1839Union SquareArchitect: Samuel B. RugglesLocation: Bounded by East 14th and 17th Streets and Union Square West and Union Square East I’ve walked through Union Square on my way to work close to 5,000 times in the last ten years, and not once have I been able to make sense of the tableau embedded in the paving stones, which depicts the development of the park — there’s always too much foot traffic to linger and look down. Is there any city park, save for the tiniest ones, as dense with people as Union Square? If so, it must live in a Soylent Green future. Union Square has been attracting and channeling humanity in large numbers since its beginning. Bowery and Broadway intersected there, thus the name. Like Washington Square and Tompkins Square, it was conceived as the focus for a wealthy (and profitable) neighborhood, and it was, for a while, catching some of the rich as they fled from the likes of Bond Street and Astor Place. Then came the decline into a commercial district, an edge of the constellation of department stores and other shops that constituted Ladies’ Mile. (This kind of decline was par for the course for fashionable New York neighborhoods in the 19th century, but Union Square’s fate was possibly overdetermined by all the transportation routes running through it.) And maybe more important than that, a center for popular entertainments: theaters, piano retailers, penny arcades. And maybe more importantly than that, a space for protest and, concomitantly, a place where the country could work out its conflicted feelings for that whole freedom-of-speech thing. All of these different Union Squares still exist, especially when the weather’s fine, and the Greenmarket’s there, and all the NYU and New School Students are hanging out. It is all things to everybody, which makes it awfully hard to write about without getting all listy. My favorite Union Square (apart from the enduring fact of the Greenmarket): Yo La Tengo playing “Blue Line Swinger” out in the open as thunderclouds bore down. (The least favorite, in case you wondered: screamy truther nutters, fuck you.) (By the way: I would’ve rather illustrated Union Square with just about anything other than the 1865 statue of George Washington shown above, but all my other pictures of the park ended up communicating nothing but a sea of people’s heads.)
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1839
Union Square

Architect: Samuel B. Ruggles
Location: Bounded by East 14th and 17th Streets and Union Square West and Union Square East

I’ve walked through Union Square on my way to work close to 5,000 times in the last ten years, and not once have I been able to make sense of the tableau embedded in the paving stones, which depicts the development of the park — there’s always too much foot traffic to linger and look down. Is there any city park, save for the tiniest ones, as dense with people as Union Square? If so, it must live in a Soylent Green future.

Union Square has been attracting and channeling humanity in large numbers since its beginning. Bowery and Broadway intersected there, thus the name. Like Washington Square and Tompkins Square, it was conceived as the focus for a wealthy (and profitable) neighborhood, and it was, for a while, catching some of the rich as they fled from the likes of Bond Street and Astor Place. Then came the decline into a commercial district, an edge of the constellation of department stores and other shops that constituted Ladies’ Mile. (This kind of decline was par for the course for fashionable New York neighborhoods in the 19th century, but Union Square’s fate was possibly overdetermined by all the transportation routes running through it.) And maybe more important than that, a center for popular entertainments: theaters, piano retailers, penny arcades. And maybe more importantly than that, a space for protest and, concomitantly, a place where the country could work out its conflicted feelings for that whole freedom-of-speech thing.

All of these different Union Squares still exist, especially when the weather’s fine, and the Greenmarket’s there, and all the NYU and New School Students are hanging out. It is all things to everybody, which makes it awfully hard to write about without getting all listy. My favorite Union Square (apart from the enduring fact of the Greenmarket): Yo La Tengo playing “Blue Line Swinger” out in the open as thunderclouds bore down. (The least favorite, in case you wondered: screamy truther nutters, fuck you.)

(By the way: I would’ve rather illustrated Union Square with just about anything other than the 1865 statue of George Washington shown above, but all my other pictures of the park ended up communicating nothing but a sea of people’s heads.)

1838St. Peter’s Church Architect: James W. Smith (builder), Clement Clarke Moore (designer)Location: 346 West 20th Street We invented Santa Claus. Sure, aspects of the myth had been boiling up through Europe and America for millenia, starting with Saint Nicholas himself, then through the Dutch Sinterklaas celebration, but it’s through the work of 18th-Century New Yorkers that they crystallize into what we recognize as Santa Claus today. Washington Irving’s A History of New York, a self-conscious attempt at creating a mythical origin story for a city that had none, featured a St. Nicholas and a flying wagon full of presents. Clement Clarke Moore’s poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas” (“Twas the night before Christmas” etc. etc.) riffed on the idea, and added/solidified all sort of details that we still have today: the chimney invasion, the fatness, the reindeer. (Thomas Nast would elaborate on the myth further.) Not content with fathering Santa Claus, Moore also gave birth to Chelsea. The neighborhood is named after his family’s estate, Chelsea, which once spanned from West 19th to West 24th Streets, and what today are 8th and 10th Avenues. As the city crept northward, and the Commissioner’s Plan of 1811 started to work its leveling magic on Moore’s land, he began to divest himself of the estate. The apple orchard was donated to the Episcopal Church and became the grounds of the General Theological Seminary. Moore later leased, then deeded, land for a chapel, and when that was deemed insufficient, a new church. Even though he was serving as a professor at the seminary, Moore found the time to be an active determinant in the fate of his former property. At various times, Moore was the church’s warden, a vestryman, and organist. Even more impressive, he drew up the plans for the chapel (now a rectory) and the church himself. At some point, the design switched from Greek Revival, which you’d figure would appeal to a philologist like Moore, to Gothic Revival, a style for high-minded aesthetes drunk on nostalgia and Sir Walter Scott. The change may have happened after construction began, the NYC LPC suggests, as the church is still has the plan of a Greek temple, and is neither cruciform or boldly asymmetrical, as was typical for a Gothic church. All of this suggests to me (as does the residential development of of Chelsea, which we’ll get to in a future post) suggests a generous control freak — a Santa Claus stuck in the chimney.
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1838
St. Peter’s Church

Architect: James W. Smith (builder), Clement Clarke Moore (designer)
Location: 346 West 20th Street

We invented Santa Claus.

Sure, aspects of the myth had been boiling up through Europe and America for millenia, starting with Saint Nicholas himself, then through the Dutch Sinterklaas celebration, but it’s through the work of 18th-Century New Yorkers that they crystallize into what we recognize as Santa Claus today. Washington Irving’s A History of New York, a self-conscious attempt at creating a mythical origin story for a city that had none, featured a St. Nicholas and a flying wagon full of presents. Clement Clarke Moore’s poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas” (“Twas the night before Christmas” etc. etc.) riffed on the idea, and added/solidified all sort of details that we still have today: the chimney invasion, the fatness, the reindeer. (Thomas Nast would elaborate on the myth further.)

Not content with fathering Santa Claus, Moore also gave birth to Chelsea. The neighborhood is named after his family’s estate, Chelsea, which once spanned from West 19th to West 24th Streets, and what today are 8th and 10th Avenues. As the city crept northward, and the Commissioner’s Plan of 1811 started to work its leveling magic on Moore’s land, he began to divest himself of the estate. The apple orchard was donated to the Episcopal Church and became the grounds of the General Theological Seminary. Moore later leased, then deeded, land for a chapel, and when that was deemed insufficient, a new church.

Even though he was serving as a professor at the seminary, Moore found the time to be an active determinant in the fate of his former property. At various times, Moore was the church’s warden, a vestryman, and organist. Even more impressive, he drew up the plans for the chapel (now a rectory) and the church himself. At some point, the design switched from Greek Revival, which you’d figure would appeal to a philologist like Moore, to Gothic Revival, a style for high-minded aesthetes drunk on nostalgia and Sir Walter Scott. The change may have happened after construction began, the NYC LPC suggests, as the church is still has the plan of a Greek temple, and is neither cruciform or boldly asymmetrical, as was typical for a Gothic church. All of this suggests to me (as does the residential development of of Chelsea, which we’ll get to in a future post) suggests a generous control freak — a Santa Claus stuck in the chimney.

1837St. James Church Architect: attributed to Minard LefeverLocation: 32 St. James Street A Greek Revival church, quite possibly from one of the leading lights of the style. But Minard Lefever’s most lasting contribution to American architecture isn’t anything that stands, or ever did stand. Instead, it might be his pattern books. You’ve probably noticed most entries so far don’t list an architect. Well, in the days before the profession was rationalized by government and professional associations like the AIA, few buildings were made according to customized plans drawn up by an architect. Doing so wouldn’t merely be considered expensive, but unnecessary, overwrought — like bringing out a bazooka to a deer hunt. Instead, for all but the most complex buildings, it would be considered enough for a builder to consult a pattern book that detailed possible floorplans and elevations, plus treatments for doorways, windows, fireplaces and the like in a wide variety of styles. A builder would then use his experience to adapt such designs to the contingencies of a site and the whims of the owner. Lafever’s four books, three of which had already been published by 1837, did much to promote the Greek Revival: suddenly, everybody with a little scratch can have their temple to Apollo.
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1837
St. James Church

Architect: attributed to Minard Lefever
Location: 32 St. James Street

A Greek Revival church, quite possibly from one of the leading lights of the style. But Minard Lefever’s most lasting contribution to American architecture isn’t anything that stands, or ever did stand. Instead, it might be his pattern books.

You’ve probably noticed most entries so far don’t list an architect. Well, in the days before the profession was rationalized by government and professional associations like the AIA, few buildings were made according to customized plans drawn up by an architect. Doing so wouldn’t merely be considered expensive, but unnecessary, overwrought — like bringing out a bazooka to a deer hunt. Instead, for all but the most complex buildings, it would be considered enough for a builder to consult a pattern book that detailed possible floorplans and elevations, plus treatments for doorways, windows, fireplaces and the like in a wide variety of styles. A builder would then use his experience to adapt such designs to the contingencies of a site and the whims of the owner.

Lafever’s four books, three of which had already been published by 1837, did much to promote the Greek Revival: suddenly, everybody with a little scratch can have their temple to Apollo.

183646-54 Stone StreetArchitect: UnknownLocation: 46-54 Stone Street Every truly great city must have at least one Great Fire, and New York City had two. (Or three, though the third doesn’t have the mythic flavor of the other two.) Mind you, none of them were at a 1666 or 1871 level of annihilation, but still, they disfigured the landscape in remarkable ways: they’re big reasons why Manhattan has very little before 1800. The first started a week after the British invaded Manhattan in September 1776. It destroyed up to a quarter of the city, mostly its extreme west side. It made the city a miserable place to occupy, with survivors living in tents among the ruins. Of course miserableness may have been the intent, though Patriot arson was never conclusively proven. The second one arrived on December 16, 1835. Ungodly winter weather — including temperatures approaching 17 degrees below zero — heightened the effects of a gas pipe explosion at a warehouse on the corner of Exchange and Pearl. High winds carried sparks all over the city, even across the rivers to New Jersey to Brooklyn. Earlier fires already depleted much of the water supply, so firemen were forced to cut holes in the frozen East River for water, and even then, it froze in hoses and pipes. The fire was so hot, so huge, so awful, people in Philadelphia could see it. Philadelphia is a hundred miles away. In the end, nearly 700 buildings over fifty acres went up in flames, thereby gutting the commercial district in America’s largest city. Tiny Stone Street, only a couple hundred feet away from the fire’s source, shows us what was built in the wake of the fire. There’s no record of what stood here before, but it’s easy to assume they resembled what you see all over South Street Seaport today. The new buildings were built taller and grander: four and five stories instead of two-and-a-half, machine-made brick instead of hand-molded, and a liberal use of granite, especially with the columns on the bottom floors — an application of Greek Revival style for commercial use. Today the street offers a concatenation of bars and restaurants that serve people out in the open during warm weather. Pleasant, but a little too crowded for my tastes.
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1836
46-54 Stone Street

Architect: Unknown
Location: 46-54 Stone Street

Every truly great city must have at least one Great Fire, and New York City had two. (Or three, though the third doesn’t have the mythic flavor of the other two.) Mind you, none of them were at a 1666 or 1871 level of annihilation, but still, they disfigured the landscape in remarkable ways: they’re big reasons why Manhattan has very little before 1800. The first started a week after the British invaded Manhattan in September 1776. It destroyed up to a quarter of the city, mostly its extreme west side. It made the city a miserable place to occupy, with survivors living in tents among the ruins. Of course miserableness may have been the intent, though Patriot arson was never conclusively proven.

The second one arrived on December 16, 1835. Ungodly winter weather — including temperatures approaching 17 degrees below zero — heightened the effects of a gas pipe explosion at a warehouse on the corner of Exchange and Pearl. High winds carried sparks all over the city, even across the rivers to New Jersey to Brooklyn. Earlier fires already depleted much of the water supply, so firemen were forced to cut holes in the frozen East River for water, and even then, it froze in hoses and pipes. The fire was so hot, so huge, so awful, people in Philadelphia could see it. Philadelphia is a hundred miles away. In the end, nearly 700 buildings over fifty acres went up in flames, thereby gutting the commercial district in America’s largest city.

Tiny Stone Street, only a couple hundred feet away from the fire’s source, shows us what was built in the wake of the fire. There’s no record of what stood here before, but it’s easy to assume they resembled what you see all over South Street Seaport today. The new buildings were built taller and grander: four and five stories instead of two-and-a-half, machine-made brick instead of hand-molded, and a liberal use of granite, especially with the columns on the bottom floors — an application of Greek Revival style for commercial use.

Today the street offers a concatenation of bars and restaurants that serve people out in the open during warm weather. Pleasant, but a little too crowded for my tastes.

1835445-451 Sixth AvenueArchitect: UnknownLocation: 445-451 Sixth Avenue I chose this picture for its aesthetic, not illustrative, qualities. So you can’t really see that this set of six buildings, united behind a common façade, extends to ten bays on Sixth Avenue. And that on the West Tenth Street corner, it combines with another set of buildings constructed a year later that’s sixteen bays wide. The monumentality of Colonnade Row and The Row spreads.
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1835
445-451 Sixth Avenue

Architect: Unknown
Location: 445-451 Sixth Avenue

I chose this picture for its aesthetic, not illustrative, qualities. So you can’t really see that this set of six buildings, united behind a common façade, extends to ten bays on Sixth Avenue. And that on the West Tenth Street corner, it combines with another set of buildings constructed a year later that’s sixteen bays wide. The monumentality of Colonnade Row and The Row spreads.

1834Tompkins Square ParkArchitect: UnknownLocation: Situated between East 7th and 10th Streets and Avenues A and B On the other side of the island, a failed attempt at replicating the success of parks like Washington Square. The idea was that this block of swampy land, when drained and leveled and landscaped, could serve as the focal point of a new upscale neighborhood like those in nearby Bond or Stuyvesant Streets. Didn’t quite work that way, as development got body-slammed (I’m speculating here) by the Great Fire of 1835, which would’ve diverted money and resources, and the Great Panic of 1837, which dried up the real estate market. Only properties on the north side ever got developed as was expected; the rest of the park was eventually surrounded by tenements populated by Germans, the Irish, Russian Jews, Puerto Ricans. As one of the few open areas in the city, the park was the site of multiple protests throughout the 19th and early 20th century, but New Yorkers of my age (I’m almost 40, btw) associate the park with riots in 1989 and 1991; the latter prompted by a heavy-handed attempt by the police to remove a shantytown in the park. The riots were framed as a revolt against the forces that sought to gentrify the neighborhood, yet everything once believed antithetical to such gentrification — the drugs, the violence, the homeless, the squatters, the revolutionary thinking — in the long run probably only heightened the neighborhood’s allure to a well-funded Bohemia that came a little later, one that gladly absorbed all values except those that bored it. And today we have the spectacle of The New York Post defending the newcomer investment bankers against those terrible resident hipster snobs, because (after all) all that’s solid melts into air.
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1834
Tompkins Square Park

Architect: Unknown
Location: Situated between East 7th and 10th Streets and Avenues A and B

On the other side of the island, a failed attempt at replicating the success of parks like Washington Square.

The idea was that this block of swampy land, when drained and leveled and landscaped, could serve as the focal point of a new upscale neighborhood like those in nearby Bond or Stuyvesant Streets. Didn’t quite work that way, as development got body-slammed (I’m speculating here) by the Great Fire of 1835, which would’ve diverted money and resources, and the Great Panic of 1837, which dried up the real estate market. Only properties on the north side ever got developed as was expected; the rest of the park was eventually surrounded by tenements populated by Germans, the Irish, Russian Jews, Puerto Ricans.

As one of the few open areas in the city, the park was the site of multiple protests throughout the 19th and early 20th century, but New Yorkers of my age (I’m almost 40, btw) associate the park with riots in 1989 and 1991; the latter prompted by a heavy-handed attempt by the police to remove a shantytown in the park. The riots were framed as a revolt against the forces that sought to gentrify the neighborhood, yet everything once believed antithetical to such gentrification — the drugs, the violence, the homeless, the squatters, the revolutionary thinking — in the long run probably only heightened the neighborhood’s allure to a well-funded Bohemia that came a little later, one that gladly absorbed all values except those that bored it. And today we have the spectacle of The New York Post defending the newcomer investment bankers against those terrible resident hipster snobs, because (after all) all that’s solid melts into air.

1833The RowArchitect: UnknownLocation: 1-13 Washington Square North Meet your new New York City architectural paradigm: Greek Revival. You’d think borrowing from the Greeks would be the most natural thing in the world for an architect to do. After all: columns! But for centuries, the West was denied first-hand encounters with the real thing, the temples and the stadia, by the instability that came with Ottoman rule. Thus the Renaissance borrowed less from the Greeks than the Romans, themselves borrowers, and held them in higher esteem. This changes starting in the mid-18th century. The work of early archeologists reintroduced the likes of the Parthenon to the rest of the world; much later, the cause of Greek independence from the Turks made the old civilization not just noble but chic. And for Americans, making a sympathetic connection was especially irresistible. The Greeks were the first democracy, and we Americans were to be their heirs, the purest expression of their promise. And to show how goddamned special we were, we copied our forbears without shame. Towns across the country received Greek names. New York State alone has Ithaca, Syracuse, Corinth, Helena, Marathon, Sparta, Homer. (Even Byron, the sympathetic revolutionary.) Sculptors put Old Hickory in a toga and the father of our country in rather less. And—oh yes—the buildings! New York is late to the party. Architects elsewhere begin working in the style at the turn of the century, with the really galvanic moment being the scaled-down Parthenon of William Strickland’s Second Bank of the United States building of 1824. Details appear here and there in New York buildings throughout the 1820s, but the style finally blooms in 1830s: suddenly big new buildings in New York are wrought as pagan temples — federal and municipal buildings, private mansions, even churches, which seems counter-intuitive when you think on it some. The style could also be powerful on the more diminutive scale of the townhouse, especially in row form, especially on this row northside of Washington Square Park. It was colloquially called “The Row,” sort of in the same half-joking, half-deferential way that The Band used to be called “The Band”: there are many like it, and yet none like this. In its day it was home to the kinds of rich folk who were putting porticoes in front of their banks and offices to match the ones at their houses; and later, home to the artists who took the city and the neighborhood as their subjects—Edward Hopper, for one, lived and died at #3. Today New York University owns most of ‘em.
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1833
The Row

Architect: Unknown
Location: 1-13 Washington Square North

Meet your new New York City architectural paradigm: Greek Revival.

You’d think borrowing from the Greeks would be the most natural thing in the world for an architect to do. After all: columns! But for centuries, the West was denied first-hand encounters with the real thing, the temples and the stadia, by the instability that came with Ottoman rule. Thus the Renaissance borrowed less from the Greeks than the Romans, themselves borrowers, and held them in higher esteem.

This changes starting in the mid-18th century. The work of early archeologists reintroduced the likes of the Parthenon to the rest of the world; much later, the cause of Greek independence from the Turks made the old civilization not just noble but chic. And for Americans, making a sympathetic connection was especially irresistible. The Greeks were the first democracy, and we Americans were to be their heirs, the purest expression of their promise. And to show how goddamned special we were, we copied our forbears without shame. Towns across the country received Greek names. New York State alone has Ithaca, Syracuse, Corinth, Helena, Marathon, Sparta, Homer. (Even Byron, the sympathetic revolutionary.) Sculptors put Old Hickory in a toga and the father of our country in rather less. And—oh yes—the buildings!

New York is late to the party. Architects elsewhere begin working in the style at the turn of the century, with the really galvanic moment being the scaled-down Parthenon of William Strickland’s Second Bank of the United States building of 1824. Details appear here and there in New York buildings throughout the 1820s, but the style finally blooms in 1830s: suddenly big new buildings in New York are wrought as pagan temples — federal and municipal buildings, private mansions, even churches, which seems counter-intuitive when you think on it some.

The style could also be powerful on the more diminutive scale of the townhouse, especially in row form, especially on this row northside of Washington Square Park. It was colloquially called “The Row,” sort of in the same half-joking, half-deferential way that The Band used to be called “The Band”: there are many like it, and yet none like this. In its day it was home to the kinds of rich folk who were putting porticoes in front of their banks and offices to match the ones at their houses; and later, home to the artists who took the city and the neighborhood as their subjects—Edward Hopper, for one, lived and died at #3. Today New York University owns most of ‘em.

1832Daniel LeRoy HouseArchitect: UnknownLocation: 20 St. Marks Place The website for the Old Merchant’s House, built the same year as this, quotes a New York Times article calling it “the best preserved” Federal townhouse in Manhattan. It’s hard to argue: the interiors and exteriors are almost intact thanks to an eccentric owner who just couldn’t let go. But the Daniel LeRoy house, a nearby contemporary, is my 1832 entry because I think you’re more likely to know it. If you read this, you’re probably part of a circle of music nerds, and if you’re also a New Yorker, you’ve also stopped in the St. Mark’s Sounds record store at least once or twice, as I have. What stays with me above and beyond everything else was the bright summer day I came here looking for a copy of the Wedding Present’s Bizarro. I remember it with a psychedelic glow consonant with the music I love from the time, 1992 specifically, all the dancey raveys and My Bloody Valentines. Plus CDs in longboxes. The dumb album cards that decorated the walls and windows. The bag check. I’ve gone there only once or twice since. But now that 99X is gone, I get my Doc Martens from Trash & Vaudeville, which is also housed in an identical building from 1832. Both of them (and a few others) are the remaining members of a block-wide row, each one of them owning those fancy rainbow-ribbon entrances and lintels with the faintly quizzical pediment common to late Federal style buildings. Townhouse details in this era project from buildings, rather than stay flush. They break the visual monotony you’d otherwise get from a row of similar buildings. They also let the rich show off. St. Mark’s was fashionable when it was built: Daniel LeRoy was married to Susan Fish, one of the Stuyvesants. (THEM AGAIN.) James Fenimore Cooper, one of America’s first great novelists, also lived where Kim’s Video once stood. Now Kim’s…Kim’s I miss.
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1832
Daniel LeRoy House

Architect: Unknown
Location: 20 St. Marks Place

The website for the Old Merchant’s House, built the same year as this, quotes a New York Times article calling it “the best preserved” Federal townhouse in Manhattan. It’s hard to argue: the interiors and exteriors are almost intact thanks to an eccentric owner who just couldn’t let go. But the Daniel LeRoy house, a nearby contemporary, is my 1832 entry because I think you’re more likely to know it.

If you read this, you’re probably part of a circle of music nerds, and if you’re also a New Yorker, you’ve also stopped in the St. Mark’s Sounds record store at least once or twice, as I have. What stays with me above and beyond everything else was the bright summer day I came here looking for a copy of the Wedding Present’s Bizarro. I remember it with a psychedelic glow consonant with the music I love from the time, 1992 specifically, all the dancey raveys and My Bloody Valentines. Plus CDs in longboxes. The dumb album cards that decorated the walls and windows. The bag check.

I’ve gone there only once or twice since. But now that 99X is gone, I get my Doc Martens from Trash & Vaudeville, which is also housed in an identical building from 1832. Both of them (and a few others) are the remaining members of a block-wide row, each one of them owning those fancy rainbow-ribbon entrances and lintels with the faintly quizzical pediment common to late Federal style buildings. Townhouse details in this era project from buildings, rather than stay flush. They break the visual monotony you’d otherwise get from a row of similar buildings. They also let the rich show off.

St. Mark’s was fashionable when it was built: Daniel LeRoy was married to Susan Fish, one of the Stuyvesants. (THEM AGAIN.) James Fenimore Cooper, one of America’s first great novelists, also lived where Kim’s Video once stood. Now Kim’s…Kim’s I miss.

1831Northern DispensaryArchitects: Henry Bayard (carpenter) and John Tucker (mason)Location: 165 Waverly Place A sad story. In the beginning, Americans saw poverty as a permanent feature of life — God’s will, really — and thus something not much could be done about. In the 19th century, to explain the puzzling appearance of poverty in a wealthy (and increasingly secular) nation, a new distinction emerged: there was now poverty and pauperism. Poverty was the state of affairs of the industrious or innocent who might be tempest-tossed by circumstance: the working poor, orphans, widows. The greater majority were poor because of improper moral education. To some extent, it was their own damned fault. These were the drunkards, the prostitutes, the beggars. The Northern Dispensary started in 1827 as a way to give medical care for the “worthy poor.” (The fact there was one in Greenwich Village was a sure sign it was making a quick transition from rich-person’s refuge from yellow fever to yet another part of the city.) By 1892, King’s Handbook would state that it had treated over a million patients. One of them was Edgar Allan Poe, treated for a head cold in 1837. This odd little building — two walls face one street, and one wall faces two streets — continued on with its mission through most of the 20th Century, narrowing its focus to dentistry in 1960. It made the stupid mistake of denying care to AIDS patients, and got fined by the Human Rights Commission for $47,000, bankrupting the organization in 1989. The building eventually made its way into the hands of William Gottlieb. He was a phenomenally rich man, and from all appearances, deeply eccentric. He would wear the same clothes day in, day out, and drive around in a green station wagon with busted windows. And he would buy properties in the Village and doing nothing with them. No selling, no upkeep, low rents, nothing. Then he died, and his 150 properties, including the dispensary building, went to his sister, Mollie Bender, who passed on her entire estate to her son, Neil Bender. And Bender may be almost as inscrutable as Gottlieb was. And still after all this time, the dispensary sits empty, with the interior collecting dust and dental paraphernalia rusting. Buildings like these are a reminder that there are many things in this city that are part of your life — even if it’s only something you pass by on occasion — but you have no say about their fate. They say: This city is not any of your damned business. As if you needed to be reminded.
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1831
Northern Dispensary

Architects: Henry Bayard (carpenter) and John Tucker (mason)
Location: 165 Waverly Place

A sad story.

In the beginning, Americans saw poverty as a permanent feature of life — God’s will, really — and thus something not much could be done about. In the 19th century, to explain the puzzling appearance of poverty in a wealthy (and increasingly secular) nation, a new distinction emerged: there was now poverty and pauperism. Poverty was the state of affairs of the industrious or innocent who might be tempest-tossed by circumstance: the working poor, orphans, widows. The greater majority were poor because of improper moral education. To some extent, it was their own damned fault. These were the drunkards, the prostitutes, the beggars.

The Northern Dispensary started in 1827 as a way to give medical care for the “worthy poor.” (The fact there was one in Greenwich Village was a sure sign it was making a quick transition from rich-person’s refuge from yellow fever to yet another part of the city.) By 1892, King’s Handbook would state that it had treated over a million patients. One of them was Edgar Allan Poe, treated for a head cold in 1837.

This odd little building — two walls face one street, and one wall faces two streets — continued on with its mission through most of the 20th Century, narrowing its focus to dentistry in 1960. It made the stupid mistake of denying care to AIDS patients, and got fined by the Human Rights Commission for $47,000, bankrupting the organization in 1989.

The building eventually made its way into the hands of William Gottlieb. He was a phenomenally rich man, and from all appearances, deeply eccentric. He would wear the same clothes day in, day out, and drive around in a green station wagon with busted windows. And he would buy properties in the Village and doing nothing with them. No selling, no upkeep, low rents, nothing. Then he died, and his 150 properties, including the dispensary building, went to his sister, Mollie Bender, who passed on her entire estate to her son, Neil Bender. And Bender may be almost as inscrutable as Gottlieb was.

And still after all this time, the dispensary sits empty, with the interior collecting dust and dental paraphernalia rusting. Buildings like these are a reminder that there are many things in this city that are part of your life — even if it’s only something you pass by on occasion — but you have no say about their fate. They say: This city is not any of your damned business. As if you needed to be reminded.

1830New York Marble CemeteryArchitect: Perkins NicholsLocation: Interior of block between East 2nd and East 3rd Streets, Second Avenue and the Bowery It’s not the alley, but what leads to it: a grassy clearing hemmed in by a stone wall, hidden in the middle of a city block. Another example of how disease shaped the city: instead of burying bodies in the ground, thus contributing to the miasmas thought to be spreading illness, they were placed in white marble vaults ten feet below. There are no gravestones here. Plots are identified by plaques set in the walls. Other than that, it’s grass and trees. It looks a little unusual, perhaps, but not spooky. A park. The cemetery was built on what was, at the time, New York’s edge, but with full knowledge that one day it would be surrounded homes and businesses: its cautious demeanor, I suspect, represents a knowing compromise between the demands of the dead and those of the future city. When I visited it for the 2007 Open House New York, there was a large part of the wall that had collapsed. More than collapsed, really: pulverized. I asked a trustee of the cemetery about it. “When did that happen?” “It started happening about twenty-five years ago.” Oh.
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1830
New York Marble Cemetery

Architect: Perkins Nichols
Location: Interior of block between East 2nd and East 3rd Streets, Second Avenue and the Bowery

It’s not the alley, but what leads to it: a grassy clearing hemmed in by a stone wall, hidden in the middle of a city block.

Another example of how disease shaped the city: instead of burying bodies in the ground, thus contributing to the miasmas thought to be spreading illness, they were placed in white marble vaults ten feet below. There are no gravestones here. Plots are identified by plaques set in the walls. Other than that, it’s grass and trees. It looks a little unusual, perhaps, but not spooky. A park. The cemetery was built on what was, at the time, New York’s edge, but with full knowledge that one day it would be surrounded homes and businesses: its cautious demeanor, I suspect, represents a knowing compromise between the demands of the dead and those of the future city.

When I visited it for the 2007 Open House New York, there was a large part of the wall that had collapsed. More than collapsed, really: pulverized. I asked a trustee of the cemetery about it. “When did that happen?” “It started happening about twenty-five years ago.” Oh.