The photographic firm of E. & H.T. Anthony & Co. captured this unusual view of New York’s City Hall on a warm sunny day in 1870.
The view shows a vacant plaza in front of this normally bustling area . Continue reading
Siegel-Cooper Department Store has been gone for over 100 years. But in 1898, Henry Siegel and Frank H. Cooper’s emporium was the Amazon of its day.
In the 1890s Siegel and Cooper successfully operated a department store in Chicago before setting their sights on an expansion in New York.
What Siegel, the driving force of the concern, conceived in New York was not just a department store, it was the “Big Store.” The Siegel-Cooper Department Store was built on Sixth Avenue between 18th and 19th streets. It was a great location, then being New York’s primary shopping district known as the “Ladies Mile.” Within a half mile stretch of Sixth Avenue between 14th and 23rd Streets could be found the giants of retailing including Macy’s; Altman’s; Hugh O’Neill’s; Adam’s Dry Goods;, Ehrich Brothers; and Simpson, Crawford & Simpson.
The Siegel-Cooper Big Store building opened on September 12, 1896 and was an instant smash with the public.
Siegel-Cooper provided the nineteenth century shopper with a incredible array of goods, from abdominal bands to zephyrs and everything in between. Perhaps the most unusual article available for sale was “Baby”, a live, baby female elephant. Baby was sold within two weeks of the store’s opening for $2,000.
Among the store’s innovations was a nursery with trained nurses Continue reading
The “Cathedral of Commerce,” still stands out on lower Broadway as an extraordinary building.
Frank Winfield Woolworth engaged architect Cass Gilbert to build him a grand office tower in 1910. Woolworth paid 13.5 million, all cash, for the land and construction of the building.
When completed in 1913 the 792 foot tower was the tallest building in the world and remained so until 1930. The top of the Woolworth Building had an observation deck where people could plunk down fifty cents to get a seventy mile panoramic view.
In 2015 the upper half of the fabulous Woolworth Building was converted to ritzy apartments. The apex of Frank Woolworth’s monument to nickels and dimes, the observation deck and its four adjoining floors is now a penthouse trophy apartment. Years after the Woolworth Building’s conversion the five story penthouse is still for sale with no takers,. The asking price has been reduced from $110 million to (a more reasonable?) $79 million.
For those looking for a relative bargain, there is the 16 acre former Woolworth estate “Winfield Hall” in Glen Cove, Long Island. Continue reading
Columbus Circle 1947 photo: Keystone-Mast Collection, UCR/California Museum of Photography
Our scene shows Columbus Circle looking south from Broadway and 60th Street towards 8th Avenue.
In the foreground are two examples of the iron and glass subway kiosks providing graceful entrances and exits to the original subway. By the late-1960s all the ornamental kiosks were removed by the city. Continue reading
Today we conclude the story of one of New York City’s greatest unsolved missing person cases. At the end of part one of the story, on December 12, 1910, Dorothy Arnold said goodbye to Gladys King, an acquaintance she had bumped into on Fifth Avenue. Gladys was the last person to see Dorothy Arnold alive.
From They Never Came Back by Allen Churchill (Crime Club, 1960) is part two of The Girl Who Never Came Back.
Return now to the Arnold home. Never had the well-brought-up Dorothy skipped a meal without warning the family ahead of time. Now when she failed to return for dinner an increasingly worried group ate without her, then began making discreet phone calls to Dorothy’s close friends asking if the girl had dropped in on them. Told she had not, the Arnolds begged that no mention ever be made of the phone call. Later they asked the same girls not to discuss the case with reporters, and it is indicative of the vast difference between society girls then and now that none of the girls ever did. Continue reading
In the annals of missing person cases few are as baffling as Dorothy Arnold.
Time has erased the Dorothy Arnold case from the public’s memory. But for decades, Dorothy Arnold’s disappearance ranked among the most speculated of mysteries in New York’s history.
Dorothy Arnold disappeared on December 12, 1910 after leaving her house to go for a walk and do some shopping in midtown Manhattan. To make finding her whereabouts more complicated a report that she was missing was not filed with police until weeks after her disappearance. Continue reading
The Beatles John Lennon playing guitar and singing in studio c. 1964 photo London Features International
If you were born after 1980, you did not know John Lennon. You couldn’t have, as today marks the 40th anniversary of his death. Continue reading
McKinley Square looking East – Bronx, NY
A short visit to the vanished Bronx of of a century ago.
It truly was the “Beautiful Bronx.”
Woodmansten Inn-Williamsbridge Road & Pelham-Parkway, Bronx, NY
A place to dine in style was the Woodmansten Inn. The Woodmansten Inn specialized in French cuisine and could seat 125 patrons. It was a busy place conveniently located across from the Morris Park Race Track (yes, the Bronx once had a horse racing track). Continue reading
Love those 1920s bathing suits.
Though undated, our photograph is from July 29, 1924, at Steeplechase Park. Miss Coney Island would go on to represent the neighborhood in the Miss America Pageant. This was before each state had just one representative. Continue reading
This view was taken by an official city photographer June 26, 1917 documenting New York’s infrastructure. The Queensboro was the first cantilever bridge over the East River. The photo is unusual because Continue reading