Lorillard Mansion, not dated. In 1760 Pierre Abraham Lorillard established a tobacco company in New York City. Pierre was killed during the Revolutionary War, but his sons took over the firm and moved it to the Bronx in 1792. Peter Lorillard constructed a 45-room mansion, stone cottage, and stables. He also built the nearby Lorillard Snuff Mill in 1840 for tobacco production. The tobacco company decamped to New Jersey in the 1870s and the city purchased the estate in the 1880s. The mansion was destroyed by a fire in 1924 but the still standing mill is the oldest existing tobacco manufacturing building in the U.S.

Between 1954 and 1957, the Municipal Art Society surveyed historic buildings in all five boroughs to create a database of potential landmarks to preserve. Local residents and MAS staff compiled individual sheets devoted to about 200 buildings. Each sheet outlined the building’s date, location, and style and provided a description and a small photograph. This is the list of Bronx buildings with descriptions by architectural historian Agnes A. Gilchrist.

The New York Botanical Garden is a 250-acre verdant landscape, an advocate for the plant kingdom. So stop, and smell the roses! It's a treat for all the senses.

To celebrate the New Year, Urban Archive is looking at an eclectic mix of some of the oldest parts of our city.

2019 has been as busy as ever at Urban Archive as we've added more locations, collections, and posts to the platform. Here are some interesting facts, stories, and images from throughout the five boroughs that we dug up along the way.

The mill has belonged to the New York Botanical Gardens since 1937 and after half a century as a cafeteria (the Snuff Mill Tea Room) and meeting space, it was renovated in 2010. Offices and an event space now occupy the nearly 180-year-old building.