East River Savings Bank, 1927. The temple-styled Amsterdam Avenue branch of the East River Savings Bank played a role in the Lindbergh kidnapping: a marked bill from the ransom payment was discovered in a deposit at the branch, one of many clues leading investigators to solve the case.

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.

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.

Riverside Drive and 97th Street, 1939.

View from outside the Cliff Dwelling apartment building, across West 96th Street, 1924. Peter’s Italian restaurant and buildings to its west (at right) have since been demolished and replaced with playgrounds and a basketball court.

Allandale Garage, West 96th Street, 1925. This West 96th Street garage has had its appearance substantially altered, but still serves dual automotive functions as a parking garage, and an unusual enclosed gas station.

The Cliff Dwelling, ca. 1990. Herman Lee Meader’s 1916 apartment building is known as the “Cliff Dwelling” for its narrow, near-triangular lot overlooking the Hudson River and Riverside Drive’s 96th Street underpass. Meader’s floorplans embraced the lot’s irregular shape: he designed all rooms to have windows on the Riverside Drive or 96th Street exposures. The building’s terra cotta ornamentation depicts figures that evoke the American West — buffalo, snakes, spears, cow skulls, etc. — as well as Mayan and Aztec-influenced geometric brickwork. In 1979, the Cliff Dwelling was converted to a co-op building, and has undergone significant refurbishments since then.

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

Out of 150 statues depicting historic figures in New York City, only six are women. This stark inequality shines a light on gender and racial representation biases in public statues. Today, multiple groups are working to amend this imbalance. Two of these organizations are Statues for Equality and She Built NYC. This story sends us on a tour of six historic women who are honored in monuments across New York City.

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 Stephen Wise Towers is a 19-story public housing building erected by the City between 1964 and 1965. As an experiment in playground design (think more than the regular ol' slides and jungle gyms), NYCHA commissioned Sardinian immigrant and well-known artist Constantino Nivola to enliven the 100-ft. by 200-ft. lot between the housing and a nearby school. Nivola said, "There is a desolation and barrenness to these buildings. I wanted to relieve that, to introduce a friendly atmosphere in plastic form.” The resulting public art was rendered not in plastic but in cast stone. Nivola created two 9-foot-tall pyramid sculptures and an 80-foot long mural out of cement. But the best known of his works here are the band of 18 chubby abstract horsies. The fat horses were cast with marble dust to sparkle in three colors. The fanciful creatures did not fare well early on, having their snouts knocked off my vandals the same year (1965) they were installed. This ca. 1971 photo captures them post-nose-removal. The horses with the short legs remain today, though perhaps made even more squat by additional layers of cement on the ground they stand on. The murals and pyramids have survived mostly well. The NYCHA partner and non-profit Fund for Public Housing announced in 2016 plans to make the restoration of public art at public housing a priority.

"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.

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

School of Holy Name of Jesus Roman Catholic Church, 1926. The parochial school was opened in 1905, five years after Holy Name’s new Gothic Revival church was completed at the southern side of the block.

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.

Gathering at the Joan of Arc Memorial Statue on Bastille Day, 1918. The thirteen-and-a-half foot statue was executed in bronze by the sculptor Anna Vaughan Hyatt (later Huntington), whose design (in plaster) had won acclaim at the Paris salon of 1910 — just as a group of New Yorkers had formed a committee to erect a memorial to 15th century French heroine. The memorial was installed in Riverside Park, at 93rd Street, in 1915, becoming the first statue of a woman in a New York City park.

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.

East River Savings Bank ARCHITECT: Walker & Gillette DATE: 1926-27 The building has two major limestone-clad facades, which are dominated by giant Ionic columns. The Amsterdam Avenue facade was doubled in size when the building was enlarged. The columns flank paired pedimented entrances on Amsterdam Avenue and recessed double-height windows lighting the main banking room on both Amsterdam Avenue and West 96th Street. A boldly-scaled entablature and parapet enclose a penthouse floor. The building, which is a reminder of the important role that savings banks have played in their communities, remains largely intact.

Starting in the late 1960s, groups such as the Public Art Fund and New York City's Public Arts Council funded works of public art all around New York. These sculptures were sometimes celebrated, and sometimes ill-received, often prompting both civil discussion and lively debate.

Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument Typical reminder, in its hollow pomposity, of an army which had not been engaged in a major struggle since 1865 and of the exploits of the Great White Fleet, this monument symbolized the stolid wealth and prosperity of our country at the time of its building.

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.

Apthorp Mansion, 1891. The Apthorp Farm was a large plot of land on what is now the Upper West Side of Manhattan (approximately 78th to 99th Streets, from Central Park to the Hudson River). Loyalist and merchant Charles Ward Apthorp purchased parcels and built a mansion in 1764 at what is now 90th Street and Columbus Avenue. It was considered one of the grandest pre-Revolutionary houses in Manhattan. The Hudson River-facing mansion was called "Elmwood" because of the large, mature elm trees that stood nearby. During the Revolutionary War the home was occupied by both sides at various points, a hard fact for the faithful British subject, Apthorp. In the mid 19th century the house and some of the surrounding land became "Elm Park," a beer garden, picnic area, and inn popular among German immigrants. It was also used as a parade ground, where in 1870 a clash between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants resulted in eight deaths. The home was demolished in 1891, while the original acreage had largely been divided and sold off decades earlier. In 1908 a large apartment house was constructed on the full block between Broadway and West End Avenue and West 78th and West 79th streets. That plot of land had once been occupied by a different home built by Apthorp in 1759 (and sold to someone else less than ten years later). The 20th century apartment building was named for the original landowner.