Explore Lower Midtown. Observe skyscrapers vying for height 🏙️ and glimpse the grandeur of historic hotels, theatres, and public buildings. Join the hustle and bustle of NoMad and wander the quiet, quaint blocks of Gramercy Park🌳.

In the closing decades of the 19th century, New York underwent a profound physical and cultural transformation. Fueled by the wealth of the exploding financial and manufacturing sectors, the city rapidly evolved into a world-class metropolis. The bold ambitions of civic and business leaders, architects, and engineers of the era manifested in landmarks such as the vast Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the stately U.S. Custom House, the towering Municipal Building, and the original terminus of New York City’s first official subway line—the ornate City Hall stop. The sweeping interior spaces common to all of these structures, and hundreds of others, depended upon a venerable Mediterranean building technology adapted to contemporary American construction: arched tile ceilings—or vaults—that were not only self-supporting but could also bear the weight of floors or roofs above them. These vaults were designed and built by a single New York firm, founded by Spanish immigrant Rafael Guastavino (1842-1908) and later headed by his son Rafael Jr. (1872-1950). The Guastavinos’ patented system for building domes and vaults involved multiple layers of thin ceramic tiles bonded with quick-drying mortar. The resulting structures were not only exceptionally strong, but also lightweight, easy to build, and inherently beautiful, thanks to intricate patterns of exposed tile that formed finished, decorative surfaces. Guastavino vaults figured prominently in more than 1,000 projects across the nation, including 200 in Manhattan alone. During its 73-year history, the Guastavino Company helped build some of the most impressive interior spaces in America—veritable palaces for the people. This list based on MCNY's exhibition Palaces for the People, contains many of Guastavino's masterpieces in the five boroughs, both those that remain and those that have been lost to the wrecking ball.

After returning to New York from Paris in 1929, photographer Berenice Abbott set out to document the changing landscape she encountered in the city. Despite initially struggling to find funding for this endeavor, Abbott was hired by the Federal Art Project to complete a collection that became known as Changing New York. Although Abbott’s focus was the city’s changing nature, examining her photographs almost a century later brings to light a contrasting theme: the continuity within the change; aspects of New York life that have remained constant through the decades, serving as a reflection of some of the many things that make New York New York.

Fifth Avenue Theatre, November 2, 1938. The Fifth Avenue Theatre had a long history even prior to the pictured building being constructed in 1892. The original Fifth Avenue Opera House was actually on Fifth Avenue at 24th Street and opened in 1865. That structure was destroyed by fire in 1873. The company was moved a few blocks north into a 1868 theatre building on 28th Street. The 28th Street theatre was constructed in 1868 as Gilsey's Apollo Hall, later the St. James Theatre. Early on it had public lectures and musical entertainment. The New Fifth Avenue Theatre was the world's first air-conditioned theatre, when a ventilation system was installed in 1877 that blew air over blocks of ice. Unfortunately that 1868 structure was also lost to a fire in 1891. The rebuilt Fifth Avenue Theatre was designed by architect Francis Hatch Kimball. It was an ornate structure inside and out. The original front facade at 31 West 28th Street had heavy terra-cotta decoration (what became the main entrance on Broadway was more subdued). In the 20th century the theatre presented vaudeville, films, and burlesque. The theatre closed in the mid 1930s and was sold at foreclosure in 1936. The auditorium was demolished and the buildings razed in 1939. Berenice Abbott took a series of very detailed interior and exterior photos a few months before the theatre was demolished.