@JCRGROSS This South Village mainstay opened in 1927 and its original owner, Domenico Parisi, spent his life savings of $1,000 to purchase their 1902 espresso machine. They claim to be the first coffee shop in the United States to serve Italian Cappuccino. According to a 1945 New York Herald Tribune article, “Dominic’s Espresso machine is a shining Gargantua equipped with many spigots, filled with hot water and steam, which makes a cup of coffee in just about three seconds… A visit to the Caffe Reggio is an experience worth having.”

@CHB22 Rockefeller Center replaced three full city blocks of low-rise, low-rent buildings, stretching from Forty-eighth to Fifty-first Streets between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, with a skyscraper complex of more than a dozen mixed-use buildings, with its multiple towers, widely spaced for sunlight and views. Raymond Hood and Harvey Wiley Corbett collaborated as key senior figures on the Center’s larger team of designers, called the Associated Architects of Rockefeller Center.

@SCHWADAVEEV Bryant Park was laid out as a potter’s field in 1823. The area became a public park in 1847, when it was named Reservoir Square after the adjacent reservoir. The Crystal Palace exhibition hall occupied the site from 1853 until it burned to the ground in 1858. In 1884, the park was given its present name in honor of William Cullen Bryant, the poet and newspaper editor who was also an advocate of public parks. After the main branch of the New York Public Library rose on the former site of the reservoir in 1899, Bryant Park was redesigned, and in the early years of this century became an active meeting place

@DASSCHMAGIMATOR In 1815, the former potter’s field at the intersection of Bowery and Bloomingdale Road (Broadway) was designated Union Place, a public commons. Official establishment as a park came in 1833, and re-designed in 1839 to adopt the spirit of the public spaces dotting the London city map. . In 1872, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the celebrated landscape architects behind Central Park and Prospect Park, were enlisted to redesign Union Square. The Olmsted and Vaux design is still evident in today’s park, with its emphasis on space for public assembly and greenery.

@VICKS\_CACRS South Cove Park and the Battery have long offered a spot of respite for New Yorkers. Much of both parks were built on landfill. Beginning in the 18th century, the shoreline was repeatedly extended, a process that continued into the next century.

@HELLOSEMRICK When the Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870, New York had no major art museum. Now New York holds many, but the Metropolitan Museum of Art still sets the standard. With more than two million objects in its collection, it is by far the largest museum in both New York and the country.

@BROOKSSPROFILE After New York City gained ownership of Roosevelt island in 1828, construction began on a series of public institutions, including a prison, an almshouse, and several hospitals. Although the penitentiary was eventually moved to Rikers Island in 1935, early inmates quarried stone to build one of the hospitals. Eventually, the thin strip of land became known as “Welfare Island.” Despite years of neglect, the island finally began to transform. In 1973, it was renamed Roosevelt Island.

@HELLOSEMRICK Pier 17 was long part of New York's bustling waterfront commerce and maritime history. Now refurbished and expanded, it continues to serve a new purpose in the revitalized South Street Seaport District.

@REESEHOLLISTER The three-story Van Cortlandt House was built in 1748 by Jacobus Van Cortlandt’s son, Frederick (1699-1749), at the south side of the park. The oldest existing building in the Bronx, it is now a National Historic Landmark. The Georgian mansion played an important role during the American Revolution: In 1776 Augustus Van Cortlandt (1728-1823), Frederick’s son, who had been appointed by the British as city clerk, took the city records out of Manhattan, fearing that they might be destroyed during an evacuation. He first hid them in the mansion and later placed them in one of the family’s burial vaults on Vault Hill. When the war ended, Augustus turned the records over to the new government.

@FRAMPTONT The Third Terminal at the site, the 1913 Grand Central Terminal has become one of the most iconic buildings in New York. Saved thanks to a virulent preservation effort, it serves commuters daily and its Beaux-Art design by architecture firms Reed and Stem, and Warren and Wetmore, has become been imbued in popular imagination by countless pictures, movies, television shows, and books.

@DISAPPEARINGDISTRICT Riverside Park's long and varied history may be complex and, at times, controversial. However, the park which was first conceived by Frederick Law Olmstead in 1865, has become a vital part in many New Yorker's daily life.