House of Mansions to Bankers' Trust

This post also appears on the Bryant park blog.
 
In 1855, developer George Higgins bought a plot of land at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, across the street from the Croton Distributing Reservoir. He hired American architect Alexander J. Davis to design a new building, and the result was this 11 unit luxury residential complex with crenelated parapets (like a castle!). Completed in 1856 and advertised as the House of Mansions, the housing complex promised residents views of "the water of the Croton, like an artificial pool, or lake . . . from the upper floors."  

Fifth Avenue looking south from 42nd Street. Image [1880]: NYPL or LOC

Just a few years earlier, the nearby Crystal Palace and Latting Observatory attracted visitors from all over, and helped establish midtown Manhattan as a tourist destination. Though the area was far from urban at the time, Higgins no doubt noticed the gradual migration of wealthy Manhattanites north along Fifth Avenue, and hoped to cash in on it. 

As history blogger Daytonian in Manhattan writes, Higgins' plan did not work -- Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street was still considered too rural for most New Yorkers. (The  Samuel P. "Sasparilla" Townsend residence had only recently been built at 34th and Fifth, and that's eight blocks south.) The property was bought and sold a few more times, and eventually the Rutgers Female Institute (later, Rutgers Female College) relocated here. A formal dedication ceremony was held on October 24, 1860. The school soon outgrew this location as well, and the property passed through a few more owners.

Fifth Avenue looking north from 41st Street, [1883].

By 1884 the Pottier & Stymus Manufacturing Company had purchased the land, demolished the structures, and built a new building on the site. The New York Times called it "extensive and elegant," and described the building as having a brownstone frontage on Fifth Avenue as well as a side entrance on 42nd Street. (I think it's the building in the photo below with the wall sign that reads "American Safe Deposit Bank.")

Fifth Avenue, looking north toward 42nd Street [1900-1910]. Image: LOC

By this time the landscape of Fifth Avenue had changed from rural to commercial, with a brief residential heydey in between. The area surrounding 34th Street by now had transformed from residential to retail, and many of the brownstones near 42nd Street were rapidly being torn down and replaced with commercial buildings and warehouses. 

The next ten years brought more changes and taller buildings to Fifth Avenue. In 1915 the Oceanic Investment Company announced the construction of a new building to be named after the building's primary tenant, the Astor Trust Company. The Astor Trust Company was set to move from their existing offices on Fifth Avenue and 36th Street and into this building, occupying a 21-year lease upon the building's completion in 1917.

Astor Trust Company building, NE corner of Fifth Ave. and 42nd Street, 1917. Image: LOC

The building's architect was Montague Flagg, also known for designing the Thomas Cook building at 565 Fifth Avenue, which is no longer. The Astor Trust Company building was eventually renamed the Bankers' Trust building and still stands, though it's no longer the tallest on the block, and there isn't a crenelated parapet to be found. 

Other Sources:
The Fifth Avenue Association. Fifty Years on Fifth, 1907-1957.
Lockwood, Charles. Manhattan Moves Uptown: An Illustrated History.

A Tower Among Skyscrapers

This post also appears on the Bryant Park blog.

In the late 1960s the city began mounting art exhibitions in outdoor public spaces throughout Manhattan. Bryant Park's central location made it the perfect space for exhibiting large sculptures, and in the following years, several were displayed on the expansive lawn. One of the first was Kenneth Snelson's Needle Tower, as seen in the photo below with Sixth Avenue in the background. (This view is almost unrecognizable now, because the buildings that appear to be along Sixth now have larger buildings in front of them; the Bush Tower looks fantastic.)

Needle Tower in Bryant Park, 1967. Photo: Parks Department

Snelson's 60' x 20' tower was accompanied by three smaller pieces, and received positive feedback from the public as well as critics. Needle Tower is a "tensegrity" work -- the word is a combination of the terms tension and structural integrity. Compressed parts (in this case, bars or tubes) are attached not to one another, but to a network of cables. The tension of the cables dictates the structural shape and stability of the whole object. The term supposedly was coined by Buckminster Fuller, but Snelson argues that he came up with the underlying principle.  

Watch a computer animation of Needle Tower assembling itself along with several other examples of tensegrity on Snelson's youtube channel.

Snelson with several smaller models including Needle Tower (center). 

Today, the tower stands outside the Hirshhorn Gallery in Washington DC.

Photo: AK

New York City's commitment to public art continues today with the Art in the Parks Program.

Read more about public art exhibited in Bryant Park, including works by Mel Chin, George Rickey,  Alexander Calder, Kate Gilmore, and Sheryl Oring.

Happy 100th Birthday, Hotel McAlpin

It's now a residential building called the Herald Towers that somewhat blends in with surrounding tall architecture, but when it was first built in 1912, the Hotel McAlpin was a formidable presence. At 25 stories tall, it was the largest hotel in the world with 1,500 rooms, not including the Turkish bath, roof garden (a solid amenity if there ever was one), ballroom (throwback to the Gilded Age), and convention hall (meh).

The McAlpin going up, March 1912. Photo: MCNY

The building was designed by American architect Frank Mills Andrews and besides its fortuitous location next to the Sixth Avenue El train, it was smack in the center of rapidly changing part of the city. In 1912, the Macy's store on West 34th Street and Broadway (across the street) was celebrating its tenth year, and the area was quickly transforming from the den of sin it was in the late 1800s to a retail and hospitality center. A few blocks away on 34th Street at Park Avenue, the Vanderbilt Hotel was under construction; the Titanic sank in April 1912, taking with it Macy's founder Isidor Strauss; and the first monument dedicated to a woman was celebrated in Bryant Park. One year earlier, the New York Public Library opened its doors to the public, and in 1913, the Grand Central Oyster Bar opened its doors. In short, people were traveling, shopping, and eating out more.

The Hotel McAlpin opened for business on December 29, 1912, a Monday.

Photo: LOC

A year after the hotel's opening, members of the Blackfoot Confederacy from Montana visited the hotel. The visit was arranged by Louis W. Hill, fonder of the Northern Railroad Company to promote train service from western states.

Photo: MCNY

All sorts of PR stunts were staged, some with phonographs.

Photo: MCNY

The McAlpin was also one of the first hotels to rent ground-level space to retailers. By 1917,  the hotel's owners had purchased additional frontage along the 34th Street entrance, and were slated to add 200 more rooms.

Photo: NYPL

The McAlpin was also known for its restaurant located in the Alpine Cellar, called the Marine Grill, not so much for the food, as for the decor. The walls and ceilings were covered in Terra Cotta murals based on paintings by Fred Dana Marsh, and showed the history of the New York harbor. 

Marine Grill, c. 1924. Photo: MCNY

The restaurant eventually closed, but thankfully the murals were rescued and are now installed at the Chambers Street / Park Place A train stop as part of the MTA's public art program.

Postcard: Pisark's

 

Sounds Like Fighting Words

Recently my boss asked me to find the first recording of a U.S. President. I thought it may have been Teddy Roosevelt, but it wasn't, and so I went backwards, finding and listening to recordings of McKinley, then Cleveland, until I got to what actually was the first recording of a U.S. President - 23rd President Benjamin Harrison, recorded in 1889. Harrison was in office from 1889-1893, nestled in between Grover Cleveland's two non-consecutive terms. He looks like he sounds.

23rd President Benjamin Harrison sitting pretty, 1888

It could have stopped there, but I got lost in the wonderful audio rabbit hole that is the Library of Congress's main sound recording page. I highly recommend spending some time with the Vaudeville recordings. They are amazing, and quite distracting.

Of course, then it's "What were these early recordings made with and listened on?" When I was looking into the history of sound playing/recording devices, I noticed that two names kept popping up: Thomas Edison and German inventor Emile Berliner. At first I thought Thomas Edison pulled a fast one on Berliner, just like he did Nikola Tesla (be still my heart). You know the story. But no, Edison filed his patent (no. 200,521, issued February 18, 1878) a few years before Berliner, and no doubt got the word out and the cash flow in first as well.

Thomas Edison wearing a very plaid suit and posing with his cylinder phonograph, [1878-1880]

Thomas Edison filed a patent for the first cylinder phonograph in 1878, and followed it up with several additional patents for modifications and improvements. Lines and grooves were scratched on the surface of a cylinder (part? object? thing?) of the phonograph, and as it moved, vibrations produced sound.

Edison had that market cornered for about ten years, until German inventor Emile Berliner came along with his gramophone in 1887. [There's a typo on the Google link to this patent, saying it was originally filed in 1837, not 1887. Huzzah?!]

Emile Berliner, so happy with his gramophone that his eyes are closed, [1910-1929]

Berliner changed (and improved) the design by swapping the cylinder out for a disc-shaped plate, also with grooves. He experimented with a number of materials for the discs including celluloid and hard rubber.  He marketed it to toy companies, and throughout the late 1880s he and Edison entered into a patent-filing war, adjusting and tweaking their respective inventions.

Berliner may have had the last laugh though. During a visit to London in 1900, he saw a painting by Mark Barraud of the artist's dog "Nipper" peering into a gramophone, called "His Master's Voice." Berliner trademarked the image and it went on to become one of the most iconic images in advertising history. Funny thing is, is that the gramophone in the painting is an Edison-Bell model. Apparently the image was first shopped to the Edison company and they turned it down.

"His Master's Voice" by Mark Barraud. Image: wikipedia

**All photos except for "Nipper" are from LOC's digital collection.

The Herald Building: Now with a Duane Reade!

This post also appears on Fashion Herald.

The New York Herald building at West 35^th Street where Broadway meets Sixth Avenue, was a two-story building designed by Stanford White of architecture firm McKim, Mead & White. White was commissioned to build it for friend James Gordon Bennett Jr. to house the new Herald offices when the paper moved uptown from Park Row in 1894. The story of the Herald and its founders are here, here, and here.

Photo: MCNY

The Herald had offices in this building until Bennett Jr.’s death in 1918. Soon after, Frank Munsey bought the paper and merged it with the New York Sun to create the Herald-Sun. The new combo-paper’s offices were moved to West 42^nd Street. 

The north half of the building was demolished in 1921, leaving only the southern part, statues intact on the  building’s façade. 

Photo: MCNY

Eventually, in 1930, a new, 24-story office building was designed and built by the architecture firm Clinton & Russell where the northern half used to be. The firm was founded in 1894, the same year the Herald building was completed (weird coincidence!).

Photo: Berenice Abbott via the  NYPL and MCNY

In the 1930s the Sixth Avenue Group (a business improvement group of sorts) sponsored a contest to re-design and “beautify” the area following construction of a new underground subway line and station, and the razing of the Sixth Avenue elevated line. The low rise portion of the Herald building was completed in 1940. I’m pretty sure that "completed" meant that the building was stripped of its Stanford White-designed façade work and given the 1940s-1950s simple (sterile) treatment. The front windows are much larger in the new building, and the ground floor looks lower, but I think the building's original bones are still there. That same year, the James Gordon Bennett memorial was installed in Herald Square in the form of a 40 ft. tall monument, unveiled during a dedication ceremony on November 19, 1940. 

Postcard: Pisark's

Herald Square and the surrounding area went into a decline in the 1970s and 1980s, but were brought back to life with a late 1990s renovation by the 34th Street Partnership.The building is still there, and the first two floors are currently home to a massive Duane Reade.Time marches on.

Additional Sources:

Kruger, Richard. The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune

“Sixth Ave. Group to Beautify Parks,” NYT, March 24, 1939

“Frank A. Munsey Buys the Herald and the Telegram,” NYT, January 15, 1920

The James Gordon Bennetts' New York Herald, Part 3

This is part 3 of a 3 part series on the New York Herald.

After returning to the States, Bennett commissioned Stanford White to design new offices for the Herald. The new building would be located a fair distance from Park Row and competitor Joseph Pulitzer's World building, completed in 1890. Bennett obtained a 30-year lease at Sixth Avenue and 35th Street, at the south border of a small clearing then known as Dodge Plaza in honor of William Earle Dodge, who I've mentioned before.

Park Row, and most of the competition

Bennett chose the new site for its proximity to public transportation and nightlife. The elevated train line had been built a few years before, and now afforded the public, including Herald's reporters, easy access to most parts of the city. The site also bordered Tin Pan Alley, and several music halls and theaters, including places like Jim Corbett's and the Haymarket.

Corbett's, said to be a hangout spot for JGB Jr., c. 1900. Photo: MCNY

No stranger to scandal himself, Stanford White designed an elaborate Renaissance Revival building based on Fra Giancondo's Loggia del Consiglio, a late 15th century seat of the local city council in Verona.  The Loggia's roof was lined with sculptures of famous poets, including the risque poet Catallus. It is said that this inspiration was chosen on purpose as a nod of sorts to the Herald's coarse nature and Bennett's sporting life.

Instead of poets lining the roof, Bennett chose his spirit animal, the owl. Supposedly he claimed that an owl's cry saved him at sea during his Civil War service.

the Herald building shortly after construction. Postcard: Pisark's

A couple of them are now incorporated in the Bennett memorial in Herald Square. I've written of the monument before, and so have others. . .

Ever-conscious of public perception, Bennett mandated that there would be windows along the Broadway side of the building allowing passersby to view the presses below. People loved it and regularly crowded at them to watch sheet after sheet of the Herald come off the presses.

The Herald building's elaborate western facade and people crowding near the windows, c. 1902 Photo: LOC

And, what they saw below:


The Herald presses, c. 1902. Photo: LOC

The acclaim of the building and increased commerce of the area led to a name change for the Square. It became known as Herald Square in the late 1890s. Still a commercial hub, now instead of newspapers, the square welcomes millions of daily shoppers.

Part 1 can be found here; part 2 here.

More sources:
Broderick, Mosette. Triumvirate, McKim, Mead & White: Art, Architecture, Scandal, and Class in America’s Gilded Age.

The James Gordon Bennetts' New York Herald, Part 2

This is part 2 of a 3 part series on the New York Herald.

In 1866 James Gordon Bennett Sr. passed the publishing duties of the New York Herald on to a man who many thought to be an unlikely successor -- his son James Gordon Bennett Jr.

Image: NYPL

James Gordon Bennett Jr. is best known in history for his devotion to yachting, ballooning, and socializing on a grand scale. Mostly due to the Herald's commercial success, he was raised to cultivate and enjoy just about any recreational activity that required expensive equipment and/or traveling. Aside from a brief stint serving as a Third Lieutenant for the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service during the Civil War, Bennett practiced a life of leisure with a consistency and fervor that led artist friend and Julius LeBlanc Stewart to paint it at least twice. 

On the Yacht "Namouna", Venice (1890), Julius LeBlanc Stewart

 . . . with totally different lighting schemes. The sky in the painting below looks like the sun is rising and setting at the same time.

Yachting on the Mediterranean (1896), Julius LeBlanc Stewart



As publisher of the Herald JGB Jr. had an extensive list of "Don'ts" for reporters to follow. The list contained very detailed instructions on how to address or refer to the wealthy (i.e. his friends) in text. Father and son were a study in opposites: James Gordon Bennett Sr. was known for exposing scandal, and James Gordon Bennett Jr. was known for living it. Their contradictory lifestyles did not escape other members of the press, who regularly satirized both, and often referred to Jr. as "The Commodore." Here, JGB Sr. visits his namesake from the grave to keep him in line, and Jr. reacts.

Image: NYPL

Under Bennett Jr.'s leadership, the Herald's circulation gradually dropped and expenses steadily rose. Bennett moved to Paris in 1877 (Wikipedia, 4th paragraph) and continued to run the newspaper from there. While in Paris, he launched the Paris Herald (forerunner to the International Herald Tribune), and an evening edition of the paper called the Telegraph. He wasn't gone for good though. The famous Herald building was still yet to be built and the Square named after the paper of the same name. More on this in part 3.

Part 1 of this series can be found here.