Windsor Hotel Fire, March 17, 1899. Showing collapse of roof water tower during blaze. photographer: unknown
As thousands of New Yorkers were celebrating the St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Friday, March 17, 1899, the Windsor Hotel on the east side of Fifth Avenue between 46th and 47th Streets caught fire. The inferno Continue reading
We are looking north along Fifth Avenue to the east side of 42nd Street.
When looking at these stereoviews it’s always nice to pin a date on the scene. While it is impossible to exactly date this stereoview, it is definitely before 1881.
During the 1870s, the nearest building at the northeast corner of 42nd Street, number 503 Fifth Avenue belonged to Levi P Morton, Vice President of the United States from 1889 – 1893 and Governor of New York from 1895-1896. Continue reading
This real photo postcard by Thaddeus Wilkerson shows the new Plaza Hotel. The hotel towers above its neighbors offering its guests terrific views of the city and the park. We are looking southwest from the Hotel Netherland on 60th Street and Fifth Avenue. The southern boundary of Central Park at 59th Street is on the right and on the extreme left is a portion of the Vanderbilt mansion on Fifth Ave and 58th Street.
The original Plaza Hotel on the same site was opened in 1890 and demolished in 1905. The new Henry Hardenbergh designed Plaza Hotel was much larger than its predecessor.
The original estimate to buy the site, raze the old hotel and build the new hotel was Continue reading
When the Park Row Building was completed in 1899, the 31 story office building was the highest in New York and the world at 382 feet. Less than seven years later it was no longer the tallest, with the Singer Building soaring 211 feet higher than the Park Row.
Today the Park Row Building, converted to residences, is not even among the 100 tallest buildings in New York. And the Singer Building was demolished over 55 years ago.
The constant desire by developers to top one another has continued and accelerated in the past dozen years.
The skyline is being overtaken by mostly nondescript glass boxes dwarfing other buildings and eclipsing many of the classic New York skyscrapers.
As of 2022 the ten tallest buildings in New York are:
Rank Name Height Stories Year Completed Address
1 One World Trade Center 1,776 94 2014 285 Fulton Street
2 Central Park Tower 1,550 99 2021 225 West 57th Street
3 111 West 57th Street 1,428 85 2022 111 West 57th Street
4 One Vanderbilt 1,401 73 2020 1 Vanderbilt Avenue
5 432 Park Avenue 1,397 85 2015 432 Park Avenue
6 30 Hudson Yards 1,270 103 2019 500 West 33rd Street
7 Empire State Building 1,250 102 1931 350 Fifth Avenue
8 Bank of America Tower 1,200 55 2009 1101 Sixth Avenue
9 3 World Trade Center 1,079 69 2018 175 Greenwich Street
10 The Brooklyn Tower 1,073 73 2022 9 DeKalb Avenue (Brooklyn)
Recently looking at the 1939 World Almanac there was a list of the tallest buildings in New York.
All heights listed are the Almanac’s figures which may differ from modern estimates.
1. The Empire State Building is located on the site of the original Continue reading
Fifth Avenue dwellings for sale 1858
This Gothic style structure stood on the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. The view is from an 1858 real estate advertising broadside print. On the southwest corner you can see a portion of the retaining wall of the massive Croton Distributing Reservoir which supplied New York’s drinking water. The main branch of the New York Public Library now occupies the site of the reservoir.
5th Ave and 42nd St. 1855 before construction of The House of Mansions. Croton Distributing Reservoir is on the right.
Though the structure appears to be one large building, it is actually 11 separate buildings. It was nicknamed The House of Mansions.
The buildings were designed by famed architect Alexander Jackson Davis and built by merchant George Higgins in 1856 as a speculative real estate investment. The buildings boasted amazing views of distant vistas including Long Island, the Palisades and Westchester. Continue reading
A kind act can transcend time. When researching our previous story about Times Square this tragic, but touching story was found.
Combining accounts from The New York Tribune, The New York Herald and The New York Times, this is what happened on August 31, 1904:
Nettie Delaney, three and a half years old, of 14 West One Hundred and Thirty-Third Street, was run over and killed almost in front of her own home yesterday afternoon by a horse drawn heavy truck carrying stone. 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
A Detroit Publishing Co. photographer got this shot on a rare day without any traffic. Every building seen here is soon to be demolished.
This photograph shows the east side of Fifth Avenue from 27th to 26th Street in 1903. Continue reading
We continue our look at New York of 150 years ago from Reverend J.F. Richmond’s New York and Its Institutions 1609-1871 (E.B. Treat; 1871).
The names may be familiar, but possibly not the building or site.
While Central Park has remained a constant presence in New York City for over 160 years, it has constantly changed.
There were always developers looking to infringe upon the park with buildings and schemes. A fair portion of Central Park has managed to keep its original spirit, but many of its early additions have changed or no longer exist.
The Children’s Playground in Central Park. There was no “Great Lawn” when Central Park was built. The Great Lawn opened in 1937, the result of filling in one of the two receiving reservoirs located within the park. The Central Park Playground seen above is an open field where children can play within its great expanse. This section was located in the southern end of the park, now site of the Heckscher playground and ballfields. Continue reading