Union Square 14th Street & 4th Avenue 1905

We are looking east along 14th Street towards Fourth Avenue. The lack of pedestrians and traffic indicates that this was probably Sunday morning.

The seven small buildings between 14th and 15th Streets feature advertising of the day.

With street scenes as this, establishing a date is as simple as looking at the surroundings. Large signs from (l-r) advertise; The Union Square Hotel; Uneeda Biscuit; Owl Cigar; Budweiser; El-Bart Dry Gin; and Hotel Hungaria.

Though the billboard sign beneath the Owl 5¢ Cigar sign could have been left up beyond the plays it is advertising, it likely narrows the date of our photograph to autumn 1905.

The New Amsterdam Theatre is playing The Prodigal Son by Hall Caine which ran from September 4 – mid-October 1905. The Broadway Theatre has The Pearl and The Pumpkin from August 21 – November 1, 1905. The Liberty has The Rogers Brothers In Ireland running September 4, til its closing October 28 1905. The Ham Tree was playing at the New York Theatre from August 28 through November 11, 1905.

In the foreground is the bronze George Washington Equestrian Statue by sculptor Henry Kirke Brown in its original placement at the intersection of 14th St. and 4th Ave. The Barre granite base was built by famous church architect Richard Upjohn. The dedication of the statue was July 4, 1856. In 1929 Union Square underwent a redesign and the statue was moved out of harms way from the street to the central southern portion of the park.

This entire block would be transformed beginning in 1912 when Samuel Klein set up shop at 10 Union Square.The enterprise grew.

S. Klein On The Square, the bargain department store, acquired and combined the hodgepodge of buildings seen above and was wildly successful. Klein’s Union Square closed in 1975.

All the buildings were demolished in 1986 to build Zeckendorf Towers in 1987.