The Farley Post Office Building

The Farley General Post Office Building is located on the "superblock" between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, and 31st and 33rd Streets, within the 34th Street district in Manhattan.

It's massive, old, and almost looks out of place among the surrounding office buildings. A relic from a different time, its closest neighbor is Madison Square Garden. The Farley building was conceived and constructed to replace the 1878 General Post Office, located downtown on Park Row and Broadway.

Construction of the Pennsylvania Terminal Building, as it was called then, came on the heels of the completion of McKim, Mead & White's monumental Pennsylvania Station. In the photo below, taken in 1913, Penn Station sits in the foreground, with the Penn Terminal building just behind it, to the west, and, for a good measure of bizarre, a lone guy on the roof of the building in the lower right corner. He was probably counting Penn Terminal's colonnade of 20 Corinthian columns, designed to complement the facade of Penn Station. Both buildings were designed and built by McKim, Mead &White, Beaux-Arts kings in the early 1900s.

Photo: MCNY

Penn Station was completed in 1910, and that same year, ground was broken for the Penn Terminal building. Penn Terminal was finished in 1913, and opened for business in September, 1914. In this postcard, most likely issued shortly after the new post office opened, it's rendered quite majestically. The artist took some liberties with the gold-embellished columns, but it really was (and is) an impressive building.

Image: Pisark's Cards

In 1914, Ira Schnapp, who at the time was designing stamps for the Postal Department, was hired as a stone carver by the US Post Office Department to design, and hand-carve the famous quote on the building's front facade:

NEITHER SNOW NOR RAIN NOR HEAT NOR GLOOM OF NIGHT STAYS THESE COURIERS FROM THEIR APPOINTED ROUNDS

The quote comes from Herodotus' Histories 8.98, and refers to Angarum, the royal riding post in the Persian Empire. Schnapp had previous experience carving, having completed the front facade of the New York Public Library in 1911 when he was just 19 years old.

Around 1918, Penn Terminal was renamed General Post Office Building, and here it is in 1920.

Photo: NYPL Digital

In 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed James A. Farley as the 53rd Postmaster General. Under Farley's leadership, a western annex was added onto the existing building in 1934, and The General Post Office building was extended all the way to Ninth Avenue, giving it superblock status. Farley served until 1940, successfully managing the postal service during the Great Depression, and greatly improving trans-continental mailing services.The next two photos are from the Smithsonian's flikr page, which is definitely worth a visit.

In this photo, taken on June 15, 1936, postmen exit the building to deliver the first round of  WWI "bonus army" checks. In 1932, WWI veterans demonstrated in Washington DC, demanding faster payment for their Service Certificate Payment. Click through the photo for more information.

Below, postmen storm the Eighth Avenue steps to deliver holiday packages in 1952, fourteen years before the building was designated a New York City landmark in 1966, and ten years before demolition began on its neighbor Penn Station in 1962 to make way for Madison Square Garden.

Smithsonian flikr

You can still see a good bit of Farley history in the Farley Museum, located in the north pavilion, as well as the building itself. I was fortunate enough to get a brief work-related tour of part of the building. Here are a few photos.

Detailed ceilings in the front foyer

Postal delivery bike on display

Carrier pigeon service, and pigeon capsules(!) in the museum 

  Filigree staircase

 Steel girders in the loading dock (probably original)

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To read a more in-depth post about the history of the building, check out   Daytonian in Manhattan, and for a more thorough look at the inside of the building as it is now, before it turns into the new Moynihan Station,  check out  Scouting NY.

World's Tower Building: A 40th Street Gothic High-Rise in the Middle of Midtown Art Deco-land

A version of this post also appears on the Bryant Park blog.

Recently, there was shift of offices here at work. I went from sitting in an open area, sort of a combo - cubicle/bullpen setting, to a room with four walls, a door, and two windows that actually open (rare for a midtown office building).  Being able to somewhat control light and temperature levels and tell when it's dark outside is very nice. Like many working archivists, most of my former jobs took place in dreary basement-level rooms with poor air circulation (great when you are sorting through 30 year-old Thermofaxes layered in dust, or rotting photographs reeking of developing fixer solution) and no natural light. Now, I look out the window and see this building.

Photo: A. Kumer

Photo: A. Kumer

The World's Tower, at 110 West 40th Street, between Sixth Avenue and Broadway, has 30 above-ground levels, and a glazed terra cotta facade. When this Neo-Gothic building was completed in 1913, it was the tallest of its kind, on an extremely narrow, 50 foot-wide footprint, and made a striking impression in mid-town Manhattan.


Photo: MCNY

The architecture firm, Buchman & Fox, was commissioned by budding real estate magnate Edward W. Browning. According to New York Times Streetscapes columnist Christopher Gray, Browning was eccentric, throughout his life, steadily acquiring adoptive daughters (and marrying one), as well as skinny mid-block high-rises. You can also see part of the Empire (Eltinge) theater in the bottom right, with Billie Burke (later to play Glinda the Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz) on the marquee.


Photo: BPC Collection

Behold, midtown, more or less as we know it now. The above photograph, taken in 1935, and looking south-west from above and across Bryant Park, shows numerous high-rise buildings surrounding the Tower. The Union Dime Savings Bank building is in the lower right of the above photograph, and Bryant Park is just west, outside the bottom frame of the photograph.

**Note: The eccentric Browning link may not work w/o a NYT login. It's worth it though, so maybe get one and read the article anyway. Sorry!

Tunnels Under Bryant Park, Part 2

This post also appears on the Bryant park blog.

During its long tenure as a public park -- 165 years, if you go all the way back to 1846, when the City ordered construction of a public park, then called Reservoir Square, next to the Croton Reservoir -- Bryant Park has seen a lot of construction. 

In addition to the erection of a temporary structure now and then, usually for a public event or activity, such as the Crystal Palace in 1853, and Federal Hall in 1932, and more recently, the Citi Pond at Bryant Park, there have also been two large-scale reconstructive efforts: one in 1934 under the guidance of Robert Moses, which transformed the park from a Victorian to a French Classical design, and another in 1988, headed by Bryant Park Corporation, which in addition to giving the park a much needed facelift, included the installation of  NYPL stacks under the lawn. 


Photo: NYC Transit Museum

 


























The photo above, taken in 1924, shows a pedestrian view of 42nd street, on the north side of the park, during construction of the Flushing Line, now, the 7 train. Service began from Grand Central Terminal to Vernon-Jackson in Queens, on June 13, 1915. Over the next 13 years, the line extended to Flushing, Queens, and to Times Square. You can read more about it here, and of course, check out the more specific up-to-date 7 train line information here.


Running along 42nd Street, building the line turned much of the park into a construction site for about five years. 

Photo: BPC Photo Collection



Years later, while writing about the 1934 renovation of the park in the December 1, 1934 issue of the New Yorker, Lewis Mumford would recall " . . .those long dreary years, when it looked as if someone had struck oil there." Construction crews arrived in the park on June 2, 1922, and didn't leave until July 5, 1927. 



Street Eats and City Crowds -- 100 Years and Counting

This photo was posted on Shorpy's, a historic and vintage photo blog. It shows Herald Square, currently managed and maintained by the 34th Street Partnership, and the surrounding area, in 1908. That's the 6th Avenue elevated train on the right, and in front of the Herald building, the William Earle Dodge monument, now in Bryant Park.


Image from Shorpy's
























Although a relatively common view -- I'm pretty sure the photo was taken from the elevated subway station at 33rd Street, in Greeley Square -- what is special about this particular one, is the insane amount of detail and information it conveys. If you click here to see the high resolution photo, you will see much, much more.

This lunch wagon, spotted by a Shorpy's commenter, and re-blogged by Midtown Lunch, was parked on Sixth Avenue, east of the elevated train tracks, or, to their left in the above photo. The commenter, Copyboy, included an excerpt from a letter sent to the New York Times complaining the cart's placement on Sixth Avenue obstructed pedestrian and vehicular traffic from 34th Street, all the way to 42nd Street, on the northwest corner of Bryant park, where it was often seen.

Displayed on top of the facade of the Herald Building, shown in a close-up below, is the James Gordon Bennett Memorial, removed from the building in 1921, and later reinstalled on a Milford pink granite pedestal in the park in 1940. The owls are another story.

And there's this:

Not nearly as many people in the street then, as now, but it looks so much more chaotic. I can identify at least six different types of transportation in use: automobiles, trolley cars, horse-drawn carriages, walking, the elevated train (not in this close-up, but in the main shot), and that strange thing in the pink box that looks like a motorized pedi-cab with the driver in the back, and passengers up front.  I guess bicycles were still too new to be considered a viable form of transporation, rather than a leisure activity. Also, without traffic lanes, and  organized direction, the street looks more like a free-for-all than it likely was. They're probably all heading for the lunch wagons.

Happy Presidents' Day (Yesterday)!

February 22, 1732 marked the birth of our nation’s first President, George Washington. Now celebrated along with Abraham Lincoln's birthday as a federal holiday, Presidents' Day, on the third Monday of February. It's also an extra day off of work for many of us. 

In 1932, to celebrate the bicentennial of Washington's birth, the Washington Bicentennial Committee, headed by Sol Bloom  and Grover Whalen, was formed to erect a replica of Federal Hall just behind the NYPL, in Bryant Park. The original Federal Hall was located on Wall Street, and it was there that Washington took his first oath of office.

  

This building cost an estimated $8,000 to construct, and 25 cents per patron to enter. It stayed up for a little over a year after the celebration, mostly collecting dust and resentment. The faux Federal Hall stayed up for months, and was torn down in April 1933, at the urging of the Parks Department. The Commission was supposed to restore the park to its prior condition, but was thwarted by lack of funds. The often articulate barometer of widespread NYC sentiment, the New Yorker, referred to these as some of the park's "dreary years" in a December 1, 1934 article.

A much older, and slightly different version of this post is on the Bryant Park blog, posted around President's Day last year, and before I figured out what to do with pictures on blogs.

Bryant Park's Choice Seating

This post also appears on the Bryant park blog.

Bryant Park is known for many things, including an abundance of its iconic green chairs. Before the park had movable chairs, seating was much more limited. With only benches and a few picnic tables, people were often crowded together on the library steps, and perched on the balustrade (which is bad for the masonry).
 

northwest section of Bryant Park, 1983

Afternoon lunchers clustered around one of the NYPL flagpoles, 1991

During the restoration of Bryant Park, in the late 1980s, Park management heeded the advice of Urbanist William H. Whyte, and decided to introduce movable chairs into the park in time for its planned re-opening in 1992.

As Whyte aptly wrote in his book The Social Life of Urban Spaces: "Chairs enlarge choice: to move into the sun, out of it, to make room for groups, move away from them. The possibility of choice is as important as the exercise of it. If you know you can move if you want to, you feel more comfortable staying put."

During the summer of 1991, most of the park was not quite yet ready for the public. However, Park management, the NYC Parks Department, and Community Board 5, agreed to a partial opening of the fountain terrace on July 1, 1991. To prepare, the BPC (then called, Bryant Park Restoration Project) purchased 400 sturdy, white stackable chairs.

Park users enjoying the new seating on the fountain terrace, 1991



This trial run of movable furniture received ample positive feedback from the press, and more importantly, park users. By the time the entire park was re-opened to the public, on April 22, 1992, BPC replaced the white chairs with the now iconic, green Fermob chairs.  

Horace Greeley Turns 200!

This is somewhat of a shameless plug for an upcoming event that I helped organize. It's a bicentennial, complete with a mini historical reenactment of sorts. Should be fun. My Berkeley roots, and Jr. High goth history are both evident in the cast of characters (Karl Marx and Edgar Allen Poe make appearances). I'll be there too, most likely without the black lipstick and communist flag.

Anyway, here is the post and event info. It also appears in the Bryant Park blog.

Local historians might be aware that Horace Greeley  --  newspaper publisher, abolitionist, and presidential candidate (he lost to Ulysses S. Grant) – turns 200 this Thursday, February 3rd.  Greeley  is the namesake of Greeley Square Park in the heart of the 34^th Street District, a few blocks south of Bryant Park. What's his connection to Bryant Park?  In 1851, while traveling in London, Greeley attended, and was blown away by, the Great Exhibit of 1851, housed in the Crystal Palace at Hyde Park. Amazed by the breadth and content of the work, when he returned to the states, he met with friend, entertainer, and promoter P.T. Barnum and New York City officials to form a committee to bring a similar exhibition to the City. 

The Crystal Palace, also known as the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations, was situated next to the Croton Reservoir (now the location of the New York Public Library), where Bryant Park is today.  You can read more about the Crystal Palace and the Croton Reservoir,  here.

Interior of the NYC Crystal Palace exhibit, opened on July 14, 1853

To celebrate Greeley's birthday, our sister BID, the 34^th Street Partnership, has planned a fun and informative program celebrating his life, with a musical performance from the Horace Greeley High School Madrigal Choir, and a re-dedication of the Horace Greeley monument by NYC Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. A number of Horace Greeley’s friends and collaborators will be in attendance, including Edgar Allen Poe, Margaret Fuller, Abraham Lincoln, and Karl Marx, among others – played by members of the Horace Greeley Drama Department – to reminisce Greeley’s numerous accomplishments and contributions to New York journalism. Also in attendance, will be a number of Greeley’s living descendants, introduced by “Horace Greeley” himself.

Early 1900s postcard showing the Greeley monument in Greeley Square Park

This special celebration begins at 11:00am and is free and open to the public. Hot chocolate will be provided by ’wichcraft.   

Event:  Happy 200th Birthday Horace Greeley
Date:   February 3, 2011
Time:  11:00 a.m.
Place:  Greeley Square Park (Between 32nd and 33rd Streets; Broadway and 6th Avenue)