Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House ca. 1910 Cass Gilbert’s design for the Rotunda of the U.S. Custom House at Bowling Green called for an elliptical, skylit dome spanning 85 by 130 feet. The size and shape of such a structure posed substantial engineering challenges. Guastavino Sr. devised a solution consisting of a pair of thin tile domes—one inside the other—supported by two elliptical steel rings: one at the top of the supporting walls and another at the skylight’s perimeter. Ornamental plaster covers the inner dome, obscuring the tiles from view.

By Alexander Wood The reign of Beaux-Arts architecture reshaped the landscape of the city at the turn of the century with grand public buildings that projected a new found sense of national power. The architects who embraced this style emphasized classicism, monumentality, and embellishment in their work, and were skilled at adapting historical precedents for modern building types. This article can be read in its original format here on the Gotham Center for New York History's Blog.

Much of the Lower West Side was once underwater, with the Hudson River shoreline running approximately where Greenwich Street is now located. During the colonial period, the settlement at Manhattan’s southern tip was guarded by Fort Amsterdam (renamed Fort George by the British), and later reinforced by the Whitehall Battery. Partially destroyed during the American Revolution, the fort was demolished and the Battery rebuilt as an elegant promenade. The adjacent blocks remained the city’s most elegant residential neighborhood, as evidenced by several surviving Federal-style row houses in the neighborhood. In the lead-up to the War of 1812, the U.S. Government built a new fortification—the West Battery, later renamed Castle Clinton—on an artificial island 300 feet offshore. By the mid-19th century, fashionable New Yorkers had moved northward and lower Manhattan was given over to commercial activity and tenement housing. Landfill extended the island’s western shoreline, enveloping Castle Clinton, by then repurposed as an immigration station. Horsecar tracks plowed through the neighborhood’s northsouth thoroughfares and in 1867 the first elevated train in the country began operating along Greenwich Street. Single-family row houses were split up into multiple units, and purpose-built tenements were erected to cater to the neighborhood’s increasingly diverse immigrant population. One of the Lower West Side’s most notable immigrant communities was “Little Syria”, which existed along lower Washington Street and the surrounding blocks from the 1880s through the 1920s. The “Great Migration” of Syrians to the U.S. was sparked, in part, by the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the subsequent devastation of the local silk industry. Though government officials often referred to them as “Turks” due to their citizenship within the Ottoman Empire, the community generally identified as Syrian. The majority came from the Mount Lebanon area, and many embraced their Lebanese heritage in the 1920s with the rise of that country’s national independence movement. Most of Little Syria was Christian; approximately half were Syrian Melkite and Lebanese Maronite Catholics. Manhattan’s Syrian Quarter was central to the lives of other Syrian communities throughout the U.S., both economically and culturally. Its merchants imported—and its factories produced—wares including Oriental rugs, cigarettes and mirrors. Printers modified their machinery to reproduce Arabic characters, and more than 50 Arabic newspapers and periodicals were produced at its height. The Lower West Side’s Syrian community began to decline in numbers and visibility during the 1920s, the same period in which the neighborhood was experiencing profound changes to its built environment. The Immigration Act of 1924 halted new arrivals to sustain the neighborhood, and residents either moved or Syrian quarters or assimilated into the general population. Rising property values also played a part as the commercial development of the Financial District increased during the Roaring Twenties. By the 1930s much of the neighborhood’s low-scale row houses and tenements had been replaced by Art Deco skyscrapers. Today the neighborhood has largely vanished, although several significant sites remain nestled among the office towers of Lower Manhattan.

Though immigration is a currently contested topic in the United States and around the world, it also has a long, established, and detailed history – people have been moving from one country to another practically since countries have existed. It may be a complicated topic, but these complications have not prevented immigration from being one of the enduring touchstones of the modern world. This story can be read in its original format here.

This enormous building, covering an entire block, stands on the site occupied successively by Fort Amsterdam, the old Government House, and finally a row of Federal town houses which were later used for the offices of shipping companies and became known as "Steamship Row." This building is richly adorned with sculpture by Daniel Chester French and boasts handsome interiors with several fine murals.

As we roam the modern streets of New York City, we can see the skyline and neighborhoods change each year. Given how complicated our city’s systems have become, it is difficult to imagine a time without the founding principles of zoning, planning, and preservation. The man who created many of those frameworks for modern-day New York is George McAneny. During his extensive civic career, he served in several official positions, including New York City comptroller, executive manager of The New York Times, first president of the Regional Plan Association, and Manhattan Borough President. The snippets of history that can be seen on Urban Archive are just a small part of McAneny’s legacy, making him one of the most remarkable New York City visionaries of the first half of the 20th century.

Castle Clinton National Monument ca. 1930 Originally built as one of the harbor forts that defended the entrance to the North River, it was first named Castle Clinton. It later became a roofed-in public amusement hall known as Castle Garden. After this it served as an immigrant depot, preceding Ellis Island. Then it was remodeled by McKim Mead & White to serve as an aquarium. It now has been restored as a fort, exhibiting this handsome doorway influenced by French military architecture of the sixteenth century.

Over the centuries, the coast of Lower Manhattan has been reshaped by tides, fires, demolition, development, and various colors of gentrification. Walk with us as we unveil details of Lower Manhattan's unique architecture, piers, and urban transformations.

A walking tour of some of Lower Manhattan's most notable landmarks.

The James Watson House, now the Rectory of the Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, at 7 State Street, between Pearl and Whitehall Streets, March 30, 1937. The eastern portion of the James Watson House (at right), was built as a Federal Style townhouse in 1793, at a time when prominent merchants maintained residences in close proximity to their business interests in the Harbor. In 1806, Moses Rogers, a relative of Archibald Gracie, purchased the house and elected to combine it with an adjacent house, via a curved colonnaded portico designed by John McComb, Jr. In 1885, the Watson house was incorporated into the Mission of Our Lady of the Rosary, an aid organization addressing the needs of immigrant women arriving at the Castle Garden intake facility in Battery Park, and later Ellis Island.

Won't you join us for a walk in the steps of early immigrants exploring their new American lives in the city? Start way downtown in Manhattan, so you're facing the East River, with Ellis Island in view. We invite you to wonder about those who arrived here willingly and even desperately, and passed through immigration hall at the notorious arrival port of Ellis Island depicted in the Forward's archival image below. In traditional Jewish lore, to look eastward, with devotional intent, is to open the heart to Jerusalem and the source of all illumination.

Since the Public Buildings Inventory was published in 1977, the Conservancy has worked to preserve and highlight the buildings in it in numerous ways. Here are some examples. You can view the Public Buildings Inventory Index here.

United States Barge Office, ca. 1910. This building served as the first federal immigration processing center from April 1890 to December 1891 for the period after the federal government fully assumed the immigration process, but before Ellis Island was opened. Immigration processing would return to this building in 1897 for three years after the wood-frame facility on Ellis Island burned down. The United States Barge Building was constructed in 1882 on the east edge of Battery Park. The turreted building was the location of various municipal bureaus, including the customs administration. The pictured building was demolished and replaced with a new Barge Office in 1913. In turn, that building was demolished for the Battery Park Underpass in the late 1940s. When it was torn down, it marked the first time since the Civil War that the city did not have a building bearing that name.

In celebration of the Municipal Art Society's 125th Anniversary, we've compiled a list of landmarks older than MAS.

The largest in the world when it opened in 1896, the New York Aquarium, in the refurbished Castle Clinton, quickly became one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions. Housed in this facility were thousands of fish, some of which were brought back by local sea captains, hundreds of invertebrates, reptiles and amphibians and several types of sea mammals. The aquarium also maintained a fish hatchery used to stock upstate rivers and supply schools with research specimens. It closed in 1941 under pressure to build the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and, after a brief stint at the Bronx Zoo, it moved to Coney Island in 1957.

Fire boat display for a crowd in Battery Park, undated photo. Castle Clinton is visible at left, with the Whitehall Building in the background.

Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, 1975. The U.S. Customs Service is the oldest of the federal agency, established in 1789. The first Customs House was on the site of Bowling Green, where the current building sits. That first building burned down in 1814 and the agency moved to a series of other locations throughout the 19th century. In 1892 the government bought the land at Bowling Green for a massive new building. Designed by Cass Gilbert, ornate Beaux-Arts style building was constructed between 1900 and 1907. Interestingly, the building was designed to face the historically significant Bowling Green and not the harbor (whereas most other customs buildings faced the water). Spectacular in and out, the most notable exterior decorative features are the four female figures representing America, Asia, Europe, and Africa, created by famed sculptor Daniel Chester French. Inside the massive rotunda features a domed ceiling created by Raphael Guastavino and murals by Reginald Marsh that depict the New York Harbor. Today the building is occupied by the National Archives and the Museum of the American Indian.

Fire boat just off the Battery, undated photo. Castle Clinton is visible at left.

By Susan Smith-Peter Using crutches because of an early bout with meningitis, Percy Loomis Sperr managed to photograph nearly all of New York City from the 1920s to the 1940s. Sperr sought to document and preserve the city as fully as possible. He was interested in telling the story of New York through the lives and environments of everyday people. This work brought him into contact with important photographers such as Berenice Abbott and, to a lesser extent, Walker Evans. And his work has deeply shaped our vision of this New York City during the Jazz Age and Depression-era. Among other things, it helped set design for such movies as The Godfather and The Great Gatsby (1974) and serves as the foundation for such popular apps as OldNYC and Urban Archive. Yet the artist himself remains little known. This blog sets out to establish the basic facts of his life, and suggests lines of possible research, using his previously unanalyzed writings and undigitized albums as well as his better-known works. Born on December 27, 1899, Sperr attended Oberlin College, where he served as the associate editor of the Annual and the managing editor of the Review. In 1916, a list of graduates places him in Columbus, Ohio, care of the Stoneman Press. As he told the Newark Sunday News in 1963, the year before his death, “the first of my sins was to teach in a small private school in California. I taught the ABCs, trigonometry and everything in between. The school closed while I was on vacation, so I wandered around in printing, freelance writing and photography.” His draft card for World War One shows that he was already living in New York in 1917, at 2887 Bailey Avenue in the Bronx. It also noted that his right leg was permanently paralyzed and that he was a printer at the Lumitone Art Company. His World War Two draft card was even blunter, simply stating, “lame.” He moved to Staten Island in 1924, during which time he was “principally a freelance writer, doing articles largely for the Sunday magazine sections of newspapers. Many of these articles concern\[ed] aspects of the New York Public Library.”

Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton (left), ca. 1976. Seton, born in 1774 in Lower Manhattan, was the first native-born American citizen to achieve Sainthood. The shrine is built on the site of the former Seton home, while the James Watson House (right), now serves as its rectory.

Battery Firehouse, May 12, 1936. This Victorian two-story house was constructed in 1895 as a permanent shoreside headquarters for Engine 57 and the other fireboats that served the harbor and waterfront from the Battery. This waterfront structure was demolished in the early 1940s prior to the construction of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and Battery Park underpass. The boats previously quartered here are moved first to North River Pier 1, then to Pier A. In 1959 the former Engine 57 is designated Marine Co. 1.

James Watson House (now Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton) ARCHITECT: John McComb, Jr. DATE: 1793 STYLE: Federal Part of the James Watson House is one of the few fine 18th century Federal townhouses remaining in Manhattan. The colonnade of the 19th-century portion is unique both in its adaptation to the curve of State Street and in its monumental scale. At the first floor level, the portico has square wooden columns, and the part above has circular Ionic columns, believed to have been made from ships masts.

Old Steam Ship Row, 1898. Steam Ship Row was the center of ocean-going travel companies, steamships, and booking offices. Firms with locations here included the Cunard, Line (at no. 4 Bowling Green in the middle of the block), Anchor Line, Red Star Line and French and German lines. These buildings were razed in 1898 in preparation for the construction of the Custom House (built 1902-1907). The headquarters of these shipping firms moved into nearby and new skyscrapers over the next few decades, including the 1898 Bowling Green Building (11 Broadway), the 1891 Columbia Building (29 Broadway), and later the 1925 Cunard Building (25 Broadway).

On February 11th, 1899, a blizzard known as the Great Arctic Outbreak moved across the United States, reaching as far as Florida, New Orleans, and even Cuba. In New York City, the average temperature was −6 °F and Central Park saw 16 inches of snow, with other areas measuring a record 2-3 feet.

New York City’s architecture is central to what makes it so iconic. From towering skyscrapers to well-loved taverns, New York City is filled with buildings of all shapes and sizes. One building that has served many roles throughout New York’s storied history is Castle Clinton. Join us to learn how a single location at the tip of Lower Manhattan has been renovated and reimagined over the years to fulfill the needs in an ever-changing city.

New York was inhabited by Native Americans long before Dutch settled the region. Much of southern New York, New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania, and Western Connecticut was inhabited by an Algonquin-speaking group of Native Americans, called the Lenape. This land was called Lenapehoking. The Lenape interacted with and lived adjacent to the European settlers for many years. The relationship between the Lenape and the colonists (first Dutch and then English) was fractured and complicated. They engaged in war from time to time. However, most of their interactions were centered on trade. In particular, the Europeans traded manufactured goods for beaver pelts and other animal furs. Due to several reasons, including disease, migration, and land treaties, the Lenape population of New York shrank as more and more Europeans settled the lands. Additionally, settlers used formal documents to lay claim to the land and slowly push the Lenape out of New York City. While Lenape structures and settlements have been mostly erased from the built environment, evidence exists to show the important contributions of the original New Yorkers. NYS Social Studies Scope and Sequence Standards: 4.2, 7.1 & 11.1 For Teachers: Native Americans In New York Lesson Plan

Battery Park Fire House, July 1, 1931.

Jewish New Year Prayer services and celebrations were always newsworthy and still are, in the pages of The Forward.

Immigration Building, May 31, 1938. Ellis Island served as an immigration station from 1892 until 1954. Following the Immigration Act of 1891, which created the Office of Immigration (later the Bureau of Immigration), the federal government took control of regulating immigration from the individual states. The first immigration building on Ellis Island opened on January 1, 1892. In 1897 the original wooden building was destroyed by fire. The replacement building, designed by the firm of Boring and Tilton, is a French Renaissance Revival style structure of red brick with limestone trim. It opened in December of 1900 and was soon followed by a number of related buildings, including kitchen, laundry, power, and hospital facilities. When the station opened in 1892, fewer than 20,000 people passed through the island a year, the result of an economic depression. By 1905 nearly a million people a year were immigrating to the United States. During its peak years (1905-1914) more than 5000 immigrants were seen every day, and it is estimated that more than 12 million people were processed through the immigration station at Ellis Island during its tenure. By 1924 the number of immigrants passing through the island had dramatically decreased due to restrictive legislation. In November 1954, the Immigration and Naturalization Service shut down their offices on Ellis Island and moved to a new location in Manhattan.

Ellis Island, ca. 1907. Ellis Island served as an immigration station from 1892 until 1954. Following the Immigration Act of 1891, which created the Office of Immigration (later the Bureau of Immigration), the federal government took control of regulating immigration from the individual states. The first immigration building on Ellis Island opened on January 1, 1892. In 1897 the original wooden building was destroyed by fire. The replacement building, designed by the firm of Boring and Tilton, is a French Renaissance Revival style structure of red brick with limestone trim. It opened in December of 1900 and was soon followed by a number of related buildings, including kitchen, laundry, power, and hospital facilities. When the station opened in 1892, fewer than 20,000 people passed through the island a year, the result of an economic depression. By 1905 nearly a million people a year were immigrating to the United States. During its peak years (1905-1914) more than 5000 immigrants were seen every day, and it is estimated that more than 12 million people were processed through the immigration station at Ellis Island during its tenure. By 1924 the number of immigrants passing through the island had dramatically decreased due to restrictive legislation. In November 1954, the Immigration and Naturalization Service shut down their offices on Ellis Island and moved to a new location in Manhattan.

New York City Aquarium, 1900. “West Battery,” a sandstone fort built on an artificial island, was completed in 1811 as part of the re-fortification of New York Harbor ahead of the War of 1812. It was renamed Castle Clinton in 1815, for DeWitt Clinton, then the Mayor of New York City. Since then, the structure has served a variety of diverse purposes: first, as an entertainment venue (1815-1854); second, as the nation’s first immigrant processing center (1855-1892), before the federal government, fearing contagion, moved its immigration facilities to Ellis Island; and finally, as the New York City Aquarium (1896-1941).

In the United States, power and the ability to pass laws is spread out across three levels of government: the federal, state, and local levels. Each level has different responsibilities and is in charge of a different group of people. Government at the federal level is in charge of the entire nation. Members of the federal government include the President, the House of Representatives, and the Senate. They make laws and deal with issues that affect the whole nation. Members of the state government are in charge of making laws and protecting the interests of people in a specific state, like New York for example. The governor, and state representatives are examples of people involved with state government. Finally, every city, town, or county has their own local government. They deal with the most specific needs of a local group of people, like keeping communities clean and safe. Members of the local government, can include a mayor, city council members, or county executives. Throughout New York City's history different places have served government functions for each level of government. As you look through this story, consider some of the different responsibilities the various levels of government have and how they have changed over time. New York Social Studies Scope and Sequence Standards 4.4b,c For Teachers: Different Levels of Government Lesson Plan

Dedicated in 1926 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Dutch settlement of New York, the Netherland Monument flagpole was designed by H.A.van den Eijnde, a Dutch artist.

This is part of Urban Archive's "Arms and Armories: Fort Week," a series that features a week of stories about the military installations that once defended the city. If you’ve ever had a picnic in Battery Park or taken a trip to the Statue of Liberty you’ve probably walked through Castle Clinton, a medieval-looking fortress by the water's edge that dates back to 1808. This structure, now used as a ticket office and information center for tourists heading to Liberty Island, has endured almost as many changes as New York City itself. It was nearly demolished on six different occasions, only to be finally rescued and restored by the National Park Service in 1946. A remnant of the City’s colonial roots, the building has been involved in military, artistic, and immigration-oriented initiatives since it’s construction, serving an impressively diverse variety of roles during its 207 years of existence. Like the Museum at Eldridge Street, the now restored building is symbolic of the massive waves of immigration that forever changed our country and the site pays homage to the stories of the people who passed through its doors during each stage of its evolution. It's a story that is integral to our past as well as our future.

Daily life in New York City continues to be upended from COVID-19. Businesses, bars, restaurants, schools and museums have been forced to close their doors. Although these feel like entirely unprecedented times, the city has experienced public health crises before. One hundred years ago, conditions were ripe for the spread of infections. And not unlike today, marginalized communities, like new immigrant populations, often bore the brunt of the bad conditions and consequences. Many immigrant neighborhoods offered substandard housing, packing large families in tiny, dingy apartments. Globalization was increasing and people and goods were traveling more and farther. So was disease. All these factors contribute to New York City’s long and dirty history of disease and illness, especially on the Lower East Side.

The New York Preservation Archive Project is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to documenting, preserving, and celebrating the history of historic preservation in New York City. The Archive Project is devoted to celebrating neglected narratives of New York historic preservation using the archives that hold these stories. This collection includes a selection of historic sites that became flashpoints of the city's preservation movement(s). For more information, visit: www.nypap.org/phd-category/places/

While the holiday season seems to begin earlier and earlier every year, there is a point every winter when New Yorkers know Christmas has actually begun: when the Christmas trees markets come out. But how did this practice come about? Crowding sidewalks with the smell of pine, funneling pedestrians into a gauntlet of jutting branches. The answer involves two essential elements of New York's history: immigration and capitalism.

Immigrant Building A 1916 explosion at a nearby munitions depot destroyed the original wood-lath-and-plaster ceiling of Ellis Island’s Registry Hall. The Guastavino Company was hired to rebuild the structure using thin tile vaults. Engineers overseeing its renovation in the 1980s deemed the building structurally sound, despite its abandonment for three decades following the 1954 closure of the immigration facility. Remarkably, only 17 of the hall’s nearly 30,000 tiles needed to be replaced.

This is part of Urban Archive's "Arms and Armories: Fort Week," a series that features a week of stories about the military installations that once defended the city. When we look at the remains of forts and armories around the city today, it might now seem strange to imagine ships arriving in New York Harbor and seizing the city. Well, that's exactly what the British did in August of 1664 and July of 1776. This set of military installations were built during the last three hundred years to gird New York with defenses that ensured the protection of America's financial hub.

A walking tours through Lower Manhattan's skyscraper canyons and more than a century of high-rise construction. This walk focuses on the buildings around Broadway. This story is adapted from an exhibition at the Skycraper Museum. The original version can be seen here.

Aftermath of the Blizzard of 1888. In the background, a train is visible on the tracks of the combined Sixth and Ninth Avenue lines, approaching South Ferry station. Battery Park, whose name is derived from the gun batteries once housed in the vicinity, is built on landfill. Beginning in the 18th century, the shoreline was repeatedly extended. Fort Amsterdam, built by the Dutch and renamed Fort George after the English takeover, was demolished in 1788 and its remnants added to the landfill. Castle Clinton, a circular naval fort made of red sandstone, was approximately 100 yards offshore when it was built in 1811 and accessible only via a pier. Never used for military purposes, Castle Clinton was turned over to the city in 1823 and, as Castle Garden, became New York's leading entertainment venue for more than 30 years. As landfill continued, eventually Castle Garden became incorporated into the western edge of the park

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 Manhattan buildings.

By Alexander Wood While the other Gateway To The Nation describes the Custom House, this story focuses on the work of the Custom House. Read this in its original format here.

Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, ca. 1977.

From its earliest days, New York has been a city in a hurry. But luckily, from hot dog carts to taco trucks, there have always been places to grab a bite on the go. This week we combed our archives for photos and history of street food in New York.

The Custom House was a fundamental element of the economic and architectural landscape of Lower Manhattan. Today it is the National Museum of the American Indian, fittingly located on the site where the Dutch purchased the island of Manhattan in 1626. Customs revenues composed nearly the entire income of the federal government in the nineteenth century, and more than half were collected from the port of New York. The increase of trade at the end of the nineteenth century forced the Customs office to abandon its 1842 building at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in favor of this new, much larger, facility. The Customs Office remained here until it moved to the World Trade Center in 1975. After a long dormancy--during which it was repeatedly threatened with unsympathetic development--this prominent landmark became the home of the National Museum of the American Indian, which occupies the grand public spaces on the main floor, as well as the Federal Bankruptcy Court. The building's architect was the prolific Cass Gilbert, who designed many downtown landmarks, including the Woolworth Building, the Federal Courthouse at Foley Square, the Broadway-Chambers Building, and the West Street Building. Born a Midwesterner, Gilbert studied architecture at M.I.T., a school influenced by the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the doctrinaire traditions of French academic classicism. This background is evidenced in the dynamic and richly sculpted classical exterior, as well as the noble sequence of public rooms on the principal floor. The main entrance takes the form of a triumphal arch, befitting not only the building's public stature but also its site at the beginning of Broadway. Significantly the main façade addresses Bowling Green and Broadway and the growing commercial city rather than the harbor. The monumental limestone sculptures on the main façade are the work of Daniel Chester French. Four seated figures on pedestals are allegories of Asia, America, Europe, and Africa. The twelve figures lining the parapet represent the great sea-faring empires of the past.