Jewish Museum ca. 1978 When Jacob Schiff saw the design for this building, he told his daughter, Frieda, that it was "terribly conspicuous" and that it would "add to the social anti-Semitism" if she and her husband Felix Warburg, built "such an ornate house right on Fifth Avenue." Schiff was the longtime and exceedingly successful president of the German-Jewish investment banking firm Kuhn, Loeb, and Company, and his thoughts on the mansion spoke to the divide between elite Jews and Protestants in Gilded-era New York. The two groups had what was called "a nine-to-five relationship." They did business with one another because it was in their financial interest. But outside of office hours, and particularly between the 18880s and 1920s, they traveled in their own social circles. The Jewish elite formed their own social clubs, which didn't make it into the social register. And wealthy Jewish families took a vacation at the Jersey Shore while the non-Jewish elite vacationed in Newport. The separation was due in some part to choice. German Jews-mostly members of banking families- referred to themselves as "Unser Kreis," German for "Our Crowd." There was an interest in preserving cultural and religious values, and children often married within the circle. But prejudice was the greater cause. Anti-Semitism had increased with the influx of Eastern European Jews at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, and prejudiced remarks often referred to Jewish people not only as foreign but as non-white. In 1904, J.P. Morgan that he considered his firm and Barings (a British firm with a branch in New York) to be the only "white firms in New York." And Morgan's son, Jack, wrote to his relative- who was the president of the board of the American Museum of Natural History Museum- that he wouldn't go to any of the meetings if Felix Warburg was there. "I cannot stand the German Jews," he said. "In my opinion, they have made themselves impossible as associates for any white people for all time." Felix Warburg, however, was concerned neither with what his father-in-law, nor those outside the Jewish community might think of his new house. He proceeded with the design that you see in front of you, which was drafted by architect Charles P.H. Gilbert who had designed the Fletcher Mansion, just a few blocks down from the Metropolitan Museum of Art on 79th and Fifth.

The Willard D. Straight House was designed by the firm of Delano & Aldrich in the neo-Georgian style and completed in 1915. Straight, an American diplomat, and his wife, the philanthropist Dorothy Payne Whitney, founded the New Republic magazine in 1914. Whitney sold the house in 1927, nine years after her husband’s death. From 1973-1999, 1130 Fifth Avenue was the headquarters of the International Center of Photography.

Former George F. Baker 69-75 East 93rd Street Designed by Delano & Aldrich 1917-18 and 1928-29 NYC ILs, NYC HD, NR-P, NR-D This L-shaped, red brick and limestone complex was built in two phases by two different owners. The three-story building that abuts Park Avenue was built for banker Francis F. Palmer. In 1928, banker and philanthropist George F. Baker, Jr. purchased the house and added the L-shaped ballroom wing, set back from the street by a courtyard. On the other end, a garage with apartments above was also constructed. The Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia purchased the house and ballroom wing in 1958. The garage wing remains a private residence.

The then-new location Museum of the City of New York, seen from across Fifth Avenue near 103rd St. In the niche at right, Adolph Alexander Weinman’s statue of DeWitt Clinton, the sixth Governor of New York.

Ogden Codman House ARCHITECT: Ogden Codman DATE: 1912-13 STYLE: French The Parisian character of the house is most emphatically to be found in the street elevation, with its strong, rusticated first floor and high double carriage door entrance, which serves also as a vestibule. It is again expressed in the second floor stone balcony supported on carved brackets, with beautifully detailed wrought iron railing extending across the width of the entire front. The second floor windows are very high with arched heads indicating the importance of the drawing room behind them. The third-floor windows are square in shape with heavy molded stone frames with swags beneath the sills. All windows of this three-story section are shuttered in a typically French manner. Completing the composition of the facade is a well-proportioned stone cornice at the fourth floor level behind which rises a slate Mansard roof with three unusual dormer windows, distinguished by their handsome semicircular stone frames and arched roofs.

21 East 94th Street, north side, west of Madison Avenue, about 1912.

Park Avenue and East 100th Street, to the east of the New York and Harlem Railroad's Harlem line tracks.

Saint Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral ARCHITECT: John Bergesen DATE: 1901-02 STYLE: Church The St. Nicholas congregation, which was established in 1894, met in a rented house at 323 Second Avenue until a permanent building could be erected. The purchase of the 75-by-100-foot lot, on which the present church buildings stand, was undertaken by Dean Alexander Hotovitsky on behalf of the congregation in September 1899. The lot was smaller than what had initially been sought, and it was not a corner site, but the high cost of real estate in New York limited the selection. The New York City congregation was unable to fully finance the building, so the Synod of Russia was given Imperial permission to collect money throughout the Russian Empire.

The Harlem line railroad tracks, then operated by the New York Railways Corporation, as seen from the northeast corner of Park Avenue and East 100th Street. Today the buildings on the western side of Park Avenue have been replaced by the NYCHA George Washington Carver Houses.

Congregation Orach Chaim at 1461 Lexington Avenue, 1927. Founded in 1879, the Orthodox congregation’s synagogue opened in its present location in 1907.

Hydrant at 1181 Fifth Avenue, on the northeast corner of East 99th Street

“1215 Park Avenue, adjoining the S.E. corner of 95th Street. This and its neighbors will be standing in 1935. About 1912.” Indeed, 1215 Park Avenue (once home to the writer Joan Didion) and its neighbors are still standing in 2016.

New York Academy of Medicine ca. 1927 A group of respected physicians founded The New York Academy of Medicine in 1847 to provide a voice for “the advancement of the art and science of medicine, the maintenance of a public medical Library, and the promotion of public health and medical education." As an advocate for modern ideas in medicine, the Academy was an important part of improving public health and sanitation as well as documenting the city's populace, particularly births and deaths (leading to the eventual formation of the Medical Examiner’s Office). Though it has occupied multiple buildings during its lifetime, including the old Sherry's Hotel (10 West 44th Street) and 15 West 43rd, it is now housed on Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street. Its current home, to which it moved in 1926, was designed by York and Sawyer. The style of the building is eclectic, incorporating Byzantine Revival and Lombardian Romanesque elements. Notably, inscriptions and mythological figures and animals relating to medicine adorn its walls. The building's library remains one of the most significant collections of medical and public health records in the United States, encompassing everything from papyri on surgery to Sigmund Freud's original writings to a prototype for George Washington's dentures.

The New York Academy of Medicine, a neo-Romanesque building by York and Sawyer, was constructed 1925-1926 with funding from the Carnegie Foundation. More information on the NYAM is available on the OHNY website here.

No. 1217 underwent extensive restoration and facade resurfacing in 2006 when it was converted back to a single-family dwelling. Except for the absence of carved panels, the upper two stories on Park Avenue are identical to those of No. 1213. Under the oriel, a corbeled brick facing was added. Round-arched windows on the parlor floor have hood moldings; a trio of whimsical creatures eye passersby. On either side are terra-cotta escutcheons, incised to suggest tiny bearded faces. The basement doors on Park Avenue are windows, restoring the original entrance to 95th Street. A wide three-step stoop is flanked with newel posts and iron railings. On either side of the door are gas-burning lanterns. Only the lowest portion on 95th Street is of brownstone; the top three stories are of red brick, with brownstone quoins defining the corners. Centered over the entrance, brick pilasters flank second and third-story windows, between which is a carved spandrel (including, perhaps, another face). The upper round-arched window has a hood molding. Narrow arched niches shelter foliate carvings.

96th Street Branch, NYPL, September 24, 1928. Constructed between 1904 and 1905 to the plans of architectural firm Babb, Cook & Willard, the 96th Street Library is a Italian Renaissance Revival building. Typical of other upper Manhattan Carnegie libraries, it is a mid block three-story, three-bay structure. The library closed for six months in 2012 for HVAC and additional infrastructure updates.

The Lucy Drexel Dahlgren House is a historic home located at 15 East 96th Street. It was built in 1915-16, and was designed by Ogden Codman, Jr. in the French Renaissance Revival style. Codman, Jr, with the novelist Edith Wharton, authored The Decoration of Houses (1897), a well-respected manual on interior design that criticized Victorian interior design as heavy, poorly planned, and wasteful of space. The wealthy and socially prominent Lucy Drexel Dahlgren spent little time in her house at 15 East 96th Street. Apparently, Dahlgren rented the house to the French jeweler Pierre Cartier from 1922 until she sold it to him in 1927. In 1945, on his retirement, Cartier sold the house to the Roman Catholic Church of St. Francis de Sales (135 East 96th Street), which used it as a convent for the nuns who taught at the church's parochial school. In 1981 the church sold the house to a private owner, who restored it.

Squadron A Armory 1339 Madison Avenue In 1884, a group of gentlemen horseback riders formed the “First New York Hussars” or “First Dragoons,” and by 1889, its 53 members became Troop “A.” By 1895, the group became Squadron “A,” and served in the Spanish American War and in World War I as the 105th Machine Gun Battalion. The Squadron A Armory was built for the group in 1895 and initially included roughly 100 horse stalls. Its Madison Avenue frontage was landmarked in 1966 as part of a dramatic, mid-demolition emergency action by the LPC. Based on what the Landmarks Preservation Commission calls, “twelfth-century French prototypes” and “American Inventiveness,” the Squadron A Armory was designed as “an excellent example of a medieval castle,” by John Rochester Thomas (who also designed New York’s Surrogates Courthouse – now home to the Municipal Archives).

“3 East 95th Street, east of the N.E. corner of Fifth Avenue. This house was formerly the residence of Clarence Mackay. About 1922.” The Mrs. Amory S. Carhart mansion, designed in 1913 by prominent Philadelphia architect Horace Trumbauer, was completed in 1921, under the ownership of financier Clarence Mackay (Marion Carhart died in 1919 with the construction unfinished). The Lycée Français de New York acquired the building in 1935. Made a New York City Landmark in 1974, the Lycée Français sold the mansion in the early 2000s.

1185 Park Avenue Designed by Schwartz & Gross, 1928-29 – NYC HD, NR-D Occupying the entire blockfront, this enormous Gothic Revival style apartment building is accessed through a grand triple-arched doorway leading into a landscaped interior courtyard and to the building’s six lobbies. The five bays on either end of the building resemble bookends, as their windows are surrounded by cream-colored, ornamental terra-cotta. Across the street, 1192 Park Avenue now stands where the home of prominent brewer George Ehret once stood. The brownstone mansion was built in 1878 (demolished 1928) when the area was largely unoccupied, but its location was convenient to Ehret’s Hell Gate Brewery on the East River. As one of the first “fine” residences on upper Park Avenue, the mansion inspired other prominent families to move here.

“View from the roof of George Ehret's home at Park Avenue and 94th Street. Looking northwest, showing High Bridge and water tower in the distance.” At right, the Park Avenue Tunnel at 97th Street. The New York Central and Hudson River Railroad lowered the tracks into what was originally called the Yorkville Tunnel from 59th Street to 96th Street between 1872-1876, at the same time that the final destination of the trains —the original Grand Central Depot— was being built.

St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral, ca. 1970. The congregation of St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church was founded in 1894. When fundraising for a church building was undertaken in 1900 the Synod of Russian was given permission to ask for donations within the Russian Empire. One of the earliest gifts from this effort was from Czar Nicholas II himself. The Baroque style design of the church, inspired by Moscow cathedrals, was created by John Bergesen, a New York architect of Russian descent. The church, topped with its eye-catching onion domed cupolas, was dedicated in November of 1902. The church was elevated to cathedral status in 1903 and in 1905 the Diocesan seat was moved from San Fransisco to here.

“George Ehret residence and garden, 1197 Park Avenue at S.E. corner of 94th Street. The house, which is at least fifty years old, has just been sold for demolition. 1928.” A German immigrant, Ehret established the Hell Gate Brewery in 1866, overlooking the Hell Gate strait of the East River from a large facility occupying an area bounded by 91-94th Streets and Second-Third Avenues. Built in 1878, Ehret’s Park Avenue mansion was sold in 1928, one year after his death. In 1929, a fifteen-story apartment building was built on its site.

Willard and Dorothy Whitney Straight House ARCHITECT: Delano & Aldrich DATE: 1913-15 STYLE: Federal The elegant doorway with its arched opening is framed by a pair of engaged Tuscan columns. It is crowned by an entablature that connects with the second-floor belt course. Reminiscent of the Federal style are the floor-length windows of the second story and the plain lintels above the square-headed openings. The bulls-eye (oculus) windows of the fourth floor and the belt courses, together with the carved marble cornice and balustrade above it, have an urban richness and refinement which give the building great dignity and considerable architectural sophistication.

Mt. Sinai Hospital ca. 1904 On May 22, 1901, Isaac Wallach, President of the Mount Sinai Board of Directors, placed the cornerstone of the new hospital buildings at 100th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues, a neighborhood that was experiencing a surge of development. The ten new buildings, which filled the entire block from Fifth to Madison Avenues, 100th to 101st Streets, were dedicated on March 15, 1904. Equipped with 456 beds (up from 200 at the Lexington Avenue site), the hospital needed to expand again by 1913, when the campus took over two-thirds of the 99th Street block along Fifth Avenue. This expansion included larger private patient facilities (allowing the old private pavilion to be used for a new model of care: semi-private rooms), a larger employee dormitory on 99th Street to house the non-medical staff, a new children’s pavilion, and a pediatric outpatient department building on the south side of 100th Street. This building program was completed in 1922. Other expansions followed. In 1952, Mount Sinai’s obstetrical service began with the establishment of the Klingenstein Maternity Pavilion. Ten years later the Klingenstein Clinical Center opened on Madison Avenue to house the Psychiatry Department as well as medical-surgical semi-private rooms that replaced large, communal, open wards. The towering Annenberg Building opened in 1974. The next significant construction came with the razing of the 1904 buildings to make way for the Guggenheim Pavilion, designed by internationally-renowned architect I.M. Pei and dedicated in 1992. Three years later, the creation of the new Primary Care Building on Madison Avenue, 101st to 102nd Streets, brought pediatrics, geriatrics, and internal medicine outpatient services together to better serve the community. Also in 1995, the East Building on Madison Avenue opened with state-of-the-art laboratories as well as patient care areas.

William Goadby and Florence Baker House ARCHITECT: Walker & Gillette DATE: 1930-31 STYLE: English ENGLISH MANHATTAN UPPER EAST SIDE This large, modern townhouse is framed in steel. It has a handsome smooth ashlar masonry facade with rusticated English basement. As it stands, it is a remarkably free interpretation of the style in which it was designed, utilizing 19th-century elements in a facade which belongs to the 20th century. It is three stories high and crowned by a roof with dormer windows set behind a parapet. This symmetrical building is set back from the street and has two-story wings, one at each end, extending forward to create a shallowly recessed forecourt at the center. These wings are joined to the house, on the court side by concavely curved walls with square-headed windows in them, further enhancing the gracious porticoed entry.

Park Avenue and 95th Street, Looking South, 1936. The fifteen-story apartment building, built in 1929, occupies the former site of the George Ehret mansion.

Green Line Car Barns, March 1, 1928. Constructed in the late 1880s or early 1890s as a streetcar barn, this building on Lexington Avenue was used by the Metropolitan Street Railway Company during the height of their operations. By 1907 the company controlled 47 streetcar lines and 300 miles of track. This car barn served the Lexington Avenue and Lennox Avenue lines. The building functioned in the later 20th century as a MaBSTOA facility (Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transportation Operating Authority). The building was razed and replaced with a new bus facility in 2003 (described by the AIA Guide to NYC as functional, up-to-date, and banal). In 2012, the 100th Street Bus Depot was renamed the Tuskegee Airmen Bus Depot in honor of the World War II African-American military pilots and support personnel.

Architect: Emery Roth Date: 1925-26 A modest 1890 row house once occupied this narrow site. In its place stands this slender, fourteen-story-plus-penthouse apartment building, rising from a three-story rusticated limestone base. Designed in neo-Renaissance style, there is a flurry of steel-level internet: at the entry, stone pilasters support a broken pediment, which embraces a second-story window with carved reveals. Large limestone blocks line the building's corners. Step back to view the fourth-story central window, fronted with a pseudo balcony and embellished with carved classical motifs. The best vantage point, however, is from the park side of Fifth Avenue. Stone pilasters applied to the brick facade soar from the fourth to the eleventh story, above which Roth pulls out all the architecture stops. At the twelfth story the three center bays are arched with carved surrounds; fourteenth-story windows alternate with decorative panels. Above the modillioned, balustrade cornice rises the penthouse tower, with three double-height arches, a carved cornice, and a huge central cartouche.

“View from the roof of George Ehret's home at Park Avenue and 94th Street. Looking west. Shows the Metropolitan Museum of Art (and Cleopatra's Needle) and the 86th Street Station \[on Park Avenue].” Designed by Calvert Vaux, the Met’s original red-brick Victorian Gothic building (center-right) was completed in 1880.

Ernesto and Edith Fabri House ARCHITECT: Egisto Fabri; Grosvenor Atterbury DATE: 1914-16 The L-shape of the plan with a rear wing at the western side of the main section of the house forms a courtyard, an unusual feature in the New York City block system. The courtyard is entered through an elaborate wrought-iron gate set between urn-topped stone pillars. A two-story section containing the entrance hall extends along the main section to the rear wing. The two-story section is lined with handsome French windows set in stone arches at both floors. The windows have balustrades at the bases, and they are separated by stone pilasters, providing an elegant contrast to the brick wall surface. The section terminates in a stone cornice surmounted by a stone parapet. The impressive entranceway, flanked by rusticated pilasters, is set within a heavy rusticated stone frame. Handsome carved wood doors beneath a wrought-iron fanlight contribute to the dignity of the entrance.

“View from the roof of George Ehret's home at Park Avenue and 94th Street. Looking east by south. Looking east on 94th Street showing 2nd and 3rd Avenue Els. Also Hell Rock. On the right is Ehret's brewery.”

1140 Fifth Avenue at 95th Street, 1923. Built by real estate developer Fred F. French, the 14-story structure was completed in 1922. French is best known for Tudor City, in 1925 the largest housing development in midtown Manhattan; Knickerbocker Village, one of the first federally-funded residential urban-redevelopment projects; and his eponymous Art Deco skyscraper at Fifth Avenue and 45th Street.

Willard Straight Residence ca. 1979 This large, sunny dwelling is an excellent example of the American town house at its best. The bull's-eye windows at the top lend an air of novelty to an otherwise conservative Federal design. The interior woodwork is extremely fine and demonstrates the loving care with which Delano and Aldrich executed their commissions.

My Archive Spring 2019 "Eliot Nolen outside of her apartment building on her way to a birthday party circa 1968." —Tim Bradley

The Museum of the City of New York was founded in 1923 by Henry Collins Brown, a Scottish-born writer with a vision for a populist approach to the city. The Museum was originally housed in Gracie Mansion, the future residence of the Mayor of New York. The City offered land on Fifth Avenue between 103rd-104th Streets and construction for Joseph H. Freedlander’s Georgian Colonial-Revival building started in 1929 and was completed in 1932. Freedlander’s red brick museum was not his only contribution to New York City history: he’s also known for designing the city’s first-ever traffic signals.