While the grid dominates most of the city, there are a few leftover streets which are distinctly their own. In many cases, these courts and places (street-name suffixes that denote these are not through streets) share architects or were part of the same larger development at the least. Below, we’ll tell the story of a few of the best dead-ends of the five boroughs.

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New York’s Streets to Nowhere

• The houses along Patchin Place were built in the late 1840s, in close proximity to Jefferson Market and, later, the Jefferson Market Courthouse and Prison. Berenice Abbott’s photograph from 1937 depicts the brick buildings lining Patchin Place, a single dead-end block off of West 10th Street. At the time, the secluded side street was known as a popular spot for literary New Yorkers. Long-term residents included e.e. cummings and Djuna Barnes, while Marlon Brando also stayed on the block for a short time.

• This curious set of wooden houses on Sylvan Terrace was built on what is functionally a dead end, with the street cut off from St. Nicholas Avenue and a small set of stairs connecting the street to the sidewalk below. The development was designed in the late 19th century, when Washington Heights was still quite rural. The street was once the carriage drive of neighboring Morris-Jumel Mansion, the oldest house in Manhattan.

• Alice Court is one of two half-block cul-de-sacs off Atlantic Avenue between Kingston and Albany Avenues. The development’s 36 Queen Anne-style rowhouses were built by architect W.M. Coots in 1888-1889 for the industrialist and developer Florian Grosjean. The street was named for Florian’s daughter, Alice Grosjean.

Week in History

August 27, 1776. George Washington’s Continental Army is defeated in the Battle of Long Island, also known as the Battle of Brooklyn.

From the Archive

• In the 1880s, architect William H. Hume designed a large campus for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum on Amsterdam Avenue between 136th and 138th Streets. After the start of World War II, the orphanage was converted into army barracks.1

• This little triangle on Woodhaven Boulevard is an 18th-century cemetery that was once part of the Remsen family farm. Among those buried here are members of the family who fought in the Revolutionary War.

• Last call! Submit your pics capturing the city’s trials and tribulations with heat to our call for photographs with Melting Metropolis. 📷

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Many of New York’s waterways have been dramatically reshaped to improve navigation, whether filled in to accommodate roads on the land or widened and dredged to allow for ships to pass through. Lower Manhattan is perhaps the most famous example of the former, with the original shoreline once running along Pearl Street, now pushed to South Street by several blocks with landfill and refuse.

There are a few lesser-known examples of areas where the water has been entirely altered or erased. Read on below to learn more about the reshaped waterways of New York City.

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New York’s Reshaped Waterways

• Spuyten Duyvil Creek: Before Inwood and Washington Heights were densely populated and long before the Henry Hudson Bridge stretched across the Hudson, the Johnson Family built their ironworks in the Spuyten Duyvil. By 1923, plans to dredge the creek was finalized, the factory was demolished, and left Marble Hill, a neighborhood of Manhattan, separated from the rest of the borough.

• Plumb Beach: This area was known as Plumb Island before Belt Parkway connected it to Sheepshead Bay and Gerritsen Beach. Prior to incorporation into Brooklyn, 1,500 Plumb residents would wade, ferry, or take a bus on a sandy “road” (lovingly referred to as the “shortest in the world”) to the mainland. The Island had no police, though the government had initially laid its eyes on the area as grounds to build a battery. Lucky for those seeking to be left alone, the quicksand-like terrain was inhospitable for military development. In the 1930s, it was joined to the rest of Brooklyn with dredging from constructing Belt Parkway.1 The island is now part of the Gateway National Recreation Area.

• Collect Pond: A five-acre, 60-foot deep pond fed by an underground stream in Lower Manhattan. As New York City, in its early years confined below Wall Street, grew uptown, its more noxious industries, such as slaughterhouses and tanneries, were exiled north of the City to the banks of the Collect Pond. By 1802, the once glistening Collect Pond had become polluted, and the Common Council voted that it be filled in with soil from the neighboring Bunker Hill. Collect Pond Park now commemorates the body of water, with a reflecting pool to hint towards its past.

Week in History

August 22, 1901. The Willis Avenue Bridge opens, connecting the Bronx with Manhattan, via First Avenue. The original span was replaced in 2007, but the bridge has retained its position as the 20-mile marker of the New York City Marathon.

From the Archive

• Now a popular joint called “Beauty Bar,” 231 East 14th Street was once the headquarters of the Cloakmakers Local 48 of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. The dramatic relief marble carvings on the upper floors, seen here, are believed to be the work of poet and sculptor Onorio Ruotolo. In the 1920s, after Mussolini’s takeover of Italy, the building was a hub of anti-Fascist organizing in New York.

• Staten Island’s government relocated to St. George following the 1898 consolidation of Greater New York City. John Carrère, a resident of Staten Island for some time, designed the new Borough Hall, which was completed in 1906.

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Before Shaw’s Hotel split in two, the land it stood on was already “halved” between brothers. The intersection on Jamaica Plank Road had two popular roadhouses on either side, run by brothers John and Jerome Snediker.1 They were busy spots owing to their proximity to the Union Course, a well-known racetrack, and their central location on the road between the Village of Brooklyn and Queens. By 1838, Jerome’s roadhouse burned down and was replaced by Shaw’s Hotel.

Shaw’s Hotel, named for proprietor William Shaw, was a Dutch-Colonial two-story structure with a sloping roof that faced the thoroughfare. William Shaw had married Phebe Snediker, related to the roadhouse owners, some years before. According to Brooklyn Genealogy, the hotel was surrounded by “great elm trees” and had a front porch that extended across the facade.2 By 1902, the building was empty, and a few years later, it was cut in half. Why exactly? Your guess is as good as ours.

Decades after replacing one half of a split, Shaw’s Hotel would meet its own kind of fracture. Read more below, and give us your theories on why this may have happened in the comments.

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The Hotel that was Cut in Half

• This depiction of the hotel from Eugene Armbruster’s “Views of Queens County,” shows the hotel in its whole state with a dashed line, perhaps indicating its split to come.

• The structure was cut in half and the two pieces were moved to two corners by 1905. One half of the structure went to 2 Danforth Street, at the corner of Crescent Street. This portion burned down in 1957.

• The other half of the chopped-up hotel was moved to 28 Danforth Street, where it has been used as a single-family residence. Though the porch has been enclosed, it still stands today.

Day in History

August 14, 1945. New Yorkers flock to Times Square to celebrate the surrender of Japan, and with it, the end of World War II.

The moment is memorialized in Alfred Eisenstaedt’s photograph, V-J Day in Times Square, which shows a Navy sailor kissing an unknown woman in Times Square.

From the Archive

• We shared this photo from our partners at the South Street Seaport Museum of the RMS Queen Mary departing New York Harbor. The legendary ocean liner, an icon of transatlantic travel, is viewable (in model form) at the museum. Go check it out!

• The Union Evangelical Church is Corona’s oldest surviving building and a hold-out of its transit-fueled development in the mid-19th century.

• When it was completed in 1908, this castle-like station on West 30th Street and 7th Avenue is where police are rumored to have made “small fortunes off New York’s heaviest concentration of gambling and prostitution,” back when the area was known as the Tenderloin.3

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The Stuyvesant Curiosity Shop was one of a handful in Manhattan. What exact need this genre of shop met is up for debate, but Charles Dickens’ 1841 novel, The Old Curiosity Shop, describes its more evocative qualities:

Peter G. Buckley, a historian, contrasts the curio shop with the libraries and popular museums of the late 19th century, which “appeared to satisfy the public’s appetite for the curious,” while the shops remained “unknowable, uncategorizable, and therefore indescribable.” He also distinguishes the high-brow curiosity shop from the low-brow junk store, the former was found along main thoroughfares and the latter as far out as Avenue A.1 How the curiosity shop evolved into the antique shop (and whether it actually did) is a much larger question. Below, explore a few of the last curiosity shops in Manhattan:

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Manhattan’s Mysterious Curiosity Shops

• The Stuyvesant Curiosity Shop, pictured above, was around until at least the 1970s. A bit of a tangent, but two doors down under the sign in the shape of a man was Sig Klein’s Fat Men’s Shop. Shoppers included Babe Ruth, bartenders, and beer garden owners from “the bad old Bowery,” per the New York Times.2

• If you wanted to know how to distinguish a “Junk Shop” from a Curiosity Shop, some proprietors made it clear and simple, like this one on East 29th Street.

• This 28th Street locale was a combination curio shop and cozy eatery, and one of New York's more eclectic and atmospheric venues for natives and tourists alike in the 1910s. The former stable building was converted into an curiosity store by Edward Elmore, a passionate collector of relics. Elmore was less inclined to sell his treasures than most shopkeepers, so the scene was a bit more gallery than traditional store.

Day in History

August 7, 1974. French high-wire artist Philippe Petit performs his most impressive stunt: a 45-minute tightrope walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

From the Archive

• In case you haven’t heard, we’re building a living archive of how New Yorkers adapt to the challenges brought on by heat. Share your photos of major weather events, like smoke blanketing the city after the Canadian Wildfires or flooding after summer storms from within the 5 boroughs.

• Harrison County, Mississippi → Explore dozens of new photographs from our partners down in the Gulf Coast, including this Neo-Classical Center Hall house with a crowd posed out front.

• Explore Flushing’s revolutionary history, including that of the Kingsland Homestead, which was moved not just once, but twice!

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In honor of the 78th anniversary of the dedication of the New York International Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport), we’re dedicating this edition of Archive Weekly to the airport’s most beloved building, the TWA Flight Center.

Arguably the most famous mid-century structure in the entire city, the TWA Flight Center was designed by famed modernist architect Eero Saarinen and completed between 1956 and 1962. Constructed out of white concrete, the swooping lines of the facade are suggestive of the movement of flight. The interior of the building continues with the curved design with features such as the signs, display boards, railings and check-in desks that were all meant to match stylistically. The architect himself said he wanted, “passengers passing through the building to experience a fully-designed environment, in which each part arises from another and everything belongs to the same formal world.”

The building housed the terminal for the airline TWA from its opening in 1962 until 2001. Though some portions of the original complex have been demolished, the iconic head house, seen above, remains and is now used as a lobby for the TWA Hotel, which was completed in 2019. The head house is flanked by two new hotel wings, which are just steps away from the new terminal that replaced it, known as JetBlue Airways’ Terminal 5. Read on to learn more about TWA’s past and present below:

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All About TWA

• The Flight Center Building’s concrete shell ranges in thickness from 40 inches where the shells converge as seen in this photo to only 7 inches at the edges.1

• Before JFK’s TWA Terminal, the airline operated out of LaGuardia Airport. This photo of the Lindbergh Line shows an airplane at LaGuardia that was part of a coast-to-coast route between New York and Los Angeles.

• Open House New York collected TWA Stories, which capture the memory of the terminal when it first touched down. Our favorite is this testimonial from Linda G. Miller: “As teenagers growing up in Far Rockaway, we used to spend a Saturday night at the TWA Flight Center. We were too young to drink but watching the planes take off and land while sitting in such an opulent ‘living room’ was better than going to the movies.”

Week in History

July 31, 1948. New York International Airport is dedicated. Also known as Idlewild, after the golf course which previously occupied the site, the airport was renamed in memory of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

From the Archive

• Explore the Revolutionary-era sites of Queens’ neighborhood of Newtown, which stretched all the way from present-day Elmhurst to Long Island City.

• Emery Roth & Sons’ Look Building dates to 1948-1950, when the minimalist aesthetics of European Modernism first began to transform the character of “setback” office buildings. In this instance, ribbon-like windows combined with tightly-rounded corners and setbacks clad with a white brick to create a unique silhouette.

• From Newburgh, NY → Just north of Newburgh’s Broadway on Liberty Street was Columbus Hall, a public forum constructed by nearby Saint Patrick’s Church in the early 20th century. The structure was removed in the late 1950’s to make way for a new Saint Patrick’s Elementary School.

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Central Park is one of New York’s beloved public spaces. Sculpted by Olmsted and Vaux, millions have sheltered under its trees and walked the paths of the first landscaped public park in the country. But its picturesque paths hide a more complicated origin story.

When the Commissioner’s Plan of 1811 was laid out, it overlaid a grid of tightly-woven streets and avenues over Manhattan. By 1850, a group of well-to-do New Yorkers petitioned for a grand park to be built in the middle of the grid. The advocates were largely wealthy merchants and landowners who saw the park as both a “an attractive setting for carriage rides,” and would provide working men an alternative to the bar. Furthermore, the creation of Central Park would put New York on par with London or Paris, which had grand parks of their own.1

While that part of Manhattan wasn’t quite a bustling metropolis just yet, there were still upwards of 1,600 residents living there. The area was mostly made up of “small farms, industrial uses, and dwellings scattered between areas of marshland and rocky hills. The most densely populated section of the site was a settlement known as Seneca Village, highly significant as a predominantly African-American community, many of whom were property owners.”2 Land for the park was acquired by use of eminent domain, which displaced everyone who was living there.

The early planning of the park is just one thread of Central Park’s long and varied history. Below, a few more facts about New York City’s most famous park:

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Central Park’s Hidden History

• The destruction of Seneca Village shows the complicated legacy of even our most treasured spaces. Two-thirds of Seneca Village’s 250-plus residents were African American and the rest were Irish and German immigrants.3 In 1850, at the time when a plan for Central Park was proposed, the village comprised 50 homes, three churches, and a school.

• One of the Park’s most picturesque landscapes, the Central Park Reservoir is 40 feet deep and holds a billion gallons of water. It was built in the 1860s as a temporary water supply for New York City, while the Croton Water system was shut down for repairs two weeks each year. The reservoir was decommissioned in 1993, deemed obsolete because of the Third Water Tunnel.

• The Central Park Zoo began as a small menagerie in 1860 when citizens and circuses started donating animals to the city. It was the first zoo in New York State and, when officially chartered in 1864, was the second publicly owned zoo in the United States (after the Philadelphia Zoo).

Week in History

July 21, 1853. The New York State Legislature designates as “a public place’‘ the 600 acres of land that were to become Central Park.

From the Archive

• Gotham Inn, a tavern that was once located near Bowery and Houston Streets, is said to have been used mainly as a hotel, farmhouse, and tavern (but once illegally operating as a brothel), the inn was a place of rest and relaxation.

• 75 1/2 Bedford Street occasionally called the narrowest houses in New York. Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay lived in the house for some time, and actors Cary Grant and John Barrymore stayed there too.

• Do you know where Brooklyn’s Putnam Avenue Trolley would go? Tell us what bus line you think might have replaced it in the comments below.

• We’re collecting photographs and personal histories that illustrate how New Yorkers have weathered the summer season. Last week, we got some incredible photos of the wildfire smoke over NYC. Did you capture any photos of last Saturday’s storm? Share them with us here.

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Floyd Bennett Field was New York City’s first municipal airport, where advances in air travel were celebrated and from which famous flights launched. Though the Field hosted record-breaking stunts and high-profile visits from aviators like Howard Hughes and Amelia Earhart, its operations as a commercial airport were actually quite short. Floyd Bennett Field was dedicated on May 23, 1931 and just 10 years later it was sold to the US Navy.

Development of the airport began in 1928, when Barren Island, a marshy peninsula in Jamaica Bay, was selected as the site for New York’s first ever municipal airport. Sand had to be brought up from the bay to enlarge the island and raise it “16 feet above the high tide mark.”1 The airport was to be named for Floyd Bennett, then something of a hometown celebrity. Bennett had lived in Brooklyn and was born in Warren County, New York and in 1926, he co-piloted the plane on the Byrd Arctic Expedition, which took him over the North Pole.2

By 1941, the city sold the airport to the United States Navy. Over the course of World War II it served as the most active naval air station in the country. Floyd Bennett Field is now on the National Register of Historic Places and maintained by the National Park Service.

In recent years, the Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy, which stewards the public parklands around Jamaica Bay and the Rockaway Peninsula, has put forward a plan to renovate the disused airport buildings. A portion of the building has been used as a sports facility since 2008,3 Hangar 3 still houses historic planes which are restored by a team of volunteers, and plans for a large-scale migrant shelter were scrapped due to its remote location.4 The future of the field is still uncertain, but we can look back on its history below:

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Floyd Bennett Field

• This photo from 1931 shows “pleasure seekers” on the island, with two tents pitched in a grassy area with the bay in the distance and over a dozen people, presumably families, picnicking. Prior to the development of the airport, the Island was home to a remote community of several thousand, many of whom worked at the nearby garbage incinerator and glue factory.5 The remaining population of the area was evicted in the 1940s, when the Navy took over the airport.

• According to the National Parks Service, 26 around-the-world flights started or ended near Floyd Bennett Field between 1931 and 1939. Other high-profile flights, like this one which carried the Brooklyn Dodgers were met with crowds and all kinds of fanfare. Check out the marching band!

• The New York Landmarks Conservancy documented the field in 1975 as part of the Public Buildings Inventory. The building was designed in an “eclectic combination of Renaissance Revival, Neoclassical, and Art Deco styles,” sometimes referred to as municipal hybrid. The National Parks Service’s report on the Administration Building6 gave the following rationale for employing such a mixture of styles:

  The “municipal hybrid” borrowed stylistic elements from a variety of classical styles to create an imposing formal appearance with clear historical precedents. However, it also simplified details of those styles, to project the functional and public nature of the building. In order to attract the acceptance and respect of the general public, buildings constructed in the “municipal hybrid” style are generally large, impressive structures that employ— and frequently exaggerate—the most associative features of certain traditional styles. Visitors were therefore both impressed by the size and scope of the architecture, and comforted by the use of familiar, popular, and repetitive features, such as the symmetrical placement of windows and doorway.

Week in History

July 14, 1938. Howard Hughes lands at Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field, completing his round-the-world flight in record time.

July 16, 1957. Marine Major John Glenn arrives at Floyd Bennett Field in 3 hours, 23 minutes, and 8 seconds after leaving Los Alamitos, California, setting a transcontinental speed record.

From the Archive

• In 1750, British naval officer Thomas Clarke bought a Dutch farm to create his retirement estate, named “Chelsea” after the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London. Today, the neighborhood of Chelsea contains a variety of historic architecture, including some of the city’s most intact nineteenth-century residential blocks.

• Wildfire smoke rolled into New York City again this week, and the orange haze is a stark reminder of when the sky turned the sky apocalyptic orange in June 2023. We're seeking to document these conditions as part of our ongoing collaboration with Melting Metropolis and Queens Memory. Do you have photos from this week's haze, or from June 2023? Submit them to our open call for photographs.

  

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Bowling Green is the oldest public park in New York City. The land, which originally served as council grounds to Native American tribes, was the site of the historic sale of Manhattan to Peter Minuit in 1626. He purchased the entire island in exchange for traded goods worth 60 guilders, an amount worth just over $1,000 today.

The Dutch who later came to occupy the southern tip of Manhattan referred to this spot as “the Plain.” Farmers and businessmen used its grounds for parading, as well as a place to sell cattle. The site also marked the start of Heere Staat, now Broadway, which was a trade route that extended from this point and into the Bronx. In 1658, the city dug its first public well here. It was the only public well in Manhattan until 1677, long after the Dutch were replaced by the British.

Not until 1733, when the land was rented to John Chambers, Peter Bayard, and Peter Jay at the cost of one peppercorn per year, was Bowling Green designated as a park. The lessees were responsible for enhancing the park with grass, trees, and a wood fence. A gilded lead statue of King George III was erected here in 1770 and one year later, in 1771, an iron fence was added. The fence, which still stands today, fared better than the statue: there’s more on that below. Read on for more about New York City’s very first park, the Bowling Green.

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The Bowling Green’s Long History

• The iron fence around Bowling Green was originally put up to protect the park and its new statue of King George III. The posts are said to have been decorated with royal crowns or iron balls that didn’t survive the Revolution, and in this 1868 painting you can see one elegant lamp remaining, which no longer exists. In 1914, the fence was removed and left in Central Park during construction of the subway, but it was restored in 1919.

• In the early 20th century, the construction of the IRT subway meant the park needed to be rebuilt as part of a larger, citywide effort to prepare for visitors to the 1939 World’s Fair.

• Until 1972, there was another statue at the northern end of Bowling Green. It depicted Abraham De Peyster, who was mayor of New York City from 1691 to 1694, governor of New York State between 1700 and 1701 and a city comptroller, alderman and judge. The statue was originally meant for Battery Park, but the New York Times, among others, suggested that the park was not the appropriate location, being already too full of statuary. The Abraham De Peyster statue was finally realized in Bowling Green in 1896 as seen in the photograph linked above.

Day in History

July 10, 1776. Incensed by a public reading of the Declaration of Independence the day before, the Sons of Liberty tore down the statue of King George in Bowling Green Park. The lead statue was then brought to Connecticut and turned into guns and shot.

From the Archive

• ⚽🥅 Announcing Soccer in the City, a new project and collaboration with the Society for American Soccer History showcasing the beautiful game and its long history in New York City.

• Downtown Brooklyn has been rapidly transforming over the past decade. See what Fulton Street’s Golden Age looked like over 100 years ago, when it was the preeminent thoroughfare for fashionable shopping in Brooklyn.

• After a stormy holiday weekend, we’re looking at a weekend with even more rain. New York’s subtropical climate mean thunderstorms are now common in the heat of summer. With storms come historic flash flooding across portions of the city. Did you capture photos of the downpour and its aftermath? We want to see them! Help us tell the story of the summer months and unpredictability.

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On this July 4th, to commemorate the country’s 250th anniversary, the largest flotilla of tall ships ever assembled will enter the Port of New York and New Jersey.

Beyond seeing the parade of ships, you can celebrate the nation’s 250 right here at home: New York City is full of Revolutionary history if you know where to look. We’re tracing the founding spirit that lives on in our parks, streets, and buildings, all of which you can visit today.

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New York City’s Revolutionary Spirit

• City Hall Park is where New York City’s Revolutionary history begins. In 1765, New Yorkers protested the Stamp Act in the area, which required colonists to pay taxes on all printed materials, from newspapers to playing cards. Eleven years later on July 9th, 1776, the new Declaration of Independence was read aloud there.

• On August 27th, 1776, barely two months after the Declaration of Independence was made public, the Old Stone House served as the location for one of the first major battles in the Revolutionary War: the Battle of Brooklyn.

• The American Redoubt Marker, located on the present-day Hudson River Greenway under the George Washington Bridge, commemorates the redoubt of Fort Washington, which was the site of an important defeat of the Continental Army on November 16th, 1776. It was the last American stronghold on Manhattan, and once it fell the British would occupy the island for the remainder of the war.

Week in History

July 4, 1976. New York’s Bicentennial celebrations kick off with a Hudson River parade of tall-masted and military ships, attended by President Gerald Ford and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller.

From the Archive

• 53-61 Cooper Square, built in 1867 as the Metropolitan Savings Bank, is considered one of the earliest examples of fireproof construction in the city.

• This site located near present-day Grand Avenue and Queens Boulevard was once a tavern built in 1716. During the American Revolution, it served as a Loyalist Headquarters.

• 🌡️ It’s getting hot out! This week’s heatwave is expected to bring temperatures to the 90s with heat index values up to 109. Can you help us document this summer’s extreme heat? Read more about this year’s open call and submit your photos here.

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When the Cyclone first opened at Coney Island in 1927, it quickly became an iconic Brooklyn landmark. As the Island’s amusement district grew more and more competitive, operators raced to build thrilling attractions to draw in visitors. The Cyclone joined a skyline already crowded with ambitious rides. Today, it is one of a handful of increasingly rare wooden roller coasters.1

Inspired by the success of two other wooden roller coasters on Coney Island, ambitious amusement park entrepreneurs Jack and Irving Rosenthal purchased the land under another ride, scrapped it, and hired Irving Keenan, a well-known coaster designer, to dream up the Cyclone: a 2,640 foot-long gravity ride. The full duration of the trip is just under two minutes, with six fan turns and twelve drops. When the coaster opened, the Brooklyn Borough President James J. Byrne christened the ride with an egg cream in the first car.2 The first 100 guests rode the Cyclone for free: a tradition Luna Park continues today.3

In 1991, the Cyclone was listed on the New York City Register of Historic Places. The two predecessors to the Cyclone, the Tornado and the Thunderbolt, are gone, but their legacy gives us a glimpse into Coney Island’s golden age. Below, explore more about the rickety history of wooden coasters on Coney Island. Maybe you’ll feel inspired to take a ride for the Cyclone’s 99th this year!

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Coney Island’s Coasters

• This postcard advertised a 15-cent ride, the same price as the Tornado and Thunderbolt, two other wooden coasters that predated the Cyclone. In reality, riding the Cyclone around the time it opened cost 25 cents — the price of a movie ticket at the time. Today, it’ll set you back $10.

• The Tornado was originally called “The Bobs.” Its designer, Frederick A. Church, was known for his “Bobs,” which, as their name may imply, bobbed riders up and down and whipped them through tight turns.4 The Tornado was destroyed by arson in 1978.

• This photo shows a residential building attached to the Thunderbolt. The building below the ride was truly a residence, and Woody Allen’s Annie Hall featured it as the fictional home of Alvy Singer.5 The actual building was part of the Kensington Hotel, and it had residents until 1988.6 The coaster and building were finally demolished in 2000.

Day in History

June 26, 1927. The Cyclone roller coaster, an iconic symbol of Coney Island, opens.

From the Archive

• 🔔In case you missed it: We’re building a living archive of heat in the city with our partners at Melting Metropolis, and we need your help. Read about the open call and submit your photos here.

• To celebrate Pride, explore New York’s LGBTQ Cultural Landmarks, including 31 Cornelia Street, or the former Caffe Cino, which many consider the birthplace of Off-Off Broadway Theater. The Caffe provided a platform for gay playwrights who had no other venue to experiment so freely.

• Read about the Public Buildings Inventory, which was published by the Landmarks Conservancy in 1977 and provides a guide to federal, state, and city-owned sites throughout New York City with significant architectural character.

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For the past three summers, we’ve partnered with Melting Metropolis to collect photographs and personal histories that illustrate how New Yorkers have weathered the summer season. This year, we’re building a living archive of how the city experiences rising temperatures, and we need your help!

We’re calling on you to share your photos of the last decade or so showing how you’ve managed the heat. Historical images are always welcome, but we’re focusing on the current problems heat causes and how we’re all dealing with it.

Our goal is to document the everyday history of summer in the city.

In 2020, New York City was reclassified as a humid subtropical climate with summer temperatures averaging around 80°F. Last year, we had five heat emergencies, where heat and humidity brought the real feel up to over 100°F. We’re asking you to show us how you keep cool on days like this. Are you taking advantage of the early morning or nighttime hours to go outside? Do you have a special method of cooling your apartment? Do you camp out somewhere else with more reliable air conditioning to cool down? Help us tell the story of heat in the city.

Submit your photo here

The call is open to anyone with a story to share, but we are most interested in photographs that were taken in NYC within the five boroughs. Each photo must include at least one human subject and a brief description.

We’ll be accepting submissions through September 21, 2026.

New York is a city of islands, with only the Bronx connected by land to the rest of the continental United States. We all know the iconic bridges of New York: the Brooklyn Bridge, the Queensboro, the Verrazzano Bridge, but what about the little guys? \

This newsletter celebrates the unsung bridges of New York.

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Unsung Bridges of New York

• Opened in 1889, the Carroll Street Bridge is a rare retractable crossing, one of two in New York City and three to four still in service in the United States. It opens diagonally, with its span slowly pulled into a reserved pocket on the Gowanus Canal’s western bank. Bridge openings are now a rare event, but were once quite common. Up until 2021, the Carroll Street Bridge was the only wooden bridge used for cars, and was called the least used bridge in the city. Now, it has been reserved only for use by pedestrians and bicycles.

• This mid-air bridge between the City Prison and the Criminal Courts Building was nicknamed "The Bridge of Sighs." It was here that prisoners were lead to trial from the "the Tombs." It's possible that the name stemmed from the Venetian "Bridge of Sighs" that Byron wrote about. This structure was replaced in 1939 with the present city prison located across the street.

• Brooklyn Heights used to have a ramp that lead down to the water. By 1859, “a neat iron bridge” erected by the wealthy property holders also spanned the ramp, connecting what was then called Columbia Street, running along the crest of the heights parallel to Furman Street, to a “private street” on the south side of the bridge. Brooklynites came to call the stone archway Montague arch and the iron bridge the penny bridge.

Week in History

June 19, 1846. Two New York clubs contest what is recognized as the first-ever baseball game at Elysian Field in Hoboken. (The New York Nine beat the Knickerbockers 23-1.)

From the Archive

• The Hebrew Orphan Asylum (HOA) was the first Jewish orphan asylum in New York City.1 It opened this large building on Amsterdam Avenue and 137th Street in 1884, with 370 children living there and eventually expanded capacity to accommodate over 1,000 children. According to some, the building was “self-sufficient enough that it was able to survive for a week on its own after it was cut off during the Blizzard of 1888.”2

• Brooklyn’s Folly Theater was the first building constructed under new Theater Building Laws, which required new constructions to be built with multiple exits and fireproof materials. The Folly included twenty-six exits onto Graham Avenue and Debevoise Street along with four fire escapes.

• This church on 2nd Avenue had an original location on Nassau Avenue. When the congregation moved to the East Village, they kept the original bell, which was cast in Amsterdam, and installed it in the building’s tallest clock tower. Until the church burned in a massive fire in 2020, the bell rang at every presidential inauguration and death.

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A century ago, a summer escape was just a trolley ride up Third Avenue. You can follow this same route today along the M101 bus line, getting off at West 184th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.

Located on the northernmost tip of Manhattan in Fort George, on the same spot where General Washington fought the British, there stood a fantastic amusement park. The park opened in 1895 as the Fort George Amusement Park, but to many it was deserving of the nickname, “Harlem’s Coney Island.” One paper even said that the “one great advantage over Everybody’s Coney Island, and that is it costs only a nickel to get there. Every nickel means a glass of beer or a frankfurter, and every East Sider knows the value of a nickel. That is one great reason why Fort George is popular.”1

In 1905, Russian-Americans Joseph Schenck and his brother Nicholas, who settled in New York in 1893, visited the then-small park, and realized the amazing opportunity for development. They opened a bar nearby, “The Old Barrel,” and partnered with Marcus Loew. Loew was a successful businessman who owned arcades and theaters who later went on to form Loew’s Theatres and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio. The Schenck brothers built a new addition to the Fort George Amusement Park in 1906 known as Paradise Park, which had an entrance fee of 10 cents at that time.2

Below, learn about the heyday of “Harlem’s Coney Island” and its eventual demise.

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Harlem’s Coney Island

• Fort George Amusement Park was just steps away from the terminus of the Third Avenue Trolley line. This location was strategic, and it drew Manhattan residents up to the breezy riverside neighborhood for summer recreation. It was popular for trolley companies to develop “trolley parks,” a precursor to amusement parks, at the end of their lines in order to give people a reason to use their services on weekends, see other examples like Luna Park and Steeplechase Park in Brooklyn.

• Schenck brothers addition to Fort George Park, ’Paradise Park,’ was perched above the rest of the park and accessible by 56 steps. It boasted two Ferris wheels, three roller coasters, nine saloons, a pony track, hotels, a casino, shooting galleries, a tunnel boat ride, and two music halls.

• While the park prospered, local residents began to petition for it to close by 1910, as benefits to the local economy began to fade and the neighborhood became plagued by public drunkenness, noise, crime, and racial tensions. Arsonists set fire to Paradise park in 1911, and it recovered, until another suspicious fire broke out in 1913, causing over $100,000 worth of damages. The fire was so huge that some reports claimed that the flames could be seen as far south as 42nd Street. That marked the end of Harlem’s Coney Island. The property where the Fort George Amusement Park stood was eventually condemned and the Parks Department officially acquired it and incorporated it in to Highbridge Park.

Week in History

June 9, 1913. A suspicious fire burns down the Fort George Amusement Park, eventually leading to its conversion into part of Highbridge Park.

From the Archive

• See a photo of Madison Square’s long lost commemorative arch, which stood at Broadway and Fifth Avenue with a colonnade along 23rd to 25th Streets.

• Celebrate Pride by locating the landmarks and legends that trace the LGBTQ history of the borough of Queens.

• Do you remember Jefferson Theater on 14th Street? The skinny entrance was on 14th street (nestled between two tenements, per Village Preservation) and the auditorium was on 13th Street.

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The American Museum of Natural History has been a fixture of Manhattan for over 150 years, a place where New Yorkers could both learn about nature and escape the chaos of the city. The first collections were put on display in the New York Arsenal in 1869, and after years of fundraising, the museum raised enough money to build a permanent home on West 77th Street, opposite Central Park. The main entrance, adorned with natural motifs of animals, hints at the world inside the museum's walls.

In the early years of the museum, there was little order to how artifacts were collected. That changed when Morris Ketchum Jesup, a philanthropist, shaped the museum into something closer to what we see today. Jesup ushered in what was characterized as “its Golden Age of collection-building and scientific expeditions,” and hired a taxidermist to create dioramas and displays and began promoting public lectures for educators.1

His successor, Henry Fairfield Osborn, served as president from 1908 to 1933 and expanded the museum's scientific ambitions considerably. A paleontologist by background, Osborn built out the museum's research program while raising the institution's public profile. However, his tenure was not without controversy. Under Osborn, the institution “embraced a burgeoning eugenics movement,”2 in an effort to “maintain the power and prestige of peoples of northwestern European ancestry.”3 Protests in 2020 were not the first time activists criticized the museum’s legacy, and racist dioramas were attacked by civil rights activists in the 60s as well.

It’s true that AMNH and other museums of the era remain, to some degree, relics of their time. Reviewing Colin Davey’s book, The Museum of the Natural History and How It Got That Way, Steven H. Jaffe wrote that the museum’s past leadership “played pivotal roles in bringing to public life a referential framework that classified all non-European peoples as ‘other’ and in some sense ‘primitive,’” a categorization “that still burdens museums in this century.”

Reckoning with the past is a long endeavor, but the AMNH continues to reframe its collections in step with the cultural moment, remaining dedicated to advancing knowledge about the natural world and beyond. Read on to learn more about the American Museum of Natural History:

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Over 150 years of the American Museum of Natural History

• In the Hall of African Mammals, The Water Hole is a favorite diorama. Many of the scenes in the hall were the outcome of a year-long expedition, which included members such as Carl Akeley, a pioneering taxidermist, and Theodore Roosevelt.

• In 1935, the state-of-the-art Hayden Planetarium was added to the Museum. Robert Moses had a heavy hand in the building’s construction, and even created a “Planetarium Authority” to gain funding. The venue utilized a Zeiss Projection Instrument, which was a dumbbell-shaped model with spherical star-projectors on either end.

• Presently, the Hall of Dinosaurs showcases only a fraction of the Museum’s collections of fossil mammal collections, which doubled in size in 1968. This photo, from 1935, captures the installation of a skeleton in one of the fossil halls newly opened as part of that year’s wing expansion.

Week in History

June 2, 1874 President Ulysses S. Grant lays the cornerstone for the American Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side.

From the Archive

• The Sunset Park Court House is now operated by the NYPD as an application processing center. When it was designed in 1931, it was only one of two courthouse buildings known to have been designed by Mortimer D. Metcalfe, a New York architect who assisted with the design of Grand Central Terminal.

• See if you can answer this question about New York’s aviation history: where was the city’s first municipal airport? Hint: 26 around-the-world flights started or ended at this airport between 1931 and 1939.

• These 1930s advertisements in the Lower East Side showcase radio show Ghetto Serenade and the film The Wandering Jew, the later of which was the “first American feature film to depict the situation of Jews in Nazi Germany,” starring Jacob Ben-Ami.4

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Since its completion in 1905, Columbus Circle has been a bustling hub for New Yorkers and tourists alike. The Circle marks the official geographic center of New York City (distances to NYC are measured from here) and was originally known simply as the Grand Circle, later taking its name from the Christopher Columbus monument erected in 1892. The rostral column commemorated the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage to America and was one of dozens of similar monuments erected all over the Americas and Europe.

The Circle is one of the four corners of Central Park, marking the transition from city blocks to parkland. The southern two points, Grand Army Plaza and the Grand Circle, were both part of Olmsted and Vaux’s original plans for Central Park.1 The Circle was laid out in 1869, when a turnabout was created to direct horse carriage traffic.2 Subway lines were added beneath the monument in 1902 and a cluster of distinct buildings rose around the plaza, including the Majestic Theatre and the Pabst Grand Circle Hotel.3 One speculative developer was William Randolph Hearst, already a newspaper magnate out west, who “envisioned a headquarters building [here] as early as 1895, and began purchasing huge amounts of property…in the Columbus Circle area,” wrote Ephemeral New York.4 Today, Hearst Tower stands just a few blocks south of the Circle.

Throughout the 20th century, traffic transitioned from horse-drawn carriages and pedestrians to a mix that included buses, trolleys, and automobiles, making this one of the most dangerous intersections in Manhattan. The plaza was redesigned by the City in 1987 to make it safer for pedestrians. Read on to learn more about Columbus Circle’s transformation over the years:

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The Official Center of New York City

• At the center of the circle, a Christopher Columbus monument sits atop a foundation which weighs a whopping 1.2 million pounds. Efforts to construct the monument were led by Carlo Barsotti, publisher of the newspaper Il Progresso Italo-Americano, the Italian American community raised funds and paid for the monument itself. At the time, Columbus, born in Genoa, was perhaps the most widely celebrated figure of Italian descent in the United States.

• By the turn of the 20th century, work was already underway for the Seventh Avenue IRT line running under Columbus Circle. The station opened in 1904. This photo from the 1930s shows the station entrance looking similar to today, though with a detail fitting for the Depression era: a stand serving the unemployed coffee and sandwiches.

• In 1936, from the ninth floor of the General Motors Building on West 58th Street, photographer Berenice Abbott captured Columbus Circle through the back of the Schenley Rye neon sign mounted on the New York Journal Building. The Circle’s statue of Columbus, erected in 1892 to commemorate the quadricentennial of his ocean voyage, occupies the center of the photograph but is dwarfed by an even more popular landmark, the Coca-Cola sign standing atop the American Circle Building.

Day in History

May 29, 1913. The USS Maine National Monument is dedicated on Memorial Day, 1913 in front of thousands of citizens and more than 10,000 sailors and soldiers. As the monument was uncovered, a 252 gun salute rang out from the Naval ships in New York Harbor.

From the Archive

• The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary was founded in 1820 and is the oldest specialized hospital in the Western Hemisphere and the third-oldest hospital in New York City after the New York Hospital and Bellevue. Our partners at Village Preservation are leading a campaign to designate the NYEEI a landmark and save it from demolition after Beth Israel Hospital, which operated the infirmary, closed last year.

• See how a view of Trinity Church in 1861 compares to the view today.

• Trace the early history of Queens, which was once a series of small villages in the Dutch colony of New Netherland. The first towns were Maspeth (est. 1642), Vlissingen (now Flushing, est. 1643), Newtown (now Elmhurst), and Rustdorp (now Jamaica).

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For a building to survive the test of time, adaptation can be necessary to remain functional and useful, ultimately saving many structures from obsolescence and even demolition. Across New York City, many structures have been transformed in ways that preserve their history while meeting new needs. Below, explore a few of our favorite examples of buildings that have successfully reinvented themselves:

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Adaptive Reuse in Action

• Originally built as Bell Telephone Laboratories in the West Village, this industrial complex was transformed in the 1970s into Westbeth Artists Housing, which provides affordable housing and studios for artists. This development was one of the first instances of adaptive reuse of industrial buildings for artistic and residential use in the country.

• Constructed in 1851 as a military supply building within Central Park, the Arsenal was repurposed in the 20th century as part of the Central Park Zoo and now houses the NYC Parks Department. One of the 1930s additions to the building was a set of murals in the lobby, which depict the city’s finest parks and recreation facilities.

• In the 20th century, the Astor Library was converted into a receiving station for thousands of newly arrived immigrants by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. When the building faced demolition in the 1960s, the newly established Landmarks Preservation Commission stepped in to save it and arranged for the producer of the New York Shakespeare Festival to step in and convert the building into the Public Theater.

Day in History

May 22, 1895. Teddy Roosevelt is appointed New York City Police Commissioner. Roosevelt’s success as a reformer helps launch his national political career.

From the Archive

• From Newburgh, NY → In 2023, the town of Newburgh conducted an Ironwork Survey. You can explore a sampling of the survey in this walking tour, which meanders through the city's many intact examples of railings, balusters, posts, and more, attesting to the creative capacities of Newburgh builders and iron founders.

• See photos of the anti-Nazi protest meeting organized by the American Jewish Congress at Madison Square Garden. The protest was held on March 27, 1933, just 5 days after the opening of the first concentration camp in Dachau.

• In the early 20th century, Long Island City’s Degnon Terminal industrial park was home to the American Chicle Company. The factory processed raw chicle brought in directly from rail lines. The product was moved from top to bottom of the building using gravity conveyors, with initial treatment at the top to processing into gum on factory floors below.

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Coney Island has been New York City’s public beach within reach for over 100 years. An average summer weekend in 1907 saw around a visitors mailing out a quarter of a million postcards. By 1920, the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue subway station opened, giving New Yorkers even greater access to the beach. Then, after almost 50 years of planning, the Coney Island Boardwalk opened in 1924, giving the city access to the coastal breeze, ocean views, and the beach itself.

According to a 1904 study, Coney Island had only about a 1.4 inches of beach sand area for all of New York’s 3.7 million residents. The report also claimed: “no[one] has worked out beach sand minimums below which seacoast cities fall short of a progressive standard of living, but as a recreative possibility this figure suggests the schoolmen’s problem.”1 Earlier tourism to the area primarily consisted of private resorts and hotels, which we covered in our issue about moving the Manhattan Beach Hotel. By 1918, Brooklyn Borough President Edward Riegelmann set out to improve the area and open the beaches to all New Yorkers, free of charge. From 1921 to 1924, he oversaw one of the largest public space projects in the country.2

The immense engineering project required 1.7 million cubic yards of sand to add another 2.5 million square feet to the beach area. Construction of the boardwalk made use of 120,000 tons of stone, 7700 cubic yards of reinforced concrete, and 3.6 million feet of timber, including long leaf yellow pine for the flooring. From a height of 14 feet above the beach, the 80-foot wide boardwalk stretched from W. 37th Street to Ocean Parkway and provided easy access to both beach and concessions.

This boardwalk gave visitors a place to stroll and promenade, and, above all, a place to stretch out on the sand, free of charge. This weekend, Coney Island and Brighton Beach open for the season. With Sunday’s forecast hitting just under 90 degrees, the boardwalk will be exactly what Riegelmann intended it to be: a welcome respite from the summer heat.

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How Coney Island Became Everyone’s Beach

• The Coney Island Pier, now known as Steeplechase Pier, is a 700-foot long walkway that jutting into the ocean from the boardwalk. Originally part of Steeplechase Park, it was integrated into the boardwalk rather than demolished to make way for a city-owned replacement, as the other beachside piers were.

• Explore Coney Island’s Boardwalk in the 1980s through the lens of Queens-based photographer Anders Goldfarb, who also documented the ruins of the area’s lost amusement parks, including Steeplechase Park mentioned above.

• Though the boardwalk opened to the public in 1924, it wasn’t officially stewarded by the Parks Department until 1938, when Robert Moses wanted to make the beach a place not just for amusement parks and rides, but a place for healthy exercise and recreation. One early advocate of health and fitness (on the beach) was Bernarr McFadden, a German-American who helped popularize bodybuilding in America and founded the Coney Island Polar Bear Club, which still organizes its famous New Year’s Day polar plunge on the beach each year.

Day in History

May 15, 1923. The first section of the Coney Island Boardwalk opens, offering the public access to the beach.

From the Archive

• In 1946, putting up a Quonset Hut Village in Canarsie was Robert Moses’ answer to the housing shortage which had lasted for over a decade.

• The First Reformed Church of Astoria is the oldest religious congregation in Astoria. The original church, a white wood-frame structure, like many wooden churches in New York, was lost to a fire. Following the fire in 1888, a new brick house of worship was completed on the same site. Unfortunately, the church suffered yet another fire last month, and now faces demolition.

• In the late 18th and mid-19th century, Catharine Slip (now spelled Catherine) was home to the Catharine Fish Market. In 1850, the market, which sold meat and fish, was a meeting place for enslaved and free African Americans from the Greater New York region.

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Since New York City’s last working farm closed, New Yorkers have found inventive ways to grow their own food. Limited space required creative thinking: growing areas shrunk to the size of a yard or lot, or experiments that used new technology to cultivate fruit and vegetables. Throughout the 20th century, a variety of projects connected city residents with the food system, from the high-tech, like growing hydroponic tomatoes at the World’s Fair, to the resourceful, like using park land to create urban farms.

The high-tech example is timely, because last month marked the 87th anniversary of the 1939 World’s Fair. The Heinz dome, an egg-shaped structure sponsored by the ketchup brand, featured an indoor display of chemiculture, now known as hydroponics. The display featured tomatoes grown inside the dome, which, according David J. Cope, a historian on the fair, were planted in white sand or treated water with refined temperature regulation and care by a designated attendant.1 But it wasn’t all artificial sunshine:

The experiment caused a number of problems for the exhibitors. Samuel Galloway Hibbon of the Westinghouse Corporation suggested placing 150-watt reflector lamps above the plants. They flourished! G. H. Van Vecten, a plant physiologist, discovered looping caterpillars had infiltrated the carefully controlled environment through a microscopic hole adjoining the next room. A chemically safe insecticide did the trick.

From futuristic experiments to neighborhood-scale efforts, these projects show how New Yorkers adapted agriculture to fit the city’s constraints.

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New York’s Urban Farming History

• A rare survivor from Queens County’s agricultural past, the Queens County Farm Museum is one of New York City’s last operating farms and is the longest continually farmed site in New York State. First established by the Adriance family in the 17th century, the farm was operated by a succession of family farmers for nearly 300 years. The current farmhouse was built around 1772 by Jacob Adriance; much of the original building remains standing today.

• The “Farm Garden,” was an educational program established by Frances “Fannie” Griscom Parsons in the early 20th century. Parsons believed that farming was crucial to education. Skills and values taught cultivating vegetables were particularly valuable for city children “whose knowledge is limited to stone pavements and one small room in a tenement house.”2 When the first of such programs launched at DeWitt Clinton Park, in the Meatpacking District, there were waiting lists in the hundreds to join the first Farm Gardens. Eventually, the program was expanded and became a feature of many parks across the city, including Betsy Head Memorial Park, in Brownsville, Brooklyn, which has given the community a space for health and recreation for over 100 years.

• Community gardens borrow from earlier urban-gardening movements, including the “Farm-Gardens” and Depression-era “subsistence gardens” which provided for communities across the city. Beginning in the 1960s, New Yorkers increasingly favored progressive government programs and looked towards the city to sponsor many past-due revitalization efforts for neighborhoods. One such effort was community gardens, which beautified abandoned lots and, most importantly, allowed the community to have an active say in the design of their urban environment.

Day in History

May 8, 1877. The first edition of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show opens at Gilmore’s Gardens, as the original Madison Square Garden was then known.

From the Archive

• From Newburgh, NY → Check out the Artist and Craftsman-style typography on this 1895 advertisement for a hardware store on Water Street.

• We were struck by just how tiny those windows are on this storefront facade at 148 Delancey Street. Are they an advertisement, or something else? Take a look and give us your guess.

• Explore the history of the Lower West Side, which included “Little Syria” located along lower Washington Street and the surrounding blocks from 1880-1920. 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.

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In our last issue, we showcased the Woolworth Building, which was from 1913 to 1930 was the tallest building in the world. In the early 20th century, a number of other slender towers rose alongside it in Lower Manhattan, including the Singer Building and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower. World War I paused construction throughout the country, but this lull was followed by a period of post-war prosperity. The boom culminated in another competition, this time in Midtown, where the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building were competing to claim the title of the world’s tallest building.

The Chrysler Building had its own secret weapon, a surprise spire, which was hoisted into place at the last moment, ultimately allowing it to beat out its downtown competitor 40 Wall Street. But it would not hold the crown for long. The ultimate winner of the race to the sky was the Empire State Building, which celebrates its 94th anniversary today.

The site of the Empire State Building has a long history. It was first purchased as a farm by the Astor family, then transformed into the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel before it was demolished and relocated north to Park Avenue. The land then passed to Empire State Inc., a group of wealthy investors who hired the architects Shreve, Lamb & Harmon to design a new tower. Early plans called for a modest 50-story building, but in a familiar tale, the ambitions kept climbing: ten stories were added, and then ten more, until the final design reached 102 stories.

The building was completed just over a year after construction began, opening on May 1, 1931, a full 45 days ahead of schedule. To ensure the tower would have unobstructed views of the city, height restrictions were placed on neighboring lots. But the developers of the Empire State had a bigger concern: that their four-foot lead over the rising Chrysler Building was too close for comfort. Read on for the secret weapon that won New York’s race to the sky.

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The Zeppelin Dock on Top of the World

• The “secret weapon” which made the Empire Building the tallest building in the world? A 200-foot mooring mast atop the 1,050-foot tall skyscraper, which developers claimed would be a landing dock for dirigibles and Zeppelins. In their idea, passengers would then descend the rocket-ship like mast and the 102-stories, reaching the streets of New York in seven short minutes. In practice, the idea proved unworkable, as high winds made docking nearly impossible. The mast remained, less as a piece of infrastructure than as a final assertion of height in New York’s most competitive building boom.

• The main entrance to the building on Fifth Avenue features three sets of metal doors flanked by sculpted eagles perched atop molded piers. In the national mythology of the era, eagles served as a symbol of America’s economic and military power, a fitting guardian for the building its developers intended as a monument to American power and ambition.

• Considered one of the finest surviving Art Deco interiors in New York City, the Empire State Building’s lobby features an aluminum relief showing the building itself, with rays of light reflecting off the mooring mast above a map of New York State.

Day in History

May 1, 1931. The Empire State Building is dedicated.

From the Archive

• Cinema Village, located at 22 East 12th Street, is the oldest continuously operated cinema in Greenwich Village and one of the oldest continuously operated art cinemas in the city. The building was a firehouse until it was converted to a movie theater in the 1960s.

• 100 Broad Street was once the Jacobean-style headquarters of the Bush Terminal Company, the manufacturing and shipping operation that built a self-sustaining city for its employees across the Brooklyn waterfront over the first half of the 20th century.

• With its distinctive, patterned brickwork and its height on a block nearly void of structures (today the building has only one low-rise neighbor to the east), the Hook and Ladder 66 firehouse on Northern Boulevard in Queens is eye-catching. Today, the station is used by one of the city’s elite Emergency Medical Squad- ESU units.

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The Woolworth Building is one of New York’s most striking pre-war skyscrapers. Dubbed the ‘Cathedral of Commerce,’ it served as both an advertisement for Woolworth’s brand (he selected the site for its visibility from the Brooklyn Bridge) and a testament to his personal financial success. Unusually, Woolworth paid the entire cost of the building, $13.5 million in cash. One might even say he paid for it in nickels and dimes.

F.W. Woolworth and his architect Cass Gilbert beg did not initially set out to build the tallest building in New York. Once construction began, Woolworth found it hard to pass up the opportunity to build higher. He contemplated the risks and delays that would come with adding additional height with his architect. Eventually, Woolworth “saw the commercial potential of the skyscraper’s location, with the building acting as a ‘giant signboard,’ advertising the greatness of his company, and as a way to make money, leasing floors to other companies, which would in turn raise the value of his real estate.”1

After hiring surveyors to confirm the height of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower, which was completed in 1909, Woolworth famously had the following exchange.2

“How high do you want the tower now?” asked Mr. Gilbert.

“How high can you make it?” Mr. Woolworth asked in reply.

“It is for you to make the limit,” said Mr. Gilbert.

“Then make it fifty feet higher than the Metropolitan Tower.”

The building was completed at a rapid pace, topping off at 792 feet high with 60 stories in 1913, just three years after its foundations were laid. A grand opening was held for nearly a thousand guests on the 27th floor of the building on April 24, 1913, sometimes called “the highest dinner party in New York.”

At 7:29, a telegraph was sent from the event to President Woodrow Wilson, who was in Washington at the time. New York Times reported the next day on the matter:

One minute later President Wilson touched the instrument, closing the circuit, which caused a bell to ring in the banquet hall and in the engine room, thirty stories below, and immediately and for the first time lights flashed from every floor of the fifty-five stories, from the sub-basement, 37 feet below the street level, to the top of the tower, 792 feet above the street.

Rising above lower Manhattan, the Woolworth Building transformed the skyline into a kind of advertisement, where height, light, and visibility became tools of business. Read on below to learn more:

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Building a Cathedral of Commerce

• The building was originally planned to occupy a much small site at the corner of Broadway and Park Place, and caissons were driven in the ground there to support the rising tower. However, Woolworth’s desire to complete the world’s tallest building meant he needed to expand the footprint along the full block of Broadway to Barclay Street. Foundation work began in 1910 (photographed here in 1911), and this model of the structure shows the front corner of the building, at Broadway and Park Place, with larger caissons at a higher density than the rest of the site. If placed end-to-end, the length of the caissons would stretch to about 1 mile.3

  

• The lobby was envisioned by Gilbert as an extension of the opulence of the Neo-Gothic exterior and is triple-heighted, perhaps a nod to the verticality of the tower. It features a grand staircase, walls clad in marble, and a glass ceiling overhead. As the height of the building necessitated elevators which would travel more than 700 feet, the engineers were cautious and tested them rigorously with methods that included: “dropping elevator cars filled with eggs and bottles to test the ‘air cushion.’” Curiously, there are also busts of architect (holding a model), owner (counting nickels), and structural engineer.

• Knowing that the building of the world’s tallest tower would become a great spectacle, Woolworth capitalized on the publicity. According to the New York Public Library, Woolworth hired commercial photographer Irving Underhill to document the building’s rise. He maintained a studio at Broadway and Park Place, opposite the site, and photographed construction at regular intervals. Photos were then sent to the Woolworth stores all over the country so all customers could know of the great construction taking place in New York. These photos show the rapid pace of construction, from February 20th to April 4th 1912, to this shot of the building’s copper roof coming on.

Day in History

April 24, 1913. The Woolworth Building, then the tallest skyscraper in the world, opens.

From the Archive

It’s National Library Week! We’re spotlighting the photos of some of our library partners below:

• In 1930, Queens Public Library drove its first “book bus” to City Hall. Named “The Pioneer,” the bus was a library on wheels, bringing the stacks to the neighborhoods of Queens.

• The Central Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library’s history dates back to 1889, when the Brooklyn Park Commission selected a location for the building near Grand Army Plaza.

• From Harrison, MS → Talk about a handsome building. Check out those spiral columns and the symmetry on the Old Biloxi Library (still standing), a Mission-style structure that was erected in 1925.

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