If we could bring back one New York City building, it would of course be the old Penn Station. But if we could bring back two, the second would be the Singer Building, designed by Ernest Flagg for the Singer Sewing Company, completed in 1908. At 41 stories, it held the title of world's tallest building for over a year. U.S. Steel bought the building in 1964 and demolished it three years later. It is now One Liberty Plaza. More on the Singer.
Charles F. W. Mielatz spent over two decades detailing New York's ever-vanishing street scenes. Mielatz did a series of etchings for Emily Augusta van Beuren Reynolds, part of the Springler-van Beuren clan, one of the oldest Dutch families on the island. The Springler digs, purchased in 1788, spread roughly from 13th to 16th Streets, between 6th and 7th. This one is Number Twenty Nine.
Irish textiles importer John "Lord" Clendening had this nice spread at Amsterdam and 103rd called, what else?, Clendening Mansion. The print says the home was on 90th Street between Bloomingdale Road and 8th Avenue, but as The Virtual Design Museum explains, there's general agreement that it was actually located further north.
Astor House was built by John Jacob Astor, opened in 1836 on the west side of Broadway between Vesey and Barclay (what is now the block south of the Woolworth, north of St. Paul's). Three years after it opened, the Hartford Courant called it "No. 1 among hotels of the world." Walt Whitman loved it, too, saying it gave "the best appearance of any building in New York." Lincoln stayed there in 1860 when he gave his famous Cooper Union Address. The building was demolished in 1926.
Hoffman House and Restaurant was a hugely popular spot at Broadway and 24th, not least because of its racy artwork Nymphs and Satyrs by William-Adolphe Bougereau. For the musical Sweet Adeline, Jerome Kern wrote "Hoffman House" in which a quartet of men in the Hoffman bar sing of their romantic yearnings. It is one of the great, little-known pieces in musical theater, both brooding and soaring.
Even though it wasn't called a World's Fair, the New York Exhibition of 1853, held at Sixth Avenue and 42nd, is often considered New York's first World's Fair. The Crystal Palace, a grand building of glass and iron by George Carstensen and Charles Gildemeister, was designed to showcase the 'industry of all nations'. Destroyed by fire in 1858.
This view of the Ruins of the Great Fire of New York, from the corner of Broad and Beaver. But what's shown here isn't the Great Fire of NY that took place in December, 1835 and which is recounted here. The 1835 fire, which was the bigger one, spread as a result of fierce winter winds. A decade later, in nearly the same spot, a fire broke out that spread to a warehouse filled with saltpeter (used in making gunpowder). That explosion and the resulting fire left over 300 buildings destroyed.
William Niblo opened the 3000-seat Niblo's Garden at Broadway and Prince in 1829, attracting famous thespians of the time. It was also home to The Black Crook, a 5 1/2 hour extravaganza generally said to be the first musical. In 1852, the luxurious Metropolitan Hotel opened on the site, subsuming Niblo's Garden. It was the first hotel in the country to allow guests to eat when they chose, rather than at seatings. The Metropolitan was often referred to as Niblo's Hotel, as on this print.
This lithograph of the Varian Tree in Broadway between 26th and 27th was included in the Valentine Manuals, annual guides, of a sort, to New York. The tree "stood for years near the old Varian homestead" according to the NY Times, which did a roundup of New York's Historic Trees in 1902: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F10C13F73A5414728DDDAD0894DD405B828CF1D3
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