184713th Street Presbyterian ChurchArchitect: Attributed to Samuel ThompsonLocation: 141-145 West 13th Street I used to be puzzled as to why this church never bothered to update its bulletin board, listing the same psalm numbers — 141, 143, 145 — for years on end. The joke was on me: it’s not a church anymore. Oh, it was one for nearly 130 years. For nineteen of them, it was used as both a church and synagogue until the Yom Kippur War sharpened pre-existing frictions and the Jewish congregation left; the Presbyterian congregation was dissolved soon after. Now it’s apartments. Really, apartments! You’d think a church wouldn’t be amenable to that kind of conversion, but in spite of the impiousness of the gesture and the distinctly un-residential qualities of most ecclesiastical architecture, it happens. All the time. Oh, and the psalm numbers? They’re address numbers. Should I mention that the columns aren’t even stone but made from wood, or would that tear one veil too many from your eyes?
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1847
13th Street Presbyterian Church

Architect: Attributed to Samuel Thompson
Location: 141-145 West 13th Street

I used to be puzzled as to why this church never bothered to update its bulletin board, listing the same psalm numbers — 141, 143, 145 — for years on end. The joke was on me: it’s not a church anymore. Oh, it was one for nearly 130 years. For nineteen of them, it was used as both a church and synagogue until the Yom Kippur War sharpened pre-existing frictions and the Jewish congregation left; the Presbyterian congregation was dissolved soon after. Now it’s apartments. Really, apartments! You’d think a church wouldn’t be amenable to that kind of conversion, but in spite of the impiousness of the gesture and the distinctly un-residential qualities of most ecclesiastical architecture, it happens. All the time. Oh, and the psalm numbers? They’re address numbers. Should I mention that the columns aren’t even stone but made from wood, or would that tear one veil too many from your eyes?

184347 Irving PlaceArchitect: UnknownLocation: 47 Irving Place Not many options available for this year. There is Ithiel Town’s Leake & Watts Orphan Asylum Building: a good subject, woefully under-appreciated, not even landmarked, but we’ve just covered Town. This paucity of 1843 buildings might be explained by a lingering depression triggered by the Panic of 1837, not that you’d never know from the opulence of the last couple entries. So we have this modest Greek Revival townhouse, built just south of Gramercy Park. Oscar Wilde may have lived here on his American tour, so there’s that. Next door (and next year) is what’s known as the Washington Irving House, even though Washington Irving — who Americans remember for penning “Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle” and treat a little condescendingly as a kind of American literary superstar who came before the real heavyweights like Hawthorne, Melville, Poe — never actually lived here, this being the fiction of awesome crazy-lady Elsie de Wolfe.
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1843
47 Irving Place

Architect: Unknown
Location: 47 Irving Place

Not many options available for this year. There is Ithiel Town’s Leake & Watts Orphan Asylum Building: a good subject, woefully under-appreciated, not even landmarked, but we’ve just covered Town. This paucity of 1843 buildings might be explained by a lingering depression triggered by the Panic of 1837, not that you’d never know from the opulence of the last couple entries. So we have this modest Greek Revival townhouse, built just south of Gramercy Park. Oscar Wilde may have lived here on his American tour, so there’s that.

Next door (and next year) is what’s known as the Washington Irving House, even though Washington Irving — who Americans remember for penning “Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle” and treat a little condescendingly as a kind of American literary superstar who came before the real heavyweights like Hawthorne, Melville, Poe — never actually lived here, this being the fiction of awesome crazy-lady Elsie de Wolfe.

1842Federal Hall National MemorialArchitects: Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson DavisLocation: 26 Wall Street “From both an architectural and historical point of view,” Nathan Silver writes, “Federal Hall might have been the greatest national landmark had it survived.” Silver’s referring to the Federal Hall that came before this Federal Hall, the building that for about a century was the City Hall before our City Hall, and then for a brief time was the US Capitol before the US Capitol, back when New York was the temporary capital of the country — the Washington, DC before Washington, DC. The Bill of Rights was passed here. George Washington was inaugurated as our first President on its balcony. And, in 1812, it was torn down and sold as scrap. This building, first a custom house, replaces it a tardy thirty years later. Before the income tax, the Federal government got most of its money from custom duties — basically taxes on imports — and custom houses were where such transactions were processed. Sitting in the country’s biggest port, this custom house had an international audience, and thus had to speak loudly to that audience. Its exterior echoes the Parthenon; the interior, with its magnificent rotunda, the Pantheon. Even more, much more than the porticoed row houses popping up all over the city, these borrowings are not merely concessions to a fashion for classical looks. With more than a little presumptuousness, they say to the world that the Americans are the inheritors of the Greeks and the Romans. The exterior was designed bt Alexander Jackson Davis and Ithiel Town. They dropped Greek temples just like this one all over the country. Together and separately, they are responsible for three state capitol buildings (Connecticut, Indiana, North Carolina, and partly Ohio; only the latter two remain). Later, Davis specializes in country villas and in the process kinda invents the suburban ideal, or at least one of them. After the custom offices were moved down to 55 Wall Street, the hall was for a time as sub-treasury where some of the government’s gold and silver was kept. Today it’s a museum that details its past uses: a memorial to itself.
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1842
Federal Hall National Memorial

Architects: Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis
Location: 26 Wall Street

“From both an architectural and historical point of view,” Nathan Silver writes, “Federal Hall might have been the greatest national landmark had it survived.” Silver’s referring to the Federal Hall that came before this Federal Hall, the building that for about a century was the City Hall before our City Hall, and then for a brief time was the US Capitol before the US Capitol, back when New York was the temporary capital of the country — the Washington, DC before Washington, DC. The Bill of Rights was passed here. George Washington was inaugurated as our first President on its balcony. And, in 1812, it was torn down and sold as scrap.

This building, first a custom house, replaces it a tardy thirty years later. Before the income tax, the Federal government got most of its money from custom duties — basically taxes on imports — and custom houses were where such transactions were processed. Sitting in the country’s biggest port, this custom house had an international audience, and thus had to speak loudly to that audience. Its exterior echoes the Parthenon; the interior, with its magnificent rotunda, the Pantheon. Even more, much more than the porticoed row houses popping up all over the city, these borrowings are not merely concessions to a fashion for classical looks. With more than a little presumptuousness, they say to the world that the Americans are the inheritors of the Greeks and the Romans.

The exterior was designed bt Alexander Jackson Davis and Ithiel Town. They dropped Greek temples just like this one all over the country. Together and separately, they are responsible for three state capitol buildings (Connecticut, Indiana, North Carolina, and partly Ohio; only the latter two remain). Later, Davis specializes in country villas and in the process kinda invents the suburban ideal, or at least one of them.

After the custom offices were moved down to 55 Wall Street, the hall was for a time as sub-treasury where some of the government’s gold and silver was kept. Today it’s a museum that details its past uses: a memorial to itself.

1841Merchants’ Exchange BuildingArchitect: Isiah RogersLocation: 55 Wall Street After I’ve already written an entry for the John Street Methodist Church, I stumble upon an entry in Philip Hone’s diary proving that the building I originally wanted to use for 1841 was, in fact, completed in 1841 and not 1842 like multiple sources says it was. So take that, Landmarks Preservation Commission. Before this, on this site, was a pioneering Greek Revival building, Merchants’ Exchange Building. Made of marble, and thus supposedly fireproof, it went up with the rest of lower Manhattan in the Great Fire of 1835. Its replacement was even more of a vision: a colonnade a block long, with columns fashioned out of single blocks of granite, and inside, a vast rotunda, one of the city’s great feats of engineering. When the exchange failed, the building’s history became one of endless refashionings and repurposings; old buildings in Wall Street seem to exchange organizations the way viruses exchange strands of DNA. It housed the New York Stock exchange before it left for slightly more modest quarters, then the US Custom House before it moved to even nicer quarters. The National City Bank (a precursor to Citibank) purchased the building and asked McKim, Mead & White to add several new stories, complementing the Ionic colonnade below with a Corinthian colonnade above. Then the bank moved to more Mad-Men modern digs, leaving it as a branch. Luxury restaurant operators Cipriani swooped it up late in the 20th century, and turned it into apartment buildings because nearly every single fucking building on Wall Street is an apartment building now, real estate matching stocks and futures in terms of speculative insanity. Oh, and also a club. It looks beautiful, but I wouldn’t know first-hand, I’m not Cipriani’s crowd.
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1841
Merchants’ Exchange Building

Architect: Isiah Rogers
Location: 55 Wall Street

After I’ve already written an entry for the John Street Methodist Church, I stumble upon an entry in Philip Hone’s diary proving that the building I originally wanted to use for 1841 was, in fact, completed in 1841 and not 1842 like multiple sources says it was. So take that, Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Before this, on this site, was a pioneering Greek Revival building, Merchants’ Exchange Building. Made of marble, and thus supposedly fireproof, it went up with the rest of lower Manhattan in the Great Fire of 1835. Its replacement was even more of a vision: a colonnade a block long, with columns fashioned out of single blocks of granite, and inside, a vast rotunda, one of the city’s great feats of engineering. When the exchange failed, the building’s history became one of endless refashionings and repurposings; old buildings in Wall Street seem to exchange organizations the way viruses exchange strands of DNA. It housed the New York Stock exchange before it left for slightly more modest quarters, then the US Custom House before it moved to even nicer quarters. The National City Bank (a precursor to Citibank) purchased the building and asked McKim, Mead & White to add several new stories, complementing the Ionic colonnade below with a Corinthian colonnade above. Then the bank moved to more Mad-Men modern digs, leaving it as a branch. Luxury restaurant operators Cipriani swooped it up late in the 20th century, and turned it into apartment buildings because nearly every single fucking building on Wall Street is an apartment building now, real estate matching stocks and futures in terms of speculative insanity. Oh, and also a club. It looks beautiful, but I wouldn’t know first-hand, I’m not Cipriani’s crowd.

1840The Cushman RowArchitect: UnknownLocation: 406-418 West 20th Street Just as Clement Clarke Moore drew up designs for the ecclesiastical buildings on his former property, he also laid a heavy hand on Chelsea’s residential development to ensure it was to his liking. The covenants drawn up for these homes included exacting specifications regarding their dimensions, their style, the materials they were to be faced with, and their spatial relationship to the street. They also banned much of the grubby aspects of the city — like manufacturing, stables, tenements — from appearing. It worked, to a point: when industrial development came, it stayed largely to the west, near the river. Restrictions like these were nothing new to the city, but never had they been applied so consistently to such a large amount of real estate. Control-freak-ish, sure, but the results were spectacular. It encouraged the construction of relatively unbroken rows of buildings like the Cushman Row, forming vast, almost martial walls of brick and stone on street after street. New Yorkers in this era may have been paying lip service to Greek values but their ambitions were Roman-size. (And yet — especially after 170 years of individuation — each Row member looks so homey.)
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1840
The Cushman Row

Architect: Unknown
Location: 406-418 West 20th Street

Just as Clement Clarke Moore drew up designs for the ecclesiastical buildings on his former property, he also laid a heavy hand on Chelsea’s residential development to ensure it was to his liking. The covenants drawn up for these homes included exacting specifications regarding their dimensions, their style, the materials they were to be faced with, and their spatial relationship to the street. They also banned much of the grubby aspects of the city — like manufacturing, stables, tenements — from appearing.

It worked, to a point: when industrial development came, it stayed largely to the west, near the river. Restrictions like these were nothing new to the city, but never had they been applied so consistently to such a large amount of real estate. Control-freak-ish, sure, but the results were spectacular. It encouraged the construction of relatively unbroken rows of buildings like the Cushman Row, forming vast, almost martial walls of brick and stone on street after street. New Yorkers in this era may have been paying lip service to Greek values but their ambitions were Roman-size. (And yet — especially after 170 years of individuation — each Row member looks so homey.)

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.

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.