72 Second Avenue; 91 East 4th Street Building Date : 1928-29 Original Use : Commercial Original Owner : Sirwin Realty Corp. Original Architect : Landsman & Smith Description & Building Alterations This terra cotta commercial building was erected in 1928-29 for the Industrial National Bank of New York by architects Landsman & Smith. It replaced a six-story brick tenement. The building is Romanesque Revival with Classical Revival elements. The current facade features a limestone base with Corinthian pilasters separating double-height round-arched openings on the ground floor, a bronze entrance enframement, ornate terra-cotta spandrels and colonettes on the upper stories, a balustrade parapet, and historic metal ground floor windows. The style is nearly Moorish Deco. It is part of the East Village/Lower East Side Historic District, designated in 2012.

By the early 20th century, as the Lower East Side grew, Second Avenue became a bustling thoroughfare, its rowhouse architecture either demolished or converted in favor of buildings hosting a mix of uses. Examples of its building types include: numbers 107 and 72, fanciful, terra-cotta-clad commercial buildings constructed in the late 1920s; number 57, a nine-story New Law tenement that straddled the line between tenement and apartment building; number 43, the avenue’s first office building; and number 32, originally a City courthouse that was converted into the Anthology Film Archives in 1979. In the early 20th century, Second Avenue became known as the “Yiddish Rialto.” In addition to the Jaffe Theater (site # 1), other significant sites include number 66, the Yiddish Public Theater that later served briefly as CBGB’s Second Avenue Theater, and 66 East 4th Street, the New York Turn Verein (German athletic and social club), where America’s first Yiddish-language theater performance is said to have taken place in 1882. Second Avenue between East 7th Street and East 2nd Street is located within the East Village/ Lower East Side Historic District boundaries.

Mother and child on East 4th Street, late 1960s.

There is no place like New York — and there is certainly nothing like growing up here. This collection will give you a look into the lives of New York City's youngest and cutest, dating from the late 19th to the mid-20th century.