Manhattan Municipal Building, ca. 1980. By the late 19th century, and especially following the consolidation of New York City's five boroughs in 1898, existing office space was unable to meet the demands of new and swelling civic agencies. In 1907 a proposal by architect William M. Kendall of McKim, Mead & White was selected; the Municipal Building became the storied firm's first steel-frame skyscraper. The design incorporated numerous Classical references, most notably its entrance arch and Gustavino tile south arcade. "Civic Fame," a sculpture by Adolph Alexander Weinman, sits atop the Classical tempietto.

The Board of Water Supply used models for design and celebration, from critically serious to comical and extravagant. Models were communication tools, explaining and promoting the City’s infrastructure projects, and sometimes helped determine the locations of structures or best way to build them. This story starts with some technical models, then looks at those that celebrated NYC’s water supply system and world-class engineering.

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.

Audrey Munson (1891-1996) was once the most famous artist’s model in the United States and her likeness can be found in a dozen public sculptures in Manhattan and Brooklyn. In 1913, her likeness had become so prominent in public spaces that the New York Sun dubbed her "Miss Manhattan." For an in-depth look at the rise and tragic fall of America’s First Supermodel, we recommend “The Curse of Beauty: The Scandalous & Tragic Life of Audrey Munson, America’s First Supermodel” by James Bone and “Miss Manhattan” (Episode 200) of the 99% Invisible podcast.

Municipal Building ca. 1976 The vaulting over the South Concourse of New York’s Municipal Building epitomizes the spatial genius of Guastavino Jr. This irregularly shaped area, punctuated by numerous columns supporting the 580-foot skyscraper above, presented him with particular challenges. Guastavino Jr. designed a deceptively simple and graceful array of vaults—no two of them alike—springing from asymmetrical structural bays. The open-air concourse provides access to the Chambers Street Subway Station below.

The 1898 consolidation of all five boroughs as one unified City of New York brought the population from 2 million to 3.4 million people and intensified the need for more water. In 1905, the City established a Board of Water Supply to plan and build a new system of reservoirs and tunnels that would ensure access to clean water for the growing population. The next year, the Board started planning the Catskill Aqueduct and installed a laboratory at 147 Varick Street to test equipment and building materials, and to analyze water and soil samples. The Board also hired a photographer to document this monumental project, and put the photo lab here to print and store thousands of images.

View of the intersection at Chambers and Centre Streets from the Park Row Station, ca. 1925. The Surrogate's Court Building is at left, and the Municipal Building is at right.

Northward view along Centre Street from Chambers Street, August 25, 1903. This survey photograph was taken in preparation for the construction of the original IRT East Side line. The building at left, behind the wooden barrier, is the Surrogate's Courthouse (also known as the Hall of Records). Began in 1899, the grand Beaux-Arts structure was under construction at the time of this photograph; it would not be completed until 1907, three years after the IRT subway had opened below. Other than that structure, literally nothing else pictured remains. The massive Municipal Building would rise across the street from the Surrogate's Courthouse in 1914, and the area north of Reade is now Foley Square, which is lined with courthouses and civic buildings constructed in the decades after 1915.

A walking tour through Lower Manhattan's skyscraper canyons and more than a century of high-rise construction. This walk focuses on the buildings around City Hall. This story is adapted from the Skyscraper Museum's "Ten Tops" exhibition.

View of the intersection at Chambers and Centre Streets from the Park Row Station overpass, November 12, 1903.

Municipal Building As a consequence of the consolidation of Greater New York in 1898, space was needed to house additional administrative offices and services for the expanded city. The architectural firm McKim, Mead and White won the 1908 Municipal Building competition with their design for the forty-story building that opened in 1914. I.N. Phelps Stokes, the respected New York City iconographer who was also an architect, said of the resulting building: "Of met actually the prototype of the upward tapering type of skyscraper with highly accentuated vertical lines, at least marked an important step in that direction and had a far-reaching effect upon the design of the modern skyscraper." Furthermore, the Municipal Building exemplified the large new "purpose-built" structures developed to accommodate the newly enlarged city's increasingly complex needs, both civic and commercial. The building's open U-shape encompasses the two triangular blocks bounded by Park Row, Centre, and Duane Streets and straddles Chambers Street, thus forming what has been called the "gate of the city." This view looks west toward the early modern emblem of the "progressive city," which towers over the lower profile of Peck Slip, a vestige of nineteenth-century New York's former maritime dominance. Among the first agencies housed in New York's Municipal Building were the city-owned and operated radio station WNYC, a new reference branch of the New York Public Library, and the city's marriage license bureau. The area around Foley Square, which quickly developed into a modern center of governmental activities, formed a marked contrast to the timeworn neighborhoods that bordered the area.

The Public Design Commission (PDC) was established as the Municipal Art Commission by the New York City Charter in 1898 (following the consolidation of NYC). The Commission was tasked with the oversight of all public artworks and monuments, but its purview quickly expanded to include public structures and open spaces. Renamed in 2008, the PDC reviews the design of permanent works of architecture, landscape architecture, and art proposed on or over City-owned property. Projects are submitted by City agencies and include the construction, renovation, or restoration of buildings; the creation or rehabilitation of parks, playgrounds, and plazas; installation of lighting and other streetscape elements; signage; and the installation and conservation of artwork, including monuments and memorials. The Commission also acts as caretaker and curator of the City’s public art collection, which is located throughout the city’s public buildings and open spaces, and maintains an extensive archive documenting the history of New York City's public works. The PDC Archive maintains a collection of projects reviewed by the Commission since 1902, documenting more than 7,000 sites throughout New York City and providing a unique view into the history of the City’s public works. The designs that have been reviewed by the PDC throughout its over 120-year history are representative of the policies and focus of Mayoral administrations while simultaneously following historical trends in public design, public health, and artistic and cultural movements in the city and country at large. The following examples illustrate the breadth of projects under the PDC's purview, from large scale developments to streetscape fixtures that often go unnoticed. For an in-depth history of the Public Design Commission, see Michele H. Bogart’s book, "The Politics of Urban Beauty."

The consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898 created the need for an impressive and suitably-sized headquarters for the city government. Between 1907 and 1908 the city sponsored an architectural competition for a large office building to consolidate various agencies. Urged by Mayor McClelland to enter, the firm of McKim, Mead & White won with a proposal for a classically detailed skyscraper. Designed by a partner William Mitchell Kendall (1856- 1941), the U-shaped structure was adroitly placed on an irregular site adjacent to the ramps of the Brooklyn Bridge and crisscrossed underground by transit connections. Completed in 1913, the 25-story block is surmounted by a central "wedding-cake" tower of spires, colonnades, obelisks and the sculpture "Civic Fame" by Adolf A. Weinman. This skyscraper grafts the language of traditional civic architecture onto a commercial office block form. The Municipal Building underwent a complete restoration of its exterior masonry in 1999, which entailed a the replacement of the badly corroded metal pins which hold the granite cladding in place.