer house." The family sold the plot following Jan's death in 1822 and the land was divided. The plot that included the large house was leased to a William Burnham in 1839 who converted the building into a respectable hotel known variously as Burnham’s Mansion House, Burnham’s Hotel, and Burnham’s Tavern. The house was purchased by John Jacob Astor (whose wife was a Van den Heuvel) in 1879 and it was occupied by a floral business in the late 19th century. It is unknown when the full third floor was added. The home was demolished in 1902, though some of its interiors and furnishings were saved. On the now empty land, William Waldorf Astor had built a massive apartment building constructed called the Apthorp.

Arthorpe Apartments ca. 1905 Following the lead of the Dakota on Central Park West, many of the new apartment houses were built with large central courtyards. This one, which occupies an entire city block, was remodeled several years ago, splitting each apartment into two. The division of rooms was balanced by using the living room and bedroom for one new apartment and the dining room, kitchen, and maids' room for the other. This ingenious scheme produced two fully remodeled apartments where only one existed formerly.

Euclid Hall, ca. 1930. This large, multi-section 1903 building was designed by Hill & Turner. It was developed as a luxury apartment buildings with most apartments arranged around narrow light courts. The units typically had four to five bedrooms, with a parlor-library-dining room arranged together. While the original tenants were somewhat prosperous New Yorkers, newer, more luxurious apartment buildings nearby quickly rendered the Euclid Hall less desirable. By the 1920s the entire Broadway front of the building had ground-level commercial spaces. And by the 1930s, it had been converted to the Euclid Hotel, a single occupancy residence (SRO) building. Decades of neglect left the building in a terrible state by the 1980s. It was purchased and refurbished in 1989 by a senior housing organization and continues to function today as a senior and supportive housing building.

Belnord, ca. 1909. Designed by the architectural firm of Hiss and Weekes and completed in 1908, the Belnord Apartments is a 12-story, Italian Renaissance apartment building. The building occupies the full block between West 86th and 87th Streets and Amsterdam and Broadway. Similar to other full block apartments in New York City the building surrounds a large, landscaped interior courtyard. Originally all entrances to the building were located within the central courtyard. Two low, barrel vaulted arches on the 86th Street facade allow car access to the interior yard. Famous residents of the building include actor Zero Mostel and jazz impresario Art D'Lugoff.

Broadway, west side, north from 86th to 88th Streets. Note subway entrance at 86th Street, 1935. The entrances and exits to the original subway stations were structures with either doomed (entrance) or peaked (exit) roofs, known as kiosks. They were modeled after the structures found on the earliest Metro lines in Budapest, Hungary. An entrance kiosk can be seen at the street level just below the words 'rye whiskey' in this photograph. They were glass and cast metal and were all torn down by the late 1960s. In 1986 a replica of one of the original kiosks was reinstalled at the Astor Place Station.

Broadway, west side, north from West 77th (left) to 79th Streets, 1908.

310 West 80th Street (at right), ca. 1900. Constructed between 1899 and 1901, James Ware (the creator of the "dumbbell tenements") designed this Beaux Arts apartment building. The impressive orange brick with limestone trim building was once home to a young Dorothy Rothschild (later Dorothy Parker). Today the well-kept apartment house is part of the Riverside Drive- West 80th-81st Street Historic District.

West End Collegiate Church and School ARCHITECT: Robert W. Gibson DATE: 1892-93 STYLE: Dutch Renaissance, Flemish Renaissance The West End Collegiate Church and School are a well-integrated group of buildings executed in a uniform style of architecture providing an accent of quaint charm among the surrounding high-rise apartments of West End Avenue. Since the Church and School trace their origins back to the first Dutch community in New York, the architect, Robert W. Gibson, appropriately combined elements of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance styles for his design. This group of buildings is one of the few good examples of this character in the City.

In 1891, the First Baptist Church on 79th Street and Broadway was designed by George M. Keister, the architect of the Apollo theater. The exterior of the church was designed with symbolism from the bible. The original structure had a rather peculiar roof of stained glass. While beautiful, constant leaks proved that this was not sustainable. The roof was eventually replaced with tiles. The towers, notable asymmetrical, represent the Christ and the Church. The taller tower, symbolic of Christ, emits light while the lower tower, meant to symbolize the Church, appears incomplete to await the return of Christ. The location of this church was the fourth for this congregation. It sits near where its founder, pastor John Gano, escaped an ambush en route to joining George Washington's army.

The Board of Water Supply used models for design and celebration, from critically serious to comical and extravagant. Models were communication tools, explaining and promoting the City’s infrastructure projects, and sometimes helped determine the locations of structures or best way to build them. This story starts with some technical models, then looks at those that celebrated NYC’s water supply system and world-class engineering.

Photo is captioned: "Riverside Park, at the foot of West 79th Street, showing the information board locating the various U. S. vessels during their visit to New York City. June 17, 1934" In the summer of 1934, this sign was placed on 79th Street and the Hudson River. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt performed a Naval Review in the New York Harbor on May 31, 1934. The board indicated to onlookers the position of the naval ships along the Hudson. The ships included were the USS Chicago, the USS Salt Lake City, the USS Dickerson, and the USS Chester. This was one of the largest naval assemblages in New York City, with 86 warships and 35,000 officers participating. Over 80 of the vessels were anchored on the Hudson. FDR then led them downstream aboard the USS Indianapolis. Finally, the President's ship came to a halt so that the 12-miles of naval ships could pass by for his review. The practice of fleet reviews dates back to the 15th century. These events were often a showcase of military strength and booster of national morale rather than an actual assessment. It was reported that the event drew 500,000 spectators onshore and 300 private boats to the water.

520 West End Avenue, 1924. The little home on the corner (at right) is dwarfed by the larger apartment buildings that surround it. But, in fact, this small home is actually a mansion of considerable size. Built on a long and narrow plot (27 feet by 100 feet), the mansion, fashioned in Romanesque, Elizabethan, and Gothic Revival styles, was designed by Clarence True as a speculative development. It was purchased while still being constructed by a cotton broker named John Burgess Leech, who had nine children. The house was completed in 1892 and the family lived there until 1905. After the Leech family left, the home was converted into a school for girls and later into eight separate apartments with a doctor's office in the basement. The mansion was threatened by demolition in the late 1920s by an owner who thought the prime corner lot would better serve him financially as a large apartment building. The Great Depression halted his plans, and today the building remains apartments.

The Riverdale, 1908.

All Angels Episcopal Church was established as a parish in the 1830s as a mission-focused church serving the community of Seneca Village, a free black neighborhood that once stood in what is now Central Park (that also included poor Irish and German immigrants as well). In the late 1850s, the church moved to West End Avenue and 80th street after their former location was condemned by the city for the creation of Central Park. The grand church seen in this interior image was completed in 1890. In 1896 Karl Bitter, the Austrian-born American sculptor, renovated the church's interior. The church featured a two-and-a-half-story Tiffany window and a pulpit ringed with limestone angels. The congregation occupied the late 19th-century church until 1979 when it was demolished for an apartment building. Today the community worships in what was the parish house at 251 West 80th Street. The Bitter-designed pulpit was saved from demolition and is now in the collection at the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

John B. and Isabella Leech House ARCHITECT: Clarence True DATE: 1892 STYLE: Romanesque, Gothic, Elizabethan In the bold form of its rusticated sandstone base, the complex massing of its tan Roman ironspot brick upper stories (now painted), the subtle handling and richness of its carved stone details of Romanesque, Gothic, and Elizabethan derivation, and decorative wrought-ironwork, it is a fine example of the diverse picturesque, eclectic architecture of the late 19th century which once characterized West End Avenue as one of New York City’s most desirable residential avenues. Its corner site, allowing for two principal designed facades linked by a curved corner bay, both enhances the prominence and integrity of its original architectural elements and emphasizes its status as one of the most significant surviving individually-designed large town houses on the Upper West Side.

322 West 81st Street (also known as 86 Riverside Drive), ca. 1925. The corner home seen here at right is one of a series of six homes built in 1897-1898 (nos. 316-320 West 81st Street and 84-86 Riverside Drive). Designed by Clarence True in an Elizabethan Renaissance Revival style, it has a rock face limestone facade with a three-story rounded bay on Riverside Drive.

"Riverside Drive, north from West 85th Street, showing prominently a predecessor of the Fifth Ave. buses. On the right is the Misses Ely's School for Young Ladies which was formerly the Episcopal Home of Mercy and occupying a setback position from the building line, between 85th and 86th Streets. North of same appears a row of brick homes, from 86th to 87th Streets, ca. 1905." The bus seen on the street here is noted as a predecessor of the Fifth Avenue Coach Company (famous in the early 20th century for their double-decker buses). This seems unlikely for a number of reasons. The Fifth Avenue line did not initially travel so far uptown. And the predecessor to the Fifth Avenue buses was a horse powered omnibus replaced in 1907 by electric buses. This open air, tiered bus looks much more like an "observation automobile" or sightseeing bus, a new popular attraction around town in the early 20th century. In 1909 the building, at right, noted in the description as Misses Ely's School for Young Ladies was replaced by The Dorchester, a 12-story grand apartment house.

Metropolitan Apartments, at the S.W. corner of West 88th Street, 1901. The first subway line, which traveled from City Hall to 145th Street on the West Side, was constructed using the 'cut and cover' method. Workers dug giant trenches through existing streets, laid the tracks, and covered them back up. This was a very disruptive construction method, as entire sections of streets were blocked off for weeks or months at a time. This photograph depicts subway construction at West 87th Street, three years before the subway officially opened.

The Apthrop, ca. 1905. Designed by architects Clinton & Russell for William Waldorf Astor, the Apthorp is a full-block apartment building. Named for Charles Ward Apthorp, who once owned the land, the Italian Renaissance Revival structure was completed in 1908. The large central barrel-vaulted entrance leads to a well-appointed interior courtyard and the building has four lobbies. The massive building originally had only 10 apartment to each floor. The floors were further divided in the 1930s and 1940s. Long a rental building, the Apthorp underwent a condo conversion in 2008, when the average price of apartments was offered at $6.5 million. Famous residents have included Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., Nora Ephron, Joseph Heller, George Balanchine, Al Pacino, and Conan O'Brien.

Like the other collegiate Churches that descended from the Dutch reformed Church of New Amsterdam, the West End Collegiate Church's Dutch origins are evident in the architecture. Built in the Colonial Revival style, its steep gables were modeled after a 1606 building, the meat market (Vleeshal) in the Dutch town of Haarlem. West End Collegiate Church also boasts stained-glass windows and plaques that commemorate its links with The Netherlands and the House of Orange.

Holy Trinity Church ca. 1931 Designed in the neo-Byzantine style popular at the time, the Holy Trinity Church exhibits the rich visual effects the Guastavinos could achieve even when using a relatively narrow color range. Panels of pale, herringbone-patterned tiles in the dome are framed by “ribs” of slightly darker tiles. As in many Guastavino projects, the company applied the exposed layer of tiles last, with protruding mortar joints that emphasize the intricate pattern when seen from a distance.

344-348 West 87th Street, ca. 1913. Of this trio of buildings, only the two to the left (nos. 344 and 346) remain. They have been altered, so as to remove their staircases and first floor entrances. The doors to the homes are no at the garden (or basement) level. Many building all over the city, in the years just prior to and just after World War I, were renovated in this way.

Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew ca. 1995 The facade of the church of St. Paul and St. Andrew is an eclectic mixture of architectural styles and decorations topped by a multi-level terracotta tiled roof. Its most eye-catching elements are the two mismatched towers that rise above 86th Street on the south side and West End Avenue on the north side. These two focal points embrace the marble steps leading into the vast semi-circular arched ceiling sanctuary visually anchored by four massive angels. The sanctuary is circled on three sides by a second story balcony flooded with light from a series of clerestory windows. The apse is framed by towering organ pipes and faux marble painted columns. Unique to the church is an intimate 75 seat theatre on its second floor and a large Social Hall on its lower level. This hall is home to Westside Campaign Against Hunger, Goddard Meals on Wheels, Homework Help tutoring program, and a variety of community and social outreach programs sponsored by the church. St. Paul and St. Andrew is a city landmark, an Upper West Side neighbor and a committed global citizen.

St. Agnes Branch, NYPL, June 10, 1928. Completed in 1906 to plans by Babb, Cook & Willard, the St. Agnes Library is designated a landmark as a part of the Upper West Side-Central Park West Historic District. The history of this library dates to 1893 when St. Agnes Chapel on West 91st Street opened a small parish library, which housed a small section for the Library for the Blind. The rapidly growing community prompted the chapel's pastor to expand the audience of the library to the entire neighborhood. St. Agnes Free Library was chartered by the University of the State of New York and merged with the New York Public Library in 1901. Five years later this structure would be built using funds from the 1901 Carnegie bequest.

Normandy Apartments ARCHITECT: Emery Roth & Sons DATE: 1938-39 The Normandy Apartments is one of the most outstanding apartment buildings on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. A large eighteen-story (with nineteenth-story penthouse) twin-towered structure overlooking the Hudson River, it dominates the vista of Riverside Drive. Designed by Emery Roth, and built-in 1938-39, it was his last great work, as well as the last of the monumental pre-World War II apartment muses that are such an important element of the Upper West Side.

Red House ARCHITECT: Harde & Short DATE: 1903-04 STYLE: Terra-cotta Red House, an exceptionally handsome apartment building, located at 350 West 85th Street near the southeast corner of West 85th Street and Riverside Drive, was built in 1903-04. An early building designed by the firm of Harde & Short. Red House takes its name from the color of the brick facing, which is set off by an abundant use of light-colored terra-cotta ornament.

Belnord Apartments ARCHITECT: Hiss & Weekes DATE: 1908-09 A notable feature of this architectural scheme is the manner in which the window arrangements differ from those in most contemporary high-rise buildings. Instead of establishing a uniform window size and subordinating the entire composition to it, the architect of the Belnord chose to use windows of several sizes, which were then further differentiated by varying their enframements and embellishments. Handsomely decorated panels were used to tie the corner windows together vertically, which, combined with the rusticated brickwork at the corners of the building, constitute a very subtle but effective vertical emphasis for each of the four long, horizontal facades.

Broadway, east side, at West 84th Street, showing the house in which Edgar Allan Poe wrote "The Raven". In the "Life of Poe' by William F. Gill (published 1877) on page 147-8 appears a drawi ng of this building. It is stated to have been a "few hundred feet from the corner of 84th St. and St. Nicholas Blvd. (formerly Bloomingdale Road)." A Mrs. Brennan lived here for 47 years and rented same to Poe in the Spring of 1844. He finished "The Raven" in the Winter of that year. The following Spring he moved to the City proper. It is inferred that General Washington and his officers used it as a shelter. G. E. Woodberry in his 'Life of E. A. Poe" (V. 2 page 113) reports the location as being "near what is now the eastern corner of 84th Street and Broadway. The sign hanging from the house reads "John Negel, Mason Builder, Ovens Built & Burners Set, Kalaomining". The inscription on the rock reads " R. Hamilton, Upholsterer, 11th Avenue.

In the last two decades of the 19th century, West End Avenue became a center for Dutch Colonial Revival architecture. Various architects including McKim, Mead, and White built Dutch (or Flemish) influenced rowhouses on West End, and in 1892 came the "Netherlandish crown of the West End" (as per Times architecture writer Christopher Gray), the West End Collegiate Church at 77th Street. Two years later, C.B.J. Snyder, Superintendent of School Buildings, designed Public School 9 in a what is usually described as an English Gothic style, but which can easily also be called Dutch, with its orange brick and prominent stepped gables. Since 2002, this building has been the home to the Mickey Mantle School (P.S. 811M), serving children with disabilities.

103, 104, 105, Riverside Drive Houses ARCHITECT: Clarence True DATE: 1898-99 STYLE: Elizabethan Revival 103, 104, 105 in Riverside Drive House and West 83rd Street are all Individual Landmarks. They were designed in architect Clarence True’s signature “Elizabethan Revival” style based on French and English Renaissance prototypes and built by True’s development firm, the Riverside Building Company; they are the northernmost of True’ s designs built along the Drive.

Apthorp Apartments ARCHITECT: Clinton & Russell DATE: 1906-08 STYLE: Italian Renaissance This handsome apartment house built around a large central courtyard fills a short city block between Broadway and West End Avenue. Designed in the Italian Renaissance style by Clinton & Russell for the Astor Estate, it remains today much as it was when originally built with the exception that stores have been added at street level on the Broadway side. The most conspicuous feature of this handsome apartment house is the use of rustication as contrasted with the smooth ashlar masonry of the wall planes. Notable also is the adaptation of the Renaissance vocabulary from the scale of a single palazzo, perhaps three stories in height, to a block-long, twelve-story edifice.

"Riverside Drive, from and including 78th to and including 79th Streets, as seen from the park on the west side of the "drive," 1934." No. 67 Riverside Drive is the double tower apartment building with the window awnings seen at the far left. Called "The Riverdale" the building was completed in 1906. It was designed by George Fredrick Pelham in the Beaux Arts style. The apartments that front Riverside Drive have small, shallow balconies (called Juliet balconies). A 1908 advertisement for the building states that the apartments are being rented for $2,000 to $3,500 a year.

"Riverside Drive, north from West 80th Street, showing the transitional aspects of this marginal thoroughfare. In the foreground is one of the last squatters shacks. The row of buildings at the right is at the S. E. corner of West 82nd Street, ca. 1895." This area of Riverside Drive and Riverside Park (across the street behind the structure in this image) would see occupation by a number of shanty towns in the 19th and 20th century. Well known as a Hooverville during the Great Depression, it was also home to a shanty town earlier. The Hudson River was lined with these communities but as Riverside Drive and the Upper West Side in general began to be developed in the 1880s and 1890s, these types of dwellings were demolished. The notation on this photo suggests that this structure, still standing in 1895, was the last of the shacks to go.