It’s always interesting when architecture tries to send a message. In the case of the New York Life Insurance Building near Madison Square Park, the message was stability. I really enjoyed reading up on this building; the architect was Cass Gilbert, the same architect as the Woolworth Building, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Alexander Hamilton Customs House in Bowling Green. The landmark’s designation report touched on how for a life insurance company, who sold no tangible products, it was important to show strength and trust in its buildings. The building was finished in 1928, but the company is far older. It was founded in 1841 as the Nautilus Insurance Company; why they changed their name from that, I’ll never know. The company experienced a lot of growth in the second half of the 19th century by both expanding westward and, more dubiously, quickly reviving policies that they had with their southern clients right after the Civil War. The building is still home to New York Life; it was landmarked on October 24th, 2000.
Montrose Morris was one of Brooklyn’s most prolific architects, but he got that way by hustling. This building at 232 was a model home and office he built to show off what he could do. This led to multiple commissions throughout Brooklyn many of which are landmarked today.
The three blocks from King Street to Vandam Street west of 6th Avenue form a small, unique historic district. The creatively named Charlton-King-Vandam Historic District has a long and storied history. In the 1700s, it was home to a large estate called Richmond Hill which would be used as both Washington’s headquarters during the Revolution and later the Vice Presidential Mansion for John Adams. The land was purchased by Aaron Burr, who then was forced to sell it to John Jacob Astor. Astor began developing the estate into a full-blown neighborhood, which is why all of the buildings around here were built within a few years of each other. These at Nos. 15 and 17 were built in 1826 and are virtually unchanged since their construction. Most of the buildings in this area would have had peaked roofs like these. A Reverend Cornelius Demarest appears to have owned No. 15 as well as other buildings on this block. The only information I was able to find on him was that he was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church and appears to have graduated from Rutgers and died in 1866. 15 & 17 King Street were landmarked as a part of the Charlton-King-Vandam Historic District on August 16th, 1966.
In 1895, James Weir Jr. had this magnificent greenhouse built on the corner of 5th Avenue and 25th Street in Brooklyn, to cater to the throngs of guests and mourners visiting Green-Wood Cemetery. The Weirs would remain in this building until 1971. After a massive restoration project by Green-Wood, the greenhouse reopened as the new visitors center and museum.
The Carroll Street Bridge is one of the oldest remaining in Brooklyn, with a single wooden span that still on occasion carries traffic. The Bridge is a retractable bridge so it literally slides on rails to a holding area while ship traffic goes through. Over its history this had led to it being jammed and today it is still open to facilitate clean up of the canal. While the rapid growth of luxury buildings has gone up around the bridge, it has been determined that its foundation is in rough shape and the city is currently studying ways to secure the bridge. It is one of 4 remaining retractable bridges in the United States and was made a landmark by New York City in 1987.
This is a deceptively large house on Clinton Avenue in Brooklyn. Constructed in 1905 for John Shepard by Manhattan based architect Theodore Visscher. Clinton Hill had turned into “the” place to be in Brooklyn following the move of the Pratt Family to the neighborhood, Shepard was the assistant treasurer of the Title Guarantee and Trust Company making this an ideal location to build his home. What makes this house so unique is its design. It extends deep into the lot allowing it to maintain a rather tidy symmetrical entryway, and it’s one of the few buildings that was built in a Venetian Revival Style in New York. The only other big examples of this were the Pulitzer Mansion, and the Montauk Club in Park Slope. It underwent renovations in 2004 and is still a single family home. It was landmarked as a part of the Clinton Hill Historic District on November 10th, 1981.
It’s come to my attention that this house is currently for sale. If you find yourself lucky enough to become the owner of this piece of history I would very much like to become friends. Here’s an entry I wrote about it a few months ago. There are few things as quaint in this fine city as a wooden home in Brooklyn Heights. This particular house at 25 Cranberry Street was built some time before 1829, based on other homes in the neighborhood, it’s safe to say it was sometime between 1820-1829 or so. This would have been an early home on the former estate of the Hick’s brothers, who had subdivided their family estate for residential development and gave the streets their names. When the home was built, Brooklyn Heights had a different numbering system, so this was actually 45 Cranberry Street. That changed in 1871 when it became No. 25. At that time, the owner of the home was a James Heckler, who was an early medical device salesman, or surgical device dealer, as he was called back then. When looking up the address in the archive of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Heckler was reported to have been called for jury duty in a murder trial but was not empaneled. Looking through that article is a bit of a head scratcher, as it literally listed the names, and addresses, of all of the jurors who were called, and empaneled for the trial. Could you imagine that today? A newspaper just casually identifying the names and location of all the jurors in a murder trial? Anyway, what might be more shocking than that is that the house sold in 2020 for $1.5 Million dollars which is a STEAL. I’m wondering if it was a sale to a close friend or if the house was in rough shape, either way kudos to whoever lives there now. 25 Cranberry Street was landmarked as part of the Brooklyn Heights Historic District on November 23rd, 1965. This was taken on Kodak Ektar 100.
I’ve been putting a lot of old buildings on this page that have been converted into luxury condos, but how about the opposite? How about a former mansion turned into a shop and regular apartments? Well, that’s what happened to 271 West 72nd Street. It was built in 1895 by architect Gilbert Schellenger for owner Spencer Aldrich. I’m unsure if it was a speculative development or built for Aldrich himself. What’s unique about this house for the time was that more often than not, developments would include multiple versions of the same home in a row. This house was a single development, so none of the surrounding buildings looked like it. At some point, it was subdivided into apartments and altered to include a storefront on the 72nd Street side. It was landmarked as a part of the West End Collegiate Historic District Extension on June 25th, 2013.
Today we’re looking home from the 1850s near Stuyvesant Square in Manhattan. 330 East 18th Street was built in 1851 by George and Theodore Young, who were carpenters and who also constructed the other houses on this block. 330 is one of three two-story homes that still survive in the neighborhood. The land these houses were built on was originally part of the Stuyvesant Bowery or Farm. The descendants of Peter Stuyvesant, the last Director General of New Amsterdam, were the ones who sold this land off to be developed. No. 330 and its neighbors are some of the oldest buildings left in this area. It was landmarked on March 20th, 1973.
Walking through the West Village, 282 West 11th Street stuck out to me. It may have been the stately light brick, or the blue door, but turns out this is one of the oldest buildings left in the village. It was built in 1818 for a man by the name of Aaron Henry. Henry was a retired clothier who decided to try his hand at real estate. In the early 19th century, Henry constructed over 9 buildings in the West Village. Unfortunately for him, he was much better at making clothes than making a profit on property development. In order to stave off his creditors, he had to sell off two of his buildings on Perry Street. They were auctioned off at the local coffee house in 1821. 282 West 11th Street was landmarked as a part of the Greenwich Village Historic District on April 29th, 1969.
Carriage houses are not that common in Park Slope. The bulk of the neighborhood’s development came just around the time of expanded rail access to Manhattan as well as the automobile, making the need for horse, carriage, and driver storage far less important. One of the few exceptions to this is located at 860 Union Street. This was built as stables for the neighboring Maxwell Mansion, located at the corner of 8th and Union. Despite my best efforts, I can’t find any information about when the mansion or this carriage house were built. What we do know is in 1923, the mansion was torn down with apartments put in its place. These new apartments had a very whimsical medieval look to them. That same year, the owners of the carriage house hired the firm of Caughy & Evans to redesign the facade to fit in with its much larger neighbor. 860 Union Street is now a single-family home which last sold in 2007. It was landmarked as part of the Park Slope Historic District on July 17th, 1973.
It’s rare to find a two story building in a prime retail corridor of Manhattan, and yet, the McCrory building occupies a large footprint in the Flatiron district. Built in 1912 on 18th and 6th Avenue, the McCrory building was an annex of the Price building which faced 6th Avenue. John McCrory was a successful businessman who ran a Five and Dime chain which he found in Pennsylvania which lasted over 100 years. Although designed to be connected to the neighboring building, they were separate for years while the lessees worked out some differences and were eventually merged. At one point, it served as a bar, a car showroom, and is now an Old Navy. The McCrory building was landmarked as a part of the Ladies’ Mile Historic District on May 2nd, 1989. Photo 1 is the McCrory Building, photo 2 is the Price Building.
New York in the middle of the nineteenth century was a city in flux. No longer a provincial back water, the city was beginning to attract waves of immigration from Europe. As a result, New York was overwhelmed by 30,000 new residents a year, mostly poor people fleeing political unrest and famine. Due to the massive rise in poverty the city was seeing, wealthy New Yorkers began to form charitable societies to assist them. In 1850, The New York House and School of Industry was founded. It was run by women from prominent families to assist poor women by teaching them how to sew. They moved to this building, designed by architect Sidney V. Stratton on West 16th Street in 1878. It was one of the first examples of the Queen Anne style of architecture in the New York at the time. The New York School and House of Industry operated for more than a century before merging with The Greenwich House in 1951. Today, the building still serves the disadvantaged by housing the Young Adults Institute, an organization that assists young people with developmental disabilities. It was landmarked by The City of New York on October 2nd, 1990. This is one of the entries from my book Hidden Landmarks of New York. If you don’t own it yet, I hear it’s wonderful so why don’t you check it out?
The rapid industrialization of cities in the mid-19th century saw a push by planners and developers to incorporate more green space into the urban landscape. This is evident with the construction of Central Park and Prospect Park in the middle of that century. Some developers wanted to take that even further; the men who developed Prospect Park South sought to make a neighborhood that would be “free from the noise and turmoil of the city, yet accessible to it.” At the turn of the 20th century, that’s exactly what they did. Park Slope South is full of large single-family homes that look like they’re in Larchmont and not Brooklyn. This particular home at 1306 Albermarle Road was built in 1905 for John Eakins, the owner of a dye manufacturing company. It last sold in 2009 for $1.6 million. The listing mentioned the income one could receive by renting it out for movie shoots that like to frequent the neighborhood. 1306 Albermarle Road was landmarked as a part of the Prospect Park South Historic District on February 8th, 1979.
Lower 5th Avenue is home to some of the most majestic-looking buildings in the city, relics of Gilded Age Manhattan. 141-147 5th Avenue is one of the jewels adorning the neighborhood’s crown. Construction on it began in 1896 for developer Henry Corn, to be used as lofts and office space. The 5th Avenue portion was completed in 1897, and the 21st Street side by 1900. Early on in its history, it was home to a “fancy” grocery store, so probably the early 20th-century equivalent of Eataly, a lithograph studio as well as stores that sold hats, lace, and jewelry. It was converted in the mid-1900s to more office space and lost some of its original luster. It was refurbished in 2005, and a 3-story penthouse was put in the cupola in 2010, which sold a year later for $12.9 million. 141-147 5th Avenue was landmarked as a part of the Ladies’ Mile Historic District on May 2nd, 1989.
Brooklyn was dubbed “America’s first suburb” when it was an independent village and later a city. If you want to get a sense of what that suburban life could have looked like, head on down to 9th Street and 4th Avenue near Park Slope. This house was built in 1856 by Wall Street banker William Cronyn on an old farm. At the time, this neighborhood would have been very rural. It would be the equivalent of having an upstate home today. The house was also reportedly designed by architect Patrick Keely, who would go on to build over 600 churches in the United States. After the Cronyns moved out, the house remained residential until the late 1800s when it became offices for a neighboring ink factory. Luckily for us, they did not destroy or remove parts of the building, leaving it remarkably intact. It is now a private residence and music shop. You can find it at 271 9th Street in Park Slope. It was landmarked on July 11th,1978
It’s hard to believe, but the Upper East Side used to be a country getaway from the hustle and bustle of New York when it was confined below Chambers Street. The Mount Vernon Hotel Museum gives New Yorkers a glimpse of that past. This building was actually the stable built for Abigail Adams Smith, the daughter of John Adams, in 1799. The Smiths never saw it to completion as financial trouble forced them to sell the property. It was converted into the Mount Vernon Hotel in 1826, catering to a more middle-class clientele offering horse trotting and fishing in the East River. Nowadays, it is surrounded on all sides by massive residential and commercial development and is in the shadow of the Queensboro Bridge. It was converted into a museum by the Colonial Dames of New York. The Mount Vernon Hotel Museum, or Abigail Adams Smith House, can be found on East 61st Street between 1st and York Avenues. It received its landmark designation from the City of New York on January 24th, 1967.
This building is 128 feet long. The further south you go in Manhattan, the more likely you are to stumble upon an interesting-shaped building. Because of the oblong block at the corner of Canal and Broadway, this bank had to incorporate a unique design. The First National City Bank of New York was a successor to Alexander Hamilton’s Federal Bank, and would eventually become Citibank. In 1927, when this bank was built, this was the pinnacle of modern design. It was built to service the various industries in Tribeca back when it was full of factories and warehouses as opposed to Taylor Swift. The irony was that just two years later, the bank’s parent company would suffer tremendous losses due to the stock market crash, and its CEO, Charles Mitchell, was a major contributor to said crash. His house still exists by the way, it’s now the French Consulate. Citi Bank remained at the building until 1990. It has since been converted into a retail space. The First National City Bank Building was landmarked as a part of the Tribeca East Historic District on December 8th, 1992.
When the subway opened in 1904, station design was a as much a work of art as utility. At the time, there was a great sense of excitement and optimism for this new form of transportation, so much so that one of the leading architectural firms was hired to build it this head house at Bowling Green. If you’ve never heard of Heins and Lafarge, you definitely are familiar with their work. They designed the Cathedral is St. John the Divine, the chapel at Columbia University as well as the original buildings at the Bronx Zoo to name a few. They designed this station to be vaguely Dutch in appearance. The choice of style relates to the buildings location at the former site of Fort Amsterdam and the site of the first windmill in New Amsterdam. It was landmarked on November 20th, 1973.
Happy Easter to those who celebrate. The Fordham University Church, located on the university’s 80-acre Bronx campus, is one of its oldest buildings. It was built in 1845 as a seminary and parish church and was very modest compared to what stands today. Over the years, additions and modifications were made to expand it to its present size. The church has a few notable features. Six of its stained-glass windows were gifts from King Louis-Philippe of France, the main altar was from St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and the single bell in the belfry was rumored to be the inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, “The Bells.” Poe, who lived up the street in the Bronx, befriended the Fordham Jesuits and spent time on campus throughout his life. It was landmarked on August 18th, 1970.