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.

B'nai Jeshurun, ca. 1917. The community of B'nai Jeshurun was founded in 1825, making it the second synagogue founded in New York and the third-oldest Ashkenazi synagogue in the country. They first occupied a building downtown on Elm Street and as the congregation grew, they moved slowly uptown into consistently larger spaces. Their last move, to West 88th Street, occurred in 1918 when a final new building was constructed for the community. Designed by Henry B. Herts with Walter S. Schneider, both of whom were congregants, the building is described as "Semitic," reflecting Moorish and Middle Eastern styles of architecture. This structure was considered influential to synagogue design in the 1920s, as more buildings were created with these Middle Eastern influences. Today the congregation continues to use this synagogue.

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.

Public School 166 ARCHITECT: C. B. J. Snyder DATE: 1897-99 STYLE: Collegiate Gothic Built in 1897-99, Public School 166 is one of the few remaining nineteenth-century institutional buildings, and one of the oldest extant public schools, on the Upper West Side. The school was designed by New York’s Superintendent of School Buildings, C.B.J. Snyder, who held that position from 1891 to 1923, exerting a tremendous influence on the design and construction of the city’s schools. He created buildings that were inventive, functional, and handsome as civic monuments and is credited with introducing the Collegiate Gothic style (usually associated with universities) to New York’s public school architecture where it was used for over twenty years.

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.

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.

127 West 89th Street, unknown date. This theatre, which is for sale, was formerly the Battery Swedish Methodist Episcopal Church

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.

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.

161-165 West 83rd Street, 1912. As per the notes on the photograph, these wood-frame homes were demolished in the 1910s to make way for a large apartment building.

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.

"Amsterdam Avenue, south from and including West 90th Street, showing W.P.A. employees resurfacing the former street car track bed, 1936." As transportation infrastructure changed in the city, so to did the streetscapes. The deconstruction of the elevated trains introduced sunlight to streets that had been in shadows for decades. Similarly as streetcars and trolleys were retired and replaced by buses, the streets they traveled needed to be repaved for automobile traffic. This type of infrastructure work was undertaken by the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression.

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.

West Park Presbyterian Church ARCHITECT: Henry Kilburn DATE: 1889-1890 STYLE: Romanesque Revival The West Park Presbyterian Church is considered to be one of the best examples of a Romanesque Revival style religious structure in New York City. The extraordinarily deep color of its red sandstone cladding and the church’s bold forms with broad, round-arched openings and a soaring tower at the corner of West 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue produce a monumental and distinguished presence along those streets.

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.

My Archive Spring 2019 "January 28, 2004. Took my 2 1/2-year-old son out for a walk after a snow storm." —Seth Jonas

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.

127 West 89th Street, ca. 1925. Formerly the Battery Swedish Methodist Episcopal Church, 127 West 89th Street, between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues. This church was remodeled into a motion picture theatre and by 1931 the theatre was boarded up and offered for sale.

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.

B'nai Jeshurun Community House, 1928. B'nai Jeshurun is the oldest Ashkenazi Jewish congregation and the second oldest Jewish community in New York State. In 1918 the synagogue moved into a Moorish and Middle Eastern influenced structure on West 88th Street. In 1927, one of the architects of the synagogue, Henry B. Herts, was rehired with his current associate, Louis Abramson, to complete a community center. Erected directly behind the synagogue, the new building is styled with complementary Moorish and Middle Eastern influences, though rendered more subtly.

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.

Jewish Center, ca. 1918. While the Upper West Side boasted a number of Jewish congregations in the early decades of the 20th century, most observed a casual prayer environment, or in the case of Congregation Shearith Israel, offered more formal, but foreign services. Two successful clothing manufacturers who moved to the neighborhood, Joseph H. Cohen and William Fischman, looked for but did not find a traditional Orthodox Synagogue. With the religious leadership of Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, the two men founded the Jewish Center in 1918. The new synagogue building, designed by Louis Abramson in a Neo-Classical style, housed not only a main sanctuary. The tall building was an extensive facility that sought to serve not only as a spiritual home, but also a cultural, social, and recreational home for its members.

Clark Potter Residence, 1903. Elizabeth Clark was the widow of Alfred Corning Clark. When he died in 1896, he left his sizable estate, including his building, the Dakota, to his wife. In 1898 she commissioned Ernest Flagg to design her a substantial Beaux-Arts mansion. The large home was rendered in red brick and decorated with white marble. In 1902 Elizabeth Clark married the Episcopal Bishop of New York, Henry Codman Potter (giving the home the Clark Potter name). The residence would have had quite a view over the river, which is why the owner went to court to attempt to prevent the city from building the long-delayed Soldiers and Sailors Monument. Mrs. Clark argued that the large memorial would block her access to light and air, obstruct her view, and diminish the value of her property. Her complaints were overruled by the mayor of the city himself, and the monument was completed in 1902. The home was sold away from the Clark Potter family in 1911. (Bishop Potter died in 1908, and Elizabeth a year later.) In 1922 it was announced (incorrectly) that the home had been purchased by an anonymous buyer who wished to donate it to the city as the residence for the mayor. The real estate firm brokering the purchase had to walk back their statement. The house was demolished in 1925 and a 16-story apartment house was constructed in its place.

"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.