New York Songlines: Broadway

W 86th | W 85th | W 84th | W 83rd | W 82nd | W 81st | W 80th | | W 79th| W 78th | W 77th | W 76th | W 75th | W 74th | W 73rd (The Ansonia) | W 72nd | W 71st | W 70th | W 69th| W 68th | W 67th | W 66th | W 65th (Lincoln Square) | W 64th | W 63rd | W 62nd | W 61st | W 60th | W 59th (Columbus Circle) | W 58th | W 57th | W 56th | W 55th | W 54th (Ed Sullivan) | W 53rd | W 52nd | W 51st | W 50th | W 49th (Brill Building) | W 48th | W 47th (Duffy Square) | W 46th (Times Square) | W 45th | W 44th | W 43rd | W 42nd/7th Ave | W 41st | W 40th | W 39th | W 38th | W 37th | W 36th | W 35th (Herald Square/Macy's) | W 34th/6th Ave | W 33rd | W 32nd (Koreatown) | W 31st | W 30th | W 29th | W 28th | W 27th | W 26th | W 25th (Worth Square) | W 24th (Madison Square) | 23rd/5th Ave (Flatiron) | E 22nd | E 21st | E 20th |
E 19th | E 18th | E 17th (Union Square) | E 14th/4th Ave | E 13th | E 12th (The Strand) | E 11th (Grace Church) | E 10th | E 9th | E 8th | Waverly Place | Washington Place | 4th St | 3rd/Great Jones | Bond | Bleecker | Houston (SoHo) | Prince | Spring | Broome | Grand | Howard | Canal | Lispenard | Walker | White | Franklin | Leonard | Catherine | Worth (Federal Plaza) | Thomas | Duane | Reade | Chambers (City Hall) | Warren | Murray | Park Place (Woolworth Tower) | Barclay/Park Row | Vesey/Ann (St. Paul's) | Fulton | Dey/John | Cortlandt/Maiden | Liberty | Cedar | Pine | Thames | Wall (Trinity Church) | Rector | Exchange | Morris | Beaver | Battery/Stone (Charging Bull/Bowling Green/Customs House)

Broadway was originally an Indian trail, called the Wickquasgeck Road, that followed the ridge of the hilly island of Manahatta. The Dutch settlers called it Heere Straat, or High Street, because of its elevated position; one of several other names it was known by was the Broad Wagon Way, which presumably was the origin of its present appellation. Above what is now Union Square it was known as the Bloomingdale Road, after a village located on the present-day Upper West Side.

Broadway now runs all the way to Albany, making it the longest street in the world. It may also be the street most sung about, immortalized in countless songs like "Lullaby of Broadway," "On Broadway" and "A Lamb Lies Down on Broadway."

It's said that there's a broken heart for every light on Broadway—or is it a broken light for every heart?




W <===     WEST 82ND STREET     ===> E

West:

The Saxony

2275 (corner): The Saxony, a seven-story Beaux Arts building from 1899, was Emery Roth's first residential building.



2273: This was from 1937 to 2014 the location of Town Shop Lingerie.


The Forres

Corner (251 W 81st): The Forres is a seven-story building by George F. Pelham. Early 20th century recording star Emilio de Gogorza lived here. Now home to Harmony by Karate, martial arts school.

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2270: Town Shop Lingerie, known for individualized bra fittings. Founded in 1888 on Bleecker Street, the store moved to the Upper West Side in 1937 and moved across the street to this location in 2014. The Avonova





Corner (219 W 81st): The Avonova, a 13-story building from 1912, designed by Gaetano Ajello.


W <===     WEST 81ST STREET     ===> E

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Zabar's

ZABAR'S

2245 (corner): Iconic Upper West Side gourmet grocery store founded in 1934 by Louis and Lillian Zabar. They claim to have introduced brie, sun-dried tomatoes and gnocchi to America. Featured in productions like Manhattan and You've Got Mail.

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Former 81st Street Theatre

Even lighting

2248 (corner): Built in 1913 as a vaudeville house, Keith's 81st Street Theatre, part of the Keith-Orpheum Circuit. Designed by Thomas Lamb, it was noted for a spectacular mural called Music & Dancing, above the proscenium. James Cagney made his acting debut here in 1919 as a chorus girl (!) in a show called Every Sailor. Later, as Keith-Orpheum became part of RKO, it was a movie house, the RKO 81st Street. It closed in 1953 to become a TV studio, CBS Studio 72, where Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella was broadcast live in 1957. It was later used to shoot such series as Sesame Street, Electric Company and Love, Sidney (a sitcom set in the neighborhood starring Tony Randall). It now serves as a grand lobby for The Broadway, a 23-story condo tower built in 1987. Temptation

2246: Westsider Rare & Used Books announced it was closing in January 2019, but was able to stay in business after an independent crowdfunding campaign raised $50,000. Opened here in 1984 as Gryphon Books, noted for out-of-print and unusual books. It was featured in the films Wonderstruck and Can You Ever Forgive Me?. 2242-2246 Broadway

2244: Runaway Poppy, gift shop




2240 (corner): The ten-story building from 1905 comprises all the addresses to 2246.


W <===     WEST 80TH STREET     ===> E

West:



2233: Ikinari Steak, Japanese mini-chain. "This is the big steak, the big cut of steak."

2231: Canine Styles West, pet store First Baptist Church

2221 (corner): The First Baptist Church in the City of New York was organized in 1762, with its first home at 35 Gold Street. Its first pastor, John Gano, was a chaplain in the Continental Army and allegedly baptized George Washington at Valley Forge. (He's also a founder of Brown University and an ancestor of Howard Hughes.) The congregation moved to 354 Broome Street and then to East 39th and Fourth Avenue before moving here in 1890.

George Keister, who later designed the Apollo Theater, was the architect of this building; its asymmetrical towers represent Jesus Christ and the church, incomplete until Jesus' return. With the addition of a balcony in 1903, the church can seat 1,000.

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2220 (corner): This two-story building from 1932 (which houses a Designer Shoe Warehouse) is the site of a mural by Banksy, Hammer Boy, which appeared on October 20, 2013. The brothers who own Zabar's preserved it by covering it with plexiglass from their deli counter.


W <===     WEST 79TH STREET     ===> E

West:

The Apthorp

The Apthorp

2209 (block): Block-spanning apartment complex built by the William Waldorph Astor from 1906-08, designed by Clinton & Russell with a central courtyard featuring two fountains. _IGP3467

Actor Douglas Fairbanks Sr. was an early tenant; he moved here from the Algonquin because he didn't want his son to be born in a hotel. Instead, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was born here December 9, 1909.

Other notable residents have included Joseph Heller, George Balanchine, Al Pacino, Conan O'Brien, Nora Ephron, Cyndi Lauper, Rosie O'Donnell and 60 Minutes' Steve Kroft.

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2200-2218 (block): Thirteen-story apartment building from 1905. Ground-floor retail includes Unique News, Blooming Couture, New Wave Cafe, Blossom Jewelry and Coco-Mat ("Sleep on Nature").



























W <===     WEST 78TH STREET     ===> E

Here Broadway stops running parallel to the "normal" avenues of Manhattan and resumes its characteristic diagonal path.

West:

2199 Broadway

2199 (corner): La Caridad 78, Chino-Cuban since 1972.

2197: Europan Bakery

2191: Bra Smyth, specialty lingerie mini-chain is the rival of Town Shop up the street. 233 West 77th Street







Corner (233 W 77th): Fifteen-story building from 1924.

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2184: A midblock lowrise built in 1913 which served as the 77th Street Theatre until 1950. Demolished 2011.

2182: The original home of Ruby Foo's, glitzy pan-Asian that opened in 1998 and closed in 2009. The Times Square incarnation lasted from 2000-2015.

Corner (227 W 77th): The Larstrand, 20 floors built in 2012.


W <===     WEST 77TH STREET     ===> E

West:

Hotel Belleclaire

Hotel Belleclaire

Corner (250 W 77th): Belle Epoque landmark designed by Emery Roth and built from 1901-03. Russian author Maxim Gorky stayed here briefly in April 1906 when he was in town raising funds for the Revolution; he was asked to leave when it was discovered that his companion was not his wife but rather actor Maria Andreyeva, his long-time lover. Mystery writer SS Van Dine lived here from 1922-25, when he created his most famous character, detective Philo Vance. Mark Twain and Babe Ruth are also said to have stayed here. The Colorado







2161 (corner): The Colorado, a 15-story red-brick building from 1925.

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NYLO New York

2178 (corner): This 1910 building has been a boutique hotel since at least 2000—first known as On the Ave, and then, after being bought by the NYLO group, going by NYLO New York City or the ArtHouse Hotel. Serafina Upper West Side, Italian, on the ground floor.

2170: RedFarm, Chinese, is the same building as Serafina. WP Theater

2162: This 1930 building was home from 1969 to 2006 to the Promenade Theatre, an off-Broadway playhouse where Sam Shepard's Lie of the Mind debuted in 1985. Still operating is its tiny, 108-seat sibling, the McGinn/Cazale Theatre, which showcases plays by the Women's Project and Second Stage.


W <===     WEST 76TH STREET     ===> E

West:

2159 (corner): This was an addition to the Astor Apartments, built 1914.
Astor Apartments

2141-2157 (corner): The Astor Apartments, built by William Waldorf Astor in 1901 to a Clinton & Russell design. Has a notable copper cornice.

This was the approximate site of Somerindyke House, a Dutch farmhouse. It was occupied by Hessians during the Revolutionary War, and future French king Louis-Philippe taught school here in the 1790s. It was torn down in 1868 to facilitate the widening of Broadway.

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The Laureate

2150 (corner): The Laureate, 20-story condo built in 2010. Noted for its rounded, ornate balconies on its Broadway angle.
















W <===     WEST 75TH STREET     ===> E

West:

2135 (corner): NYC Morning. Very Very Very Cold Morning. Citarella Gourmet Market; founded in 1912 as seafood shop; bought in 1983 by Joe Gurrera, who turned it into an upscale grocery mini-empire.





























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Hotel Beacon

2130 (corner): The Hotel Beacon was built in 1928, designed by Walter W. Ahlschlager, the architect of the Roxy Theatre. It was built in conjunction with the theater next door; both were named for an actual airplane beacon that was on the roof, said to be visible by planes 70 miles away. It was turned off in 1931 when the Department of Commerce cracked down on unoffical beacons.

Residents have included Broadway producer Albert H. Woods and Paris Underground author Etta Shiber.

The Viand Cafe is on the ground floor.

Previously on this land were the Tilden Club House and the Dakota Stables.

Beacon Theatre

Beacon Auditorium Ceiling

2124: Opened in 1929 as Warner's Beacon Theatre, a movie palace and vaudeville house, the Walter Ahlschlager-designed auditorium has an interior "second only to Radio City Music Hall," according to the AIA Guide. Seating 2,894, the venue switched from movies to live concerts in the 1970s; its been host to notable shows by the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, the Rolling Stones and Mariah Carey, among many others. (I've seen PJ Harvey and Lucinda Williams here, to name two more.)

2120 (corner): Beacon Wine & Spirits


W <===     WEST 74TH STREET     ===> E

West:

The Ansonia

The Ansonia A Beaux Arts landmark built in 1904 as a residential hotel by copper heir William Earle Dodge Stokes, who named it for his grandfather, Anson Greene Phelps. There was originally an urban farm on the roof, which Stokes said featured "about 500 chickens, many ducks, about six goats and a small bear." Sadly, the Health Department shut the farm down in 1907. The first air-conditioned hotel in the city, the Ansonia also featured the world's largest indoor pool and a lobby fountain with live seals. The Ansonia

In part because of its soundproof walls, the Ansonia counted an incredible array of musical talents among its early guests, including Enrico Caruso, Arturo Toscanini, Igor Stravinsky Sergei Rachmaninoff, Gustave Mahler, Ezio Pinza, Lily Pons and Yehudi Menuhin. It has also attracted big names from stage and screen, like Sarah Bernhardt, Moss Hart, Tony Curtis, Paul Sorvino, Angelina Jolie, Macaulay Culkin and Natalie Portman.

Notable New York reports that for a time impresario Florence Ziegfeld kept two identical suites on the 10th and 13th floors—one for his wife, one for his mistress. He later lived here—in one suite—with his last wife, actress Bille Burke.

From the literary world, Theodore Dreiser lived here (1931-35), as did Isaac Bashevitz Singer, Cornell Woolrich and cartoonist Walt Kelly.

L1012230.JPG

Babe Ruth moved here in 1920 when he was signed by the Yankees, and stayed most of the decade; he was remembered for going down to the hotel barber in his bathrobe and playing the saxophone in the halls. Jack Dempsey lived here while training for the 1919 world heavyweight championship. The 1919 White Sox team plotted to throw the World Series here.

Exiled Mexican dictator Victoriano Huerta was caught conspiring with Germany here in 1914, hoping to win the return of Texas and California. The next year German agents plotted to blow up the Ansonia's main ballroom to kill America's naval leadership gathered for a ball.

Bank robber Willie Sutton was arrested (for the sixth of eight times) at the Childs Restaurant on the ground floor in 1930.

Ansonia

The basement pool became the Continental Baths, a gay bathhouse opened in 1968 that could reportedly accommodate 1,000 guests at a time. The baths featured an incredible array of entertainers—from Sarah Vaughan to the New York Dolls—but are best-known for launching the career of Bette Midler—sometimes accompanied on piano by a towel-clad Barry Manilow. They were reinvented as the co-ed sex club in 1977—shut down by Ed Koch during the AIDS crisis in 1980.

The Ansonia has been featured in numberous films, including The Sunshine Boys, Three Days of the Condor, Single White Female, The Paper and My Super Ex-Girlfriend. It played the demonic title location in the TV show 666 Park Avenue.

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Central Savings Bank

Central Savings Bank

A 1928 structure designed by York & Sawyer to look like an Italian Renaissance palazzo. The bank was founded in 1859, with its offices in Cooper Union, as the German Savings Bank; it changed its name during World War I. In 1981, it was bought by the Harlem Savings Bank, which in 1983 changed its name to the Apple Savings Bank; under that name it still operates out of this building.














NYC - UWS: Central Savings Bank




























NYC - UWS: Central Savings Bank



















Apple Bank for Savings (former Central Savings Bank building)




















W <===     WEST 73RD STREET     ===> E

West:

1925, 73rd St

2095 (corner): The Rutgers Building, home of the Rutgers Presby- terian Church. The church was founded in 1798 at the corner of Henry and Rutgers streets in Lower Manhattan, where St. Theresa of Avila Catholic Church is now. After a relatively brief stay at Madison and 29th (1863-87), it moved here to what was then an expanding part of the city, building a large Romanesque church in 1880. The present building, which combines a sanctuary, a church house and a commercial bank building, was dedicated in 1925.

2091: The Wood Dolson Building was built in 1922 for the Wood Dolson real estate company, which helped develop the Upper West Side. The Alexandria

2085 (corner): The Alexandria, 25-story apartment building from 1991. The AIA Guide calls this "consummate schmaltz" an "insult to ancient Egypt." But Carter Horsley called it "the most attractive new building on the Upper West Side in decades." There's a Bloomingdale's Outlet Store on the ground floor.

In 2003, a painting by Rufino Tamayo was found in the garbage here after being stolen for 20 years. It was later sold at auction for $1 million.

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Verdi Square

Set In Stone A small triangular park formed by the intersection of Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. It's named for the opera composer Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901); there's a statue of him here by Pasquale Civiletti, flanked by four of his most famous characters: Aida, Otello, Falstaff and Leonora (from The Force of Destiny).

In the 1960s and 1970s, the park's popularity with IV drug users gave it the nickname Needle Park, as featured in the 1971 movie Panic in Needle Park.

In the summer this is home to the Verdi Square Festival of the Arts. 72 St Subway Station-2

The subway entrance here was added in 2002 to ease congestion on the platforms below. The station serves the 1, 2 and 3 IRT trains.


W <===     WEST 72ND STREET     ===> E

Northern Boundary of Lincoln Square Neighborhood

West:

The Corner

Corner (200 W 72nd): The Corner, 19-story apartment building completed in 2010. It replaced the Colonial Club, an 1892 clubhouse designed by Henry F. Kilburn with a distinctive turreted corner. The club, whose name referred to an interest in pre-Revolutionary history, was one of the first in the city to admit women; “One of the elevating purposes of the club was to enjoy the society of pure and honorable women,” the New York Times reported in 1893. They were only able to engage in this activity for a few years, however; the clubhouse was sold in 1903 and the club apparently disbanded.








2061 (corner): An eight-story co-op built in 1925. Cafe 71 is on the ground floor.

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NYC - UWS: 72nd Street Control House The southern section of Verdi Square holds the original entrance to the subway station, a landmarked 1905 structure by Heins & LaFarge.

AMSTERDAM AVE   ===> N

The Dorilton

NYC - UWS: Dorilton Apartments

Point (171 W 71st): A Beaux Arts landmark constructed in 1902, designed by Janes & Leo. New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. has lived here, as has developer William Zeckendorf.


W <===     WEST 71ST STREET     ===> E

This was the approximate center of the early 19th century village of Harsenville.

West:

71st and Broadway

2047: Little Italy pizza; Maoz, Israeli vegetarian

2039 (block): A 41-story highrise from 1971.





S <===   AMSTERDAM AVE

Sherman Square

NYC - UWS: Sherman Square

A triangular piece of land acquired by the city in 1849 and named for Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in 1891, the year of his death. (Sherman had lived in the neighborhood.) Divided by Broadway into two pieces, neither one of which is much more than a glorified traffic island. Panic in Needle Park was supposedly filmed here.

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South Pierre

Almanac Hotel

2054-2062 (corner): A 19-story 1923 building by Maynicke & Franke. Originally known as the Almanac Hotel; Yankees star Babe Ruth stayed here in 1929 before he married his girlfriend Claire Merritt Hodgson, who lived on 80th Street.

Tasty Cafe, Pinkyotto women's wear and the wine bar Le Pif are on the ground floor.







Coronado Gargoyle I

Corner (155 W 70th): The Coronado, a 21-story apartment building, features gargoyles despite being built in 1990. From 1922 into the 1950s, there was a Studebaker showroom on this corner.


W <===     WEST 70TH STREET     ===> E

West:

Nevada Towers II

2025 (corner): A little bank building. Has the same address as the big building it's in front of.


On this land in 1806 was built the Bloomingdale Dutch Reformed Church, serving residents who had moved up the island to escape yellow fever. The community was originally called Harsenville after church founder Jacob Harsen. A nicer church was built by 1816 and stood until Broadway — then known in this stretch as The Boulevard — was widened in 1869. By 1885 the third and final church was built on this site, a limestone structure seating a thousand people, with a 160-foot spire. It was torn down in 1905 when the congregation moved further uptown to West End between 106th and 107th, where it disbanded in 1913.


Nevada Towers I

2025 (corner): Nevada Towers, a 30-story building with an odd convex shape. It was built in 1974, replacing an earlier building with the same name.

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The Ormonde

The Ormonde

2028 (corner): A wedge-shaped building to fit on a triangular lot, The Ormonde (aka 154 West 70th) was designed by Robert Maynicke in 1899. It later changed its name to the Embassy Hotel, then Embassy Tower, then back to Ormonde. Perhaps named after Ormonde, the horse that won the Triple Crown in 1886, considered "the horse of the century."

Albert Camus stayed here in 1946 during the first part of a three-month trip to New York. "It is beyond human power," said Camus, "to give an idea of the curious way in which 8 million bison live in this elevated amusement park that geographers call New York."

2028: Gina La Fornarina, pizza 2020 Broadway Entrance

2020 (corner): Eight neo-Renaissance stories, built 1896. Originally the Seminole Hotel, also known as the Lincoln View. Shakespeare & Co., beloved bookstore franchise, promises to move into the space vacated by Albertina's Fine Foods. Westside Restaurant, diner, is on the corner.


W <===     WEST 69TH STREET     ===> E

West:

Dorchester Towers

Block (155 W 68th): Dorchester Towers, 34 stories of white brick from 1965. Includes the offices of John Kong, DDS, whose slogan is "Better Living through Dentistry."










Beach Umbrella on Broadway









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Lincoln Spencer Arms

Corner (140 W 69th): Lincoln Spencer Arms, a 12-story Beaux Arts apartment building from 1903. Originally the Spencer Arms Hotel.

2014: Sole Bistro Italiano

2012: Nanoosh, Mediterranean





The Copley

2000 (corner): The Copley, a 1987, 28-floor apartment building designed by Davis, Brody & Associates.


W <===     WEST 68TH STREET     ===> E

West:

1991/1995 Broadway

1995 (corner): An 18-story building from 1974.

1991: Bel Canto, 27-story condo from 1986. On the ground floor is Sugar Factory, glitzy dessert-oriented diner. If you find the idea of cocktails filled with gummi bears appealing, this place is for you.








Apple Store

1981 (corner): Apple Upper West Side, a glass and marble building opened in 2009. This kind of free-standing retail, with no residential or commercial space above, is now very rare.

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AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13

Loews Lincoln Square and IMAX Theater, Broadway, New York City

1998 (block): When Sony opened this cinema complex in 1994, it was the nations's busiest multiplex. The individual theaters bear the names of grand Loews movie palaces, many long gone: the Valencia, Kings, State, Capital, Paradise and Jersey. The plaster and fiberglass entrances evoke these cinemas' fanciful decor. The 876-seat main theater, called Loew's, with its Thai temple theme, is modeled on Loew’s 72nd Street theatre designed by Thomas Lamb and demolished in 1961. Lincoln Square Mural I The classic movies featured in the lobby mural were released by Columbia, which is owned by Sony, the multiplex's original owner.

The Park Millennium, the 38-story condo tower above the theater, goes by the address 111 W 67th. Replaced the four-story Ansonia Post Office, built in 1955.


W <===     WEST 67TH STREET     ===> E

West:

Grand Millennium Condo

1961 (block): Grand Millennium Condo, 32 floors that went up in 1997. Tower Records used to be on the ground floor.

This corner was once the Dauphin Hotel, built in 1903 to a CPH Gilbert design.





1961 (corner): The southeast corner of this block was the Marie Antoinette Hotel, an eight-story 1895 building by Julius Munckowitz. At some point it seems to have merged with the Dauphin.

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138-150 Columbus Avenue

Block (138-150 Columbus): A 30-story condo built 1995. Barnes & Noble used to be on the ground floor, replaced by Century 21. Sportcaster Marv Alpert, who was convicted of assault after being accused of sexually abusing two women, has lived here.

1970: The site of Frank E. Campbell's Funeral Chapel, New York City's most prestigious funeral home, from 1913 to 1938. A wake for Rudolph Valentino was held here from August 24-30, 1926, attracting 50,000 distraught fans. Other notables who lay in state here include Frank Woolworth (1919), Enrico Caruso (1921), Bat Masterson (1921), Fatty Arbuckle (1933) and George Gershwin (1938).


W <===     WEST 66TH STREET     ===> E

West:

Juilliard School

090704 Alice Tully Hall 01

Sometimes considered the world's leading performing arts school, Juilliard traces its history to the Institute of Musical Art, founded in 1905 in Greenwich Village and soon relocated to Morningside Heights. It merged in 1926 with the Juilliard Graduate School, a new institution endowed by the estate of textile merchant Augustus Juilliard. Alice Tully Hall, NYC

In 1969 it moved to its current home, part of the Lincoln Square re- development project. The building—which includes the concert space Alice Tully Hall—was designed by Pietro Belluschi, architect of the Pan Am Building. The Juilliard Shool

Musicians and composers trained here include Chick Corea, Philip Glass, Marvin Hamlisch, Bernard Herrmann, Nina Simone, Tito Puente, Wynton Marsalis, Henry Mancini and Yo-Yo Ma.

Acting alumni include Jessica Chastain, Adam Driver, Kelsey Grammer, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Val Kilmer, Laura Linney, Patti LuPone, Elizabeth McGovern, Mandy Patinkin, Christopher Reeve, Kevin Spacey and Robin Williams. (Also Phillipa Soo, who went to the same high school I did.)

Paul Taylor danced here, and Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan studied the clarinet. Thirteen Studio

Notable faculty members include John Houseman, Maria Callas, Tony Kushner, Wynton Marsalis, Terrence McNally and Itzhak Perlman.

There are also studios for public TV stations WNET and WLIW here.






SE Corner: Here was the Lincoln Arcade Building, a 1902 studio building that provided work space for artists like George Bellows (who shared his studio with Eugene O'Neill), Thomas Hart Benton, Marcel Duchamp and Rockwell Kent. Robert Henri taught art here to such students as Edward Hopper, Stuart Davis and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. The structure was destroyed by fire in 1931, but a rebuilt version lasted for another two decades.

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Tucker Square

Richard Tucker

Though often thought of as Lincoln Square, this triangular plaza is actually named for Opera star Richard Tucker, who sang at the Met from 1945 until his death in 1975. There's a bust of him here by Milton Hebald. Before being named for Tucker, the official name was Empire Square North.

I wonder if neither triangle at Lincoln Square actually being named Lincoln Square has to do with the mystery over Lincoln Square's name—there's no record of why the neighborhood was given that designation in 1906, and the speculation is that this lacuna had something to do with the fact that then-Mayor George B. McClellan was the son of Abraham Lincoln's bitter rival, Gen. George B. McClellan Sr.

There's a farmers market here twice a week.

66th Street/Lincoln Center Station:

A local stop on the IRT's 1 line, opened 1904.


COLUMBUS AVE         ===> N

LDS Manhattan New York Temple

Manhattan New York Temple

Corner (125 Columbus): A temple of the Church of Latter Day Saints, or Mormon Church. Roughly equivalent to a Catholic cathedral, there are about 150 LDS temples in the world. The Mormons built here in 1975, but it was not turned into a temple until 2004. Angel Moroni II

Atop the temple is the traditional statue of the angel Moroni, who Mormons believe gave the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith.

1940 (corner): Previously on this corner was the Hotel Sidney. In 1927 the proprietor, along with six others ("all well-dressed") was arrested here by the Society for the Suppresion of Vice for running "one of the most substantial policy games in existence." "It supplied tickets to negroes, althought many white people played the game as well," the New York Times reported. Along with "adding machines, checkbooks and other paraphernalia" on "green-covered tables," there was said to be found "some alleged whiskey in five-gallon cans."


W <===     WEST 65TH STREET     ===> E

Was San Juan Hill's Northern Boundary

West:

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

Avery Fisher Hall

Conceived in 1955 by the Mayor's Slum Clearance Committee (chaired by Robert Moses) as the enterpiece of efforts to remake the then-impoverished Lincoln Square neighborhood (the West Side of West Side Story). The Center's first president was John D. Rockefeller III; President Dwight Eisenhower broke ground for it in 1959, with its first building, Philharmonic Hall, opening in 1962 as the home of the New York Philharmonic. New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall

The hall, on the corner here of 65th Street, Broadway and Columbus Avenue, was designed by Max Abramovitz of Harrison & Abramovitz. It was renamed Avery Fisher Hall in 1973 after the founder of Fisher Electronics gave the orchestra here $10 million. In 2015 it was renamed David Geffen after the Geffen Records exec gave Lincoln Center $100 million.

The acoustics of the hall remain problematic despite repeated attempts to fix them. It's the home of the Mostly Mozart Festival, launched in 1966, as well as PBS's Great Performances series.

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Grand Tier II

1930 (block): The Grand Tier, a 30-story Costas Kondylis building from 2005.

As No. 1926, this was the site of the Goelet Garage, built in 1906-07, designed by Maynicke & Franke along with Frank M. Andrews. In the 1920s, it became the Macfadden Building, where Bernarr Macfadden published magazines like Liberty, True Story, Physical Culture and The New York Graphic. National Cash Register operated a service center here, and ABC at one point rented two-thirds of the building; the DJ Cousin Brucie broadcast from there. Dustin Hoffman later had his film company here. The building housed a number of restaurants serving Lincoln Center audiences, including the Ginger Man (later Lincoln Tavern), Magic Flute (which became Saloon), Sfuzzi and Opera Espresso.


















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Dante Park

Dante Park Originally Empire Park, acquired by the city in either 1852 or 1868, it was renamed Dante Park when the statue of the Italian poet (by Ettore Ximenes) was dedicated here in 1921. This was part of the campaign of Carlo Barsotti, owner and editor of the daily Il Progresso, to memorialize famous Italians, which also produced Columbus Circle, Verdi Square, Time Sculpture the statue of Garibaldi in Washington Square and of Verrazzano in Battery Park.

Also here is TimeSculpture (1999) by architect Philip Johnson.

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One Lincoln Plaza

1900 Broadway

Block (20 W 64th): Forty-three floors built in 1974, this apartment complex designed by Philip Birnbaum was the first major construction following the development of Lincoln Center, and it still dominates the area. The AIA Guide calls it a "behemoth" with "no redeeming social or architectural significance.... What an urbanistic mistake!” On the other hand, while acknowledging that its looks are "a bit prosaic," Carter Horsley says it has "excellent" form that "holds the angled street-line of Broadway very well." The arcade along Broadway features the restaurants Boulud Epicerie, Boulud Bar, Fiorello and The Smith.

The building was home to jazz great Lionel Hampton, whose apartment was gutted by a 1997 fire. Other residents have included actor Ben Vereen and Linda Lavin, sportscaster Frank Gifford and journalist Hendrik Hertzberg.

Commercial tenants at One Lincoln Plaza include Sesame Workshop, the producers of Sesame Street; the actors union SAG-AFTRA; and the musical copyright enforcer ASCAP, which has been headquartered here since 1974.



W <===     WEST 63RD STREET     ===> E

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Empire Hotel

Hotel Empire

1889 (corner): The original Empire Hotel on this site was an 1889 building bought by hotelier Herbert DuPuy in 1908. In 1923, DuPuy opened a new 15-story building here, complete with iconic rooftop neon sign.

Composer Aaron Copland lived here from 1936-47, where he wrote Fanfare for the Common Man and Appalachian Spring. Lyricist Al Dubin (1891-1945), who wrote the words for such standards as "42nd Street," "Tiptoe Through the Tulips," "We're in the Money," "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," "I Only Have Eyes for You" and "Lullaby of Broaday," spent the last few years of his life here.

In the TV show Gossip Girl, the hotel is owned by one of the main characters. Chilly Gonzales at the Lincoln Atrium

1887: The David Rubenstein Atrium is a visitors and ticketing center for Lincoln Center, named for the co-founder of the Carlyle Group. It's in the space once occupied by the Colonial Theatre, opened in 1905, playing mostly vaudeville. Silent film legends Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel made their US debut on stage together here in 1910; other performers here included Harry Houdini, Buster Keaton, George Burns and Gracie Allen, and Ethel Barrymore. In the early 1920s it became a venue for African-American musical revues, one of which introduced the Charleston dance craze in 1923.

Starting in 1932, it showed movies as the RKO Colonial; Walter Winchell broadcast his radio show from here in the 1940s. Later it became a TV studio for NBC and later ABC. As the Harkness in 1974, it had a brief rebirth as a legitimate theater before being torn down in 1977. AAA Building

1881 (corner): The AAA office here started out as a Cadillace dealership when this was Automobile Row.

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1890 Broadway

1890 (block): 30 Lincoln Plaza, also known as 30 W 63rd, is a 33-story apartment building from 1978— designed, like its next-door neighbor up Broadway, by Philip Birnbaum.

From 1981 to 2018, the basement was home to Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, which showcased art house fare, both international (Fellini's City of Women opened the theater) and domestic (Thin Blue Line and Mulholland Drive both premiered here). The building's owner, who declined to renew the Lincoln Plaza's lease, promises a cinema of some sort will return after renovations.

Breads Bakery here features the Concord Cake, a recreation of the mousse/meringue cake the owner grew up having for birthdays from Soutine on 70th Street, which closed in 2012.


































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The Allegro

1871 (corner): The Allegro, 27-story apartment building from 1987. NYIT's Auditorium on Broadway is in this building — as is Melissa's Gourmet Deli.





1865 Broadway Under Construction

1865 (corner): A 33-story building completed in 2018 to a Skidmore, Owings & Merrill design. It replaced another building by the same firm, the 1966 American Bible Society Building. The American Bible Society was founded in New York City in 1816; John Jay was among its first presidents, and Francis Scott Key a long-time vice president. It sold its headquarters and moved to Philadelphia amidst financial difficulties in 2015. The Museum of Biblical Art was located in the ABS's building.

Earlier on this corner was a Packard Motor Car Co. showroom.

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1880 (corner): Was the New York Guild for the Jewish Blind

15 Central Park West

15 Central Park West I

Block (15 CPW): A 2008 building designed by Robert Stern to look pre-war, it immediately became one of the most prestigious addresses in New York City and a template for high-end development. Residents include Robert De Niro, Sting, Norman Lear, Denzel Washington, Bob Costas and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.

1860 (corner): Formerly on this side of the block was 1860 Broadway, a 17-story Emory Roth building from 1927, demolished 1986.












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New York Institute of Technology

New York Institute of Technology

Corner (1855 Broadway): A college founded in 1955 to focus on technology and applied science; this is one of its two main campuses, the other being at Old Westbury on Long Island.

Earlier on this corner was the Hotel Midtown.

1849: NYIT's Metro Cafe 1845 Broadway

1845: Sapphire, Indian, is in an 1883 building designed by Henry Harden- bergh, architect of the Dakota and the Plaza Hotel. Around 1910, this building housed the Cafe de la Paix, owned by the Bustanoby’s restaurant family. The Cafe was a dance salon that helped spark a society craze for the tango and turkey trot. A young Rudolph Valentino may (or may not) have been paid to dance with lonely ladies here.

1841 (corner): A 12-story building from 1924.


W <===         W 60TH ST

Time Warner Center

Time Warner Center by saitowitz, on Flickr

Corner (10 Columbus Circle): This 2003 megastructure, a home for the media giant, was designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The first major skyscraper built after September 11, it features twin towers— with 55 stories, half of the World Trade Center's reach. The massive complex includes a a performance space for Jazz at Lincoln Center, and a hotel, the Mandarin Oriental that boasts such guests as Liam Neeson, Sigourney Weaver and I.M. Pei—and probably no longer boasts about Lance Armstrong and Kevin Spacey. Shops over there by roboppy, on Flickr Also some of the most expensive restaurants in New York City, including Masa ($300-a-plate sushi), per se and V Steakhouse.

Built on the site of the New York Coliseum, Robert Moses' 1954 convention center (Leon and Lionel Levy, 1954), widely viewed as an eyesore—and as a white elephant after the Javits Center opened in 1986. Demolished 2000.

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Trump International Hotel

Trump International Hotel & Tower, NYC by faungg, on Flickr Built in 1968-71 as the Gulf + Western Building, headquarters of the conglomerate that owned (among many other things) Paramount Pictures, Stax Records, Sega and Miss Universe, and later Simon & Schuster and Madison Square Garden. Purchased by the Trump Organization, it was stripped down to its skeleton and given an entirely new facade designed by Philip Johnson and Costas Kondylis. The makeover, completed in 1997, increased the number of floors from 44 to 52, due to decreased ceiling heights.

The building was the setting of the movie Tower Heist. Trump Globe by edenpictures, on Flickr

Directly south of the building is a 40-foot chrome-plated globe, seemingly inspired by Queens' Unisphere. Below the globe is the entrance to the Columbus Circle subway station.








Worlds
























20121103_006








59th Street/Columbus Circle Station:

Opened in 1904 as a stop on the IRT's 1 line; in 1932 it was expanded to include the IND's 8th Avenue line, and now serves the A, B, C and D trains as well.


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Columbus Circle

Columbus Circle

A roundabout honoring one of history's greatest monsters. It's not that he should be held responsible for all of Europe's effects on a New World that he didn't even realize he had found; Columbus Circle Columbus rather, he should be held responsible for what he did personally to the inhabitants of Hispaniola, whom he exploited and exterminated with an efficiency that would have made Eichmann proud. His statue, by Gaetano Russo and dedicated on the 400th anniversary of Columbus' first voyage in 1892, stands on a 70-foot pillar featuring representations of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria.

Speaking of monsters, the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man menaces Columbus Circle in Ghostbusters. And Travis Bickle tries to assassinate a political candidate here in Taxi Driver.

The circle got a major makeover in 2005 to make it more hospitable and accessible to pedestrians.

Above Columbus Circle is the Lincoln Square neighborhood; below is Hell's Kitchen.


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2 Columbus Circle

2 Columbus Circle by Vidiot, on Flickr

990 (block): In 1964, a 12-story concave tower designed by Edward Durell Stone was built here to house the Gallery of Modern Art, the collection of A & P heir Huntington Hartford. Known as the Lollipop Building for its distinctive ground-floor columns, it was noted for its almost windowless white marble facade, which attracted both ridicule and affection.

After being owned by Fairleigh Dickinson University and Gulf + Western, the building became home to the city's Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau from 1980 until 1998. The city transferred the property to the Museum of Arts & Design, which embarked on a highly controversial redesign of the building. 2 Columbus Circle by DrewVigal, on Flickr

Despite vocal calls to preserve the building as a historically important example of Modernism, the Landmark Commission stubbornly refused to even hold hearings on the matter. The new look was unveiled in 2008.

From 1874 until 1960, this was the site of the Pabst Grand Circle Hotel, a seven-story brownstone with a mansard roof. Actors Equity was founded there in 1913.

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Buildings - Columbus Circle

1802 (block): This 1941 apartment building, designed by Mayer & Whittlesley, was home to Antoine de Saint-Exupery when he was in exile from Nazi-occupied France. He spent his time here researching an Allied invasion of France and writing The Little Prince. Lois Lane lives here in the film Superman. This is said to be the first New York apartment building to make extensive use of balconies. retail shops, 240 Central Park South

On the Broadway side of the building (better known as 240 Central Park South) are Dino Shoe Repair, Columbus Circle Wines and Grom gelato.




















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Columbus Tower

3 Columbus Circle marked up for surgery by jskrybe, on Flickr

Block: Also known as the Newsweek Building, for its most prominent tenant (since 1994), the first three stories of this 25-story building went up in 1921 as the Collonade Building, noted for its Ionic columns (William Welles Bosworth, architect). The Broadway side was leased to the Hudson Motor Car Company for an Essex showroom, a space that from 1974 to 2003 was home to Coliseum Books, one of New York's most storied bookstores. The northern corner is the Cosmic Coffee House. In 1926, Shreve & Lamb added 22 stories to the building, which became General Motors' East Coast headquarters; the building was known as the General Motors Building until 1968, when the company moved to 5th Avenue. The current owner decided to reclad the building in glass in 2008, an aesthetically dubious move. It's also being renamed, inanely, 3 Columbus Circle, despite not being on Columbus Circle.

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1790 Broadway by Infinite Jeff, on Flickr

1790 (corner): The 20-story US Rubber Company Building was built as HQ for the company that became Uniroyal and is now owned by Michelin. Faced in marble, it was designed in the Modern French style by Carrere & Hastings, who had just finished the NYPL.

This was the address of the NAACP, where on October 25, 1976, the pardon of the last surviving Scottsboro Boy, Clarence Norris, was announced.









1780 (corner): Lazarus Building houses the Perfect Picture Store, Pax Wholesome Foods.


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West:

Corner (250 W 57th): The Fisk Building is a 26-story office building from 1921, designed by Carèrre & Hastings and Shreve, Lamb & Blake for the Fisk Tire and Rubber Company. It has its own entrance to the Columbus Circle subway station. Once a hub for auto industry offices, it now specializes in entertainment; David Bowie had his offices here in the 1980s, and it's currently home to RZO, which provides business services to a roster of rock stars like Bowie, the Rolling Stones, U2, Madonna, etc.

The Fisk Building where supervillain Wilson Fisk (aka The Kingpin) works seems to be an entirely different building—though it is somewhere in Midtown.

Corner (235 W 56th): Symphony House Apartments, 43-story building from 1986

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Foreign Dignitaries by d.billy, on Flickr

Corner (211 W 56th): Carnegie Mews Apartments, a 37-story high-rise designed by Emery Roth & Sons (1979), used to house the only Manhattan branch of Hooters; it's since moved to Chelsea. From 1905-69, this was the site of the French-Gothic Broadway Tabernacle, a United Church of Christ congregation that now shares a home with Advent Lutheran on Broadway and 93rd.


W <===     WEST 56TH STREET     ===> E

West:

Random House Tower

The Random House Building by Ben+Sam, on Flickr

1745 (block): The headquarters of the publishing giant, built in 2003. The triple slab tower atop the trapezoidal base, which is residential, resembles a trio of giant books. The residences here are known as the Park Imperial; Sean "Puffy" Combs was one of the first tenants.

Random House was founded in 1925 by Bennett Cerf, who intended to publish a random assortment of books—which turned out to include works by Faulkner, Truman Capote, Ayn Rand and Dr. Seuss, and the first complete edition of Joyce's Ulysses.

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MONY Building

55th & Broadway by Andrew Baron, on Flickr

1740 (block): Built in 1950 as the 25-story headquarters of the Mutual Life Insurance Co. (Shreve, Lamb and Harmon were the architects), the building was known for the MONY logo at the top that inspired the Shondells song "Mony Mony." MONY moved out after a 2004 merger with AXA, and the logo was replaced with a "1740" in 2008.






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West:

Eating at Applejacks Diner, Broadway... by rmcgervey, on Flickr

1727 (corner): Applejack Diner is on the site of the Hotsy Totsy Club (then numbered 1721), Jack "Legs" Diamond's speakeasy and the headquarters of his rackets. A gangster named Red Cassidy was murdered here on July 13, 1929, but the case against Diamond was dropped when some eight witnesses died or disappeared.

Corner: 54 Broadway Cafe

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The Dream Hotel, New York, NY by Grufnik, on Flickr

Corner (210 W 55th): Dream Hotel (formerly the Majestic, originally the Woodward Hotel) is in a Beaux Arts building from 1895, given an ethereal blue lighting scheme. Serafina, Italian, on the ground floor.

1710: Bad Boy Worldwide, Sean "Diddy" Combs' management company

1708 (corner): International Ladies Garment Workers Union


W <===     WEST 54TH STREET     ===> E

West:

56th & Broadway by mikeyNYC, on Flickr

Corner: Ameritania Hotel (formerly Bryant Hotel) has scary online reviews. Twist Lounge on ground floor.

Ed Sullivan Theatre

New York City by Ryner12, on Flickr

1697 (corner): Built in 1927 as Hammer- stein's Theater, Arthur Hammerstein's tribute to his father Oscar, it was later known as the Manhattan Theater and Billy Rose's Music Hall. In 1936, CBS began radio broadcasts from here, and it was converted to a TV studio in 1950. It was home to the classic show The Honeymooners and The Merv Griffin Show and such game shows as What's My Line?, To Tell the Truth, Password and The $20,000 Pyramid. Ed Sullivan Theater by sarowen, on Flickr

But it was most famously home to the The Ed Sullivan Show, which aired from here until its 1971 cancellation. It was here that Elvis Presley performed on September 9, 1956, the camera famously avoiding his swiveling hips, and the Beatles made their U.S. television debut on February 9, 1964. Since David Letterman moved to CBS in 1993, it's been the studio for his Late Show.

The building is also home, at No. 1695, to Omido, sleek sushi restaurant designed by AvroKO.

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Central Park Vista

1700 (block): A 42-floor Emery Roth building from 1969 that has been home since 1996 to DC Comics and Mad magazine (which Bart visited when The Simpsons came to New York). Europa Cafe is on the ground floor.

































1698: This was the address of the Palladium Ballroom, a second-floor dancehall that was one of New York's leading venues for Latin music from 1948 until 1966. It hosted the likes of Tito Puente, Arsenio Rodríguez and Celia Cruz. This was ground zero for the mambo craze.


W <===     WEST 53RD STREET     ===> E

West:

Broadway Theatre

Broadway by RcktManIL, on Flickr

1685 (corner): Built in 1924 to a Eugene DeRosa design, it was originally the Colony Theatre, where "Steamboat Willie," the first talking cartoon, debuted in 1928. (Mickey Mouse had been introduced in "Plane Crazy" six months earlier.) After being renamed the Broadway, it saw the premiere of Fantasia in 1939. My Fair Lady, The Music Man and South Pacific all had their Broadway debuts here, as did My Sister Eileen. It's also been home to such successful musicals as The Wiz Evita, Les Miserables, Miss Saigon and The Color Purple.

1675 (corner): A green granite office tower, designed by Fox & Fowle and built 1986-89, wraps around the Broadway Theatre.

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Flash Dancers by Thomas Hawk, on Flickr

1678 (corner): Earle Building was the original home of Birdland, Charlie Parker's legendary jazz club from 1949-65. After such incarnations as Ubangi, Ebony and Clicque, now houses Flash Dancers, a topless club. Also in the building are Leone Pizza and Gourmet Deli & Hot Bagel.


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New-York - Novotel

1657 (corner): Novotel New York Times Square is part of a French hotel chain; includes the Broadway Bar. Art Cafe, Broadway Deli are on the ground floor.



























1653: Phantom of Broadway, souvenirs

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Sheraton Manhattan at Times Square

Sheraton Manhattan by Modesto, on Flickr

Block (790 7th Ave): This was the Loews City Squire, built in 1962, bought by Sheraton in 1979 and given its current name in 1989. The hotel takes up the entire block, but the businesses on the Broadway side have their own addresses:

1666: Zan Boutique

1662: This was the site of Warners' Theater, where the first talking picture, The Jazz Singer, had its premiere in 1927. The cinema was built as the Piccadilly Theater in 1924; in 1936, it was Minsky's Oriental, a high-end burlesque house that was shut down by Mayor LaGuardia.

1658: Georgi-oh!, women's clothing, is at the address of the original Roseland Ballroom— a popular dancehall where the phrase "taxi dancer" is said to have originated. Bandleaders like Harry James, Louis Armstrong and Glenn Miller played here; Count Basie wrote "The Roseland Shuffle" about it. The space had opened in 1916 as the Iceland skating rink; Joseph Crater (not yet a judge) was one of the original incorporators. When the venue here was torn down in 1956, the Roseland moved to another former Iceland space on 52nd Street.


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Paramount Plaza

Manhattan - Paramount plaza by Nniiccoollaa, on Flickr 1633 (block): Originally known as the Uris Building, this 48-floor building went up in 1970 on the site of the Capitol Theatre, demolished in 1968. The 1919 cinema was designed by Thomas Lamb and was managed for a time by Samuel "Roxy" Rothapfel. It originally sat 5,300, making it the largest cinema in New York at the time and probably the world. It was the flagship of MGM's cinema chain; The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind both opened here in 1939. The talent show Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour, a huge phenomenon in its 1930s heyday, was broadcast from here on CBS Radio. The last movie to play here was 2001. Mars 2112 Restaurant

Now houses the U.S. offices of Hachette Filipacchi, the world's largest magazine publisher; several of their American magazines are based here, such as Elle, Woman's Day and Premiere. Located in the sunken courtyard was Mars 2112, a touristy sci-fi-themed restaurant that ran from 1999 until 2012.









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NYC: Ellen's Stardust Diner by Professor Bop, on Flickr

1650 (corner): Ellen's Stardust Diner features 1950s nostalgia and a singing waitstaff. Below is the Iridium Jazz Club. In the film Pat and Mike, the Spencer Tracy character's office is on this corner—though out his window you can see the I. Miller Building, at 7th and 46th. In the mid-20th Century, this was the address of the Havana-Madrid Club, a Latin music venue.

1638: Was Hawaii Kai, a Polynesian-themed restaurant from the 1950s through the 1980s. The scene in Goodfellas with Joe Pesci and the waiter was shot here.

Winter Garden Theater

hot strike by somethingstartedcr azy, on Flickr

1634 (corner): Starting Life in 1885 as the American Horse Exchange Building, it was largely rebuilt as the Winter Garden in 1911 and remodeled by Herbert J. Krapp in 1923. Its debut production included the Broadway premiere of Al Jolson. Here were the Broadway bows of Wonderful Town, West Side Story, Funny Girl, Mame, Steven Sondheim's Follies and Pacific Overtures, Beatlemania and 42nd Street. Cats set a Broadway record by playing here 7,485 performances between 1982 and 2000. The Twyla Tharp/David Byrne collaboration The Catherine Wheel was performed here in 1981.


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In the Damon Runyon story "Breach of Promise," Harry the Horse says he carried eight slugs in his body from this intersection to Brooklyn. It's also where Runyon runs into the title character of "Madame La Gimp."

At this intersection on December 7, 1988, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev got out of his limousine to greet New Yorkers—an incident that symbolized the new spirit of glasnost.

West:

Snapple on 50th west of Broadway by eszter, on Flickr

Corner (210 W 50th): Snapple Theater Center, an Off- Broadway house owned by the iced-tea company. Perfect Crime moved here after playing since 1987 at the Duffy Theater, making it the longest-running play on Broadway. Also at this address is Emmett O'Lunney's Harmony View, a pub; Emmett's father owns O'Lunney's on 45th Street.

Brill Building

brill building by traffic sounds, on Flickr

1619 (corner): Built in 1931 by developer Abraham Lefcourt, it was soon taken over and renamed by the Brill Brothers clothing store. In 1932, Southern Music Publishing Company moved here, starting the building's role as a center of music publishing that would last until 1974. (Buddy Holly met his soon-to-be wife, Maria Elena Santiago, at Southern Music, where she was a secretary.) Almost a third of the songs played on Your Hit Parade from 1935 until 1958 were published by Brill Building companies. Songwriters like Carole King, Burt Bacharach, Neil Diamond and Neil Sedaka got their starts here. Big Bands like the Dorsey Brothers, Guy Lombardo, Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway were also headquartered here. colony by Digiart2001, on Flickr

On the ground floor, the Colony Music Center, with vintage vinyl and a great sheet music collection, is a reminder of the building's glory days.

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750 7th Avenue

NYC - Midtown: 750 Seventh Avenue

Block (750 7th Ave): This 35-story 1989 ziggurat was designed by Kevin Roche. Houses the Majestic Delicatessen, opened in 1972, and Martinique Jewelers, founded 1963.





Junior's

1626: One of two Times Square outposts of a beloved Brooklyn diner, famous for its cheesecake; this one opened in 2016. Formerly this was Ruby Foo's, a glitzy pan-Asian whose Times Square incarnation lasted from 1999 to 2015.

Caroline's

Caroline's by Thomas Hawk, on Flickr

1626: Opened in 1981 in Chelsea, this famous comedy club has featured big names like Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno and Rosie O'Donnell.

It's on the site of the original Lindy's, immortalized in Damon Runyon's stories as "Mindy's." The late-night diner was opened August 20, 1921, by Leo Lindermann. Gambler Arnold Rothstein used it as his office, with a table no one else could sit at after 9 p.m.; he was Runyon's model for Nathan Detroit. Lindy's latter-day chain incarnations were regarded as charmless and overpriced; the last one closed in February 2018.




1620: The site of the Rivoli Theatre, New York's grandest movie palace, designed by Thomas Lamb for Paramount with 2,092 seats. Torn down in 1988 after being defaced to avoid landmarking.


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Gambler Sky Masterson met the mission worker Sarah Brown at this corner in the Damon Runyon story "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown."

West:

Crowne Plaza Manhattan

Crowne Plaza NY by Martin de Witte, on Flickr

1605 (block): This 1989 building by Alan Lapidus stands out for its purplish glass and curved concrete corners.









DSC02115 by StrahlemannBE, on Flickr

1593 (corner): On the southeast corner of the hotel is Hershey's Times Square, a chocolate store with a 215-foot multimedia facade. Spot any broken lights? It's supposed to look like that.

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1604 (corner): Spotlight Live, karaoke-themed restaurant with a live back-up band.






1600 Broadway by pakec, on Flickr

1600 (corner): The site of the Studebaker Building, built in 1902 as an auto showroom. In the 1930s it was Joseph Hilton & Sons suits, in 1939 the Ripley Believe It or Not! Odditorium ("Curioddities From 200 Countries"), in the 1940s-60s Howard Clothes, and more recently Tony Roma's A Place for Ribs. Before the Renaissance Hotel was built, it was one of the most visible spots in Times Square, bringing the rooftop memorable signage from Maxwell House to Sony. Torn down in 2005, it's being replaced by a high-rise apartment building designed by Einhorn Yaffee Prescott Achitecture & Engineering.


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Morgan Stanley

CIMG2805.JPG by L.x. Fringes, on Flickr

1585 (block): Headquarters of the financial firm co-founded in 1935 by J.P. Morgan's grandson, this building's post-modern facade features rolling financial quotes. As a result of the financial crisis of 2008, it got out of investment banking and allowed Mitsubishi to buy a 21 percent stake.

In 1914, this block became the site of The Strand, the first Times Square theater designed specifically for movies.

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Ramada Renaissance

NYC - Times Square by wallyg, on Flickr

1580 (block): This wedge-shaped building, put up in 1989, is most famous for its signage— Coca-Cola has had a sign here almost continuously since 1936. The site has a storied history: In the 1920s it was the Palais Royale, with the Moulin Rouge in the basement; then from 1936 to 1940 it was the Cotton Club's post-Harlem home, featuring stars like Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Lena Horne. From 1942 to 1969, it was the Latin Quarter nightclub—run by Lou Walters, Barbara Walters' father.


W <===             WEST 47TH STREET             ===> E

Starting May 24, 2009, Broadway between 47th and 42nd streets is closed to vehicle traffic—an excellent solution to both snarled traffic and overflowing pedestrians.

West:

W New York-Times Square

New York 2010 - 02 by Tigermuse, on Flickr

1567 (corner): This luxury hotel opened in 2001 featuring "almost hallucinatory public spaces" (Access NYC). Includes the Whiskey bar and the restaurant Blue Fin. Planet Hollywood had threatened to build a hotel here.

1565: Roxy Delicatessen; Time Square by gwenael.piaser, on Flickr the name recalls the great Times Square movie palace.





1557: This building was the site of Horn and Hardart's first New York City Automat, opening in 1912 (a decade after the coin-operated dining concept was launched in Philadelphia). It closed in the mid-1970s.

1553: Duffy Theatre, an off-Broadway theater right on Broadway. "Perfect Crime" has been playing here since 1987.

Howard Johnson's

Howard Johnson's Times Square by Adry Long, on Flickr

Corner: This was not only the last HoJo's in New York—it was one of the last in the entire country. Missed for its cocktails and Americana. It was once a Child's.

Upstairs was the Gaiety, a gay burlesque house. Earlier it was the New Paris, with live sex shows; before that, from 1917-64, it was the Orpheum Dance Palace, New York's most famous dime-a-dance joint. Here in 1923, when it was known as Wilson's Dancing Studio, novelist Henry Miller met his second wife, June Mansfield.

Rheba Brown, the Salvation Army's "Angel of Broadway" who was the inspiration for Guys and Dolls' Sarah Brown, used to hold her street rallies at this corner.

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Duffy Square

the new tkts # 008 by workinpana, on Flickr

At the north end of this triangular traffic island is the TKTS booth, offering half-priced tickets to selected plays on the day of the show. The old canvas-and-pipe structure was quite attractive, but it's been replaced by a more Blade Runnerish form whose roof is a red staircase-to-nowhere with a great view of Times Square.




NYC: Duffy Square - Father Duffy Statue by wallyg, on Flickr

Standing in front of the staircase is a statue of the square's namesake, Father Francis P. Duffy, who after serving as chaplain to the "Fighting 69th" Division in World War I helped to clean up Hell's Kitchen. He was also Broadway's spiritual advisor, which is why he can be found here, backed by a Celtic cross.
















Give my regards to Broadway by Jeff Tabaco, on Flickr

Also here is George M. Cohan, forever giving his regards to Broadway.

In 1909, a 50-foot statue of Purity was erected here. It lasted two months.


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The traffic island in Times Square between 46th and 45th Street is the site of Times Square, a sound installation by Max Neuhaus.

This is the intersection where Giselle emerges from the manhole in the movie Enchanted.

West:

New York Marriott Marquis

dsc01681 by Adam Comerford, on Flickr

1535 (block): When this glitzy mammoth was built in 1981-85—the first major new hotel in Times Square in 75 years—it destroyed five classic theaters: the Astor, Bijou, Gaiety, Morosco and the old Helen Hayes. (It did add one new one—the Marquis.) This wanton destruction led to a wave of landmarking in the Theater District. Up by kirbyfest, on Flickr

The design is by John Portman, noted for similar hotels around the country. The atrium/elevator column is pretty spectacular, I have to admit.

The facade of the hotel features a huge electronic sign for Bank of America, and an enormous ad for Kodak. See a 360-degree panoramic photo.

In the movie True Lies, Arnold Schwarzenegger rides a horse on this building and almost falls off the edge.

1537 (corner): The Astor Theatre, which opened on this corner in 1906, showed both films and legit theater. Gone With the Wind premiered here in 1939; other films that debuted here include The Hunchback of Notre Dame, On the Waterfront, Rebel Without a Cause and The Apartment. In 1948, Babe Ruth made his final public appearance here, to attend the premiere of The Babe Ruth Story.

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1550 (corner): Digital Cameras & Computers

Bertelsmann Building

German media conglomerate, which owns Random House and RCA records, among much else; better known as the home of the Virgin Megastore, billed as the world's largest record store. The post-modern blue-and-green glass structure, designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill, was put up between 1989 and 1990. The site used to hold the Loews State Theater Building, built 1920, and memorialized by the Loews State Theatre 4 in the basement.










North of the Megastore, from 2000-02, was Bar Code, a combination club/video arcade.



New York City by maxirafer, on Flickr

At the southwest corner of the Bertelsmann Building is the Times Square branch of Planet Hollywood. Formerly the Official All Star Cafe, a sports-themed restaurant.


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West:

Astor Plaza

mtv by azizk, on Flickr

1515 (block): Best known as the location of MTV's studios, this 1969 Kahn & Jacobs building was allowed to grow to 50 floors because it added theatrical space—The Minskoff, named for the skyscraper's developer. (Pippin, Sunset Boulevard and The Scarlet Pimpernel had their debuts here.) On the ground floor are Element clothing, Billabong Surf Shop and the MTV Store. MTV Times Square by wooohooo, on Flickr

The building replaced its namesake, the Astor Hotel, a well-loved Times Square landmark. Built in 1904 by William Waldorf Astor, the hotel housed such celebrity residents as Toscanini, Will Rogers, Jimmy Durante and Carmen Miranda. It was here, according to Cole Porter, that Mimsie Starr got pinched in the Astor Bar.


















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Toys R Us Times Square by aa440, on Flickr

1528 (corner): A Swatch outlet

This block has long been famous for its signage— from 1936 until 1942, Wrigley's had a block-long sign here featuring giant neon fish and the "Wrigley's Spearman." This was replaced, from 1948 to 1954, by the Bond Clothiers sign, a neon spectacular that featured two 7-story nude figures (later clothed in neon after complaints from the Hotel Astor) and an actual waterfall with 50,000 gallons of recirculating water. Pepsi took over the spot, turning the giants into giant bottles, and an illuminated clock into a bottlecap. Today the site features relatively mundane ads for Liz Claiborne and Jockey underwear.

The building below the sign has been known as the Bond Building (after the clothing store) and the Bow-Tie Building (for its peculiar Times Square shape). In the 1980s, there was a large disco called Bond's here.

From 1895 until 1935, this was the site of Oscar Hammerstein's Olympia Theater, the first theater above 42nd Street. The huge complex sat 6,000 people—too big to survive being too early for Times Square's heyday. The rooftop garden, the Jardin de Paris, was the first home of the Ziegfeld Follies. Toys R' Us . Times Square, NYC by Stinkie Pinkie, on Flickr

1520 (corner): Site of a Toys "R" Us superstore, noted for its interior ferris wheel and animatronic dinosaur. See images. It replaced the Criterion Theater (at 1514 Broadway), a movie palace that hosted the premieres of blockbusters like The Ten Commandments, Lawrence of Arabia and Patton. Demolished in 2000 to make room for the toy store, which itself moved out in 2015, replaced by Gap and Old Navy.


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West:

Paramount Building

NYC - Times Square: Paramount Building by wallyg, on Flickr

1501 (block): Built for the film company in 1927; the step-like setbacks are intended to resemble the mountain on the Paramount logo. Here was the Paramount Theater, which was Frank Sinatra's home base in the early 1940s, and a Beatles venue in 1964; the space was later the Hard Rock Cafe NYC by L-ines, on Flickr WWE New York, a wrestling-themed restaurant. It's now the Hard Rock Cafe, the theme restaurant that started them all; this one was christened in 2005 with the smashing of 100 guitars. On the northern end of the block is the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., named for the business in Forrest Gump. (Boy, I hated that movie.)

The superhero Captain Marvel was born on the 22nd floor here in 1940, in the offices of Fawcett Comics.

This was earlier the site of the Putnam Building, which was used as a base by racketeer Kid Dropper. Involved in a gang war with another mob leader, the Kid was shot and killed while being sent out of town with an escort of 80 cops.

The Paramount Building has pre-recorded chimes that play "Give My Regards to Broadway" at 7:45 p.m. every day to remind theatergoers that it's 15 minutes until curtain.

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Times Square Studios

NYC - Times Square: Times Square Plaza at 1500 Broadway by wallyg, on Flickr

1500 (block): This holds the set of ABC's Good Morning America, and for Dick Clark's New Year's Eve broadcasts. ABC News runs a zipper here.



Corner: The northern end of the block used to be the Hotel Rector, later known as the Hotel Claridge. From 1941 to 1966, it displayed the famous Camel sign that blew real smoke rings. The hotel was home and office for a time to mob boss Lucky Luciano; it also housed director D.W. Griffith while his upstate estate was being built. The music-writers group ASCAP was founded here in 1914 with members like John Philip Sousa, Irving Berlin and Victor Herbert. John Voight and Dustin Hoffman stayed there in Midnight Cowboy.

In the middle of the block was Rector's, a Gay '90s "lobster palace" that was a favorite with Diamond Jim Brady—Charles Rector called him his "best 25 customers." New York's first revolving door was installed here in 1899. Torn down in 1899 to make way for the hotel. Branded... by Trapac, on Flickr

Corner: The southeast corner of the block (where the JVC globe is today) was the site of the Barrett House Hotel, where playwright Eugene O'Neill was born on October 16, 1888, while his father was in town playing The Count of Monte Cristo.


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Recruiting in Times Square by inkbase, on Flickr US Army rekrutering på Times Square #1 by Stig Nygaard, on Flickr

The Times Square Armed Forces Recruiting Station is in the middle of the square at this intersection. Opened in 1946, it has signed up more people for the military than any other recruiting booth. It was the target of a smallish bomb on March 6, 2008.

West:

At the tip of this block is a small NYPD substation.



















One Times Square

It was Longacre Square until the New York Times shockingly moved its offices from Newspaper Row downtown to what was then the edge of town, suddenly made accessible by subway. (It replaced the Pabst Hotel on the site.) Building an Italian Renaissance castle on the spot, the paper got the city to rename first the subway stop and then the square after itself.

The paper celebrated moving in on New Year's Eve, 1904, with a fireworks display—starting the tradition of Times Square as the place to be on December 31. The ball, which used to drop from Trinity Church downtown, has been dropping from here since 1908. The Times moved off the Square in 1913, but the name stuck. NYC - Times Square: Mototron by wallyg, on Flickr

The world's first illuminated news ticker (dubbed the "Motogram") circles the building; it got its start reporting the 1928 election returns. (Hoover won.) Its announcement of Japan's surrender set off Times Square's famous celebration of the end of World War II.

The tower was modernized by new owners Allied Chemical, who moved out in 1975. Since then the building has mostly been a place to put giant signs. The ground floor was a Warner Brothers store for a while.

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Conde Nast Building

Conde Nast Building, Times Square by dsjeffries, on Flickr

1520 (block): This building, unhelpfully known as "4 Times Square," houses the offices of the Conde Nast publishing empire (Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, New Yorker, Wired, etc.). The building, designed by Fox & Fowle and built from 1996-99, is praised for letting its freak flag fly on Times Square while presenting a more sober facade on the newly respectable 42nd Street. NASDAQ Times Square by aa440, on Flickr

The northwest corner of the building is the Blade Runner-esque NASDAQ display. The exchange, which is the successor to Wall Street's Curb Exchange, has a PR outpost here; its real headquarters are still downtown, at One Liberty Plaza. ESPN Zone by kcjc009, on Flickr

The southwest corner is the ESPN Zone sports-themed restaurant.

The architect says he was inspired by Nathan's, which used to have an Art Deco restaurant on the northwest corner—originally Toffenetti's, built for the 1939 World's Fair.















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"The Crossroads of the World"

Starting May 24, 2009, Broadway between 47th and 42nd streets is closed to vehicle traffic.

West:

Times Square Subway Station

Subway Sign by _MaO_, on Flickr This is the busiest station in the system, handling 11 subway lines and half a million passengers a day. 42nd and Broadway by Nose in a book, on Flickr

It features a large mural by Roy Liechtenstein, among other art. The Cricket in Times Square is set in a newsstand here.

Uptown: Times Square subway by Ddrucki, on Flickr
1/9/A to 59th Street
2/3 to 72nd Street
N/R to 57th Street
C/E to 50th Street Times Square Subway by andy in nyc, on Flickr

Downtown:
1/2/3/9 to 34th Street
N/R to 34th Street
A/C/E to 34th Street

Crosstown:
7 to 5th Avenue
S to Grand Central

Times Square Tower

NYC: Times Square Tower by wallyg, on Flickr

1459 (block): This 47-floor office building (2001-03) was supposed to house the headquarters of Arthur Andersen, but the Enron scandal scuttled the deal. Has the fake and confusing address of 7 Times Square.

The Times Square Brewery, a post-Disneyfication microbrewery, used to be on this site; it had a half-scale model of a Concorde on its roof.

Earlier it was the location of the Heidelberg Building, aka the Crossroads Building, a white elephant from its 1910 construction until its 1984 demolition. Built with an 11-story tower atop a seven-floor base, it was meant primarily as a platform for ads, but would-be advertisers pointed out that you had to be blocks from the crowds in Times Square to see the tower. Plans over the years to transform in into a hotel, an auto showroom or a taller office tower fizzled over the years. It had its greatest moment of glory in 1912, when Harry Houdini escaped from a straitjacket while being suspended over the edge of the building.

Prior to that, the Hotel Metropole was on this block.

1457: Also in the building was XS, a virtual reality and lazer tag arcade—now defunct.

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Former Knickerbocker Hotel

Gap in Time Square by tedwang, on Flickr

1466 (corner): Built between 1901 and 1906 for John Jacob Astor IV, this Renaissance Eclectic structure was once one of the city's most fashionable hotels, housing celebreties like George M. Cohan and Enrico Caruso, who used to serenade fans from the balcony of his suite. The hotel's King Cole Bar was noted for its Maxfield Parrish mural, which now graces a bar of the same name at the St. Regis Hotel.

It later became known as the Newsweek Building when it housed the newsweekly's offices. Now I guess it's officially Six Times Square.

Monk Eastman, the famous gang leader, was captured here by police while having a shoot-out with a Pinkerton detective; the 10 years he got spelled the end of his power in the underworld.









































1460 (corner): Siemens Building


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1441 (corner): Cool ziggurat-like building houses offices of the fashion company Liz Claiborne.












1431 (corner): The address of the Poodle Dog, a restaurant/cabaret opened in 1913.

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1450 (corner): This 1931 building houses Walt Disney Theatrical Productions and Nederlander Producing, among other tenants. Cafe Duke is on the ground floor.

1440 (corner): Here Federated Department Stores, owners of Macy's, Bloomingdale's and other retail giants, has its headquarters. Here also for 79 years were the studios of WOR radio, a historic station founded in 1922 that launched Golden Age programs like The Lone Ranger and Superman. For 75 years the station (whose call letters stand for ''Orpheus Radio'') broadcast Rambling With Gambling, a morning show continued by its founder's son and grandson. Much of the station's airtime is now devoted to far-right hosts like Bob Grant and Michael Savage. The station moved downtown in 2005.


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West:

Broadway & 40th by Vidiot, on Flickr

1411 (block): This block was home to the Metropolitan Opera House from 1883 until 1966. Built by Gilded Age businessmen like William Vanderbilt who were denied boxes at the Academy of Music on 14th Street, it soon eclipsed the older venue as the central stage of New York society (as depicted in Edith Wharton's Custom of the Country). It saw the American debuts of Enrico Caruso (11/23/1903), who performed here 861 times, and Vaslav Nijinsky (4/12/1916). After Dorothy Parker was fired from Vanity Fair, she and Robert Benchley rented an office here for writing—so small, Benchley said, that one cubic foot less "would have constituted adultery."

Sculptor Karl Bitter was struck by a car and killed leaving the opera here on April 9, 1915, the day he completed the model for the Pulitzer Fountain.

The beloved house was doomed by the Metropolitan Opera company, which insisted, when it moved to Lincoln Center, that the building's buyer tear it down so that a rival opera company could not use it.

It was replaced with the World Apparel Center. NYC: Golda Meir Square by wallyg, on Flickr With more than a million square feet of space, this block-spanning 1970 building is touted as the premier showroom for the Fashion District.

There's a triangular space in front of the current building called Golda Meir Square—with a bust of the Israeli prime minister at the southern end.

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1430 (corner):






































1418: The Kaiserhof Restaurant opened here in 1914.

1412: The Europa Cafe

1412 (corner): The Fashion Gallery Building has the Gotham Bank of New York on the ground floor.


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1407 (block): This building houses (among other things) the restaurant Abigael's on Broadway, Harrie's Delicatessen & Bakery, Peter's Flowers (since 1937) and Via Rossi shoes.































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Peek-a-Boo, I See You by Vidiot, on Flickr

1410 (corner): Where the Andrews Coffee Shop is now was the Casino Theater (1882-1929), said to be the best example of Moorish architecture in the country. It was the first theater with a roof garden, the first to be entirely lit by electricity, and the first to feature a chorus line—the Floradora Girls, who included Evelyn Nesbit, over whom Harry K. Thaw murdered Stanford White.

The X-ray machine was demonstrated here in 1896— as a curiosity billed as the "Parisian Sensation."

The current building is the Bricken Casino Building, a 1929 effort by Eli Jacques Kahn noted for its inventive use of setbacks" and its "blade-like precision and grace."

1400 (corner): On the site of the old Knickerbocker Theater can be found the New Yankee Cafe and the Israel-based Leumi Bank (founded by Theodor Herzl). This building was also designed by Eli Jacques Kahn. In 1919 this was the address of Young India, the publication of the India Home Rule League of America.


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West:

Broadway & 38th by Vidiot, on Flickr -->

1385 (corner): Gideon's Drugs







1375 (corner): The home of Broadway's Jerusalem 2 Kosher Pizza & Falafel

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1384 (corner): Lefcourt Normandie Building, built by Garment District developer Abraham Lefcourt, on the site of the Hotel Normandie. Tchaikovsky stayed there in the spring of 1891 to inaugurate Carnegie Hall. Nick and Nora Charles also stayed here in the novel The Thin Man.

The Lefcourt Normandie National Bank of New York, founded in 1928, after a series of mergers and name changes became Chemical (now Chase) Bank.

Beads World, a Garment District supplier, can be found here now.

1372 (corner): Includes Mr. Broadway Glatt Kosher cafe and Another Good Location deli.


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1369 (corner): Showroom of Ecko Unltd., hip-hop clothing line with the rhino logo.













1359 (corner): Lefcourt Marlboro Building provides space for Kosher Delight, Eurovision Optical and Food Merchants.

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1370 (corner): Rosenthal & Rosenthal, financial services for the apparel industry since 1938.

Haier Building

NYC: The Haier Building by wallyg, on Flickr

1356 (corner): Built 1922-24 for the Greenwich Savings Bank and later used by Republic National Bank, this striking landmark surrounded by Corinthian columns is now the New York headquarters of the Haier Group, China's leading refrigerator manufacturer. Inside is Gotham Hall, a dramatic domed space often used for fashion shows.


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The Broadway Cable and Seventh Avenue Railroad Company ran cable cars from here down to Bowling Green, with the cables all pulled by 100-ton wheels in the basement of the Cable Building on Houston Street (where the Angelica is today).

West:

1333 (block): The Johnson Building's ground floor is mostly occupied by Conway Herald Square, "some of Herald Square's cheapest threads"—Time Out. The Marlborough-Blenheim hotel used to be at No. 1353.



Corner: The site of the New York Aquarium from 1876 to 1883. Later there was a theater variously called the New Park, Harrigan's and the Herald Square.

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1350 (corner): Herald Square Building contains an HSBC bank. The entire block was once the site of the New York Herald Building, a two-story Venetian palace built in 1893 by McKim, Mead and White and housing the paper that now lives on only in the International Herald Tribune. Demolished 1921, but its name remains in the square to its south.


The southern end of the block is a Florsheim shoe outlet.


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Starting May 24, 2009, Broadway between 35th and 33rd streets is closed to vehicle traffic. Herald Square was previously one of the hardest parts of the city to get through on foot or by car.

West:

Macy's

Macy's New York by CeeKay, on Flickr

Since 1902, this has been the location of the famous department store founded by Capt. Rowland Hussey Macy, a former whaling captain whose red star tattoo is still the store's symbol (and a whale is still used in sale ads). With expansions to take up (almost) the entire block, this still holds the record for the world's largest store. NYC: Herald Square - R.H. Macy & Company Store by wallyg, on Flickr

Macy's claims credit for such innovations as standardized sizes (1934), colored bath towels (1932), the tea bag (1912), the baked potato (1926) and the department store Santa (1870)—the latter claim to fame cemented by the 1947 classic Miracle on 34th Street, set at the store. NYC: Herald Square - R.H. Macy & Company Store by wallyg, on Flickr

Another holiday tradition is Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, first thrown in 1924 by immigrant employees in imitation of European street processions. (The balloons were added in 1927.) Macy's is also responsible for New York's July 4th fireworks. NYC: Herald Square - R.H. Macy & Company Store by wallyg, on Flickr

The one part of the block not owned by Macy's is, ironically, the southeast corner with the enormous "Macy's" sign on it. When Macy's was buying up the block, competitor Henry Siegel of the Siegel-Cooper department store snatched up the corner— perhaps to leverage Macy's into selling Siegel-Cooper its old space on 14th Street. Macy's simply built around the holdout, and now leases the space above for its giant ad. Currently the corner itself is a Sunglasses Hut.

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Herald Square

Herald Square: Bennett Memorial by peterjr1961, on Flickr

As in, "Remember me at..." Named for the New York Herald, a racist, antisemitic newspaper founded by James Gordon Bennett whose offices were directly to the north of this triangle. The paper introduced such features as the gossip column and stock market coverage. It later merged with the New York Tribune; the International Herald-Tribune is the surviving relic.




Herald Square by Smaku, on Flickr










NYC - Herald Square: Bennett Clock by wallyg, on Flickr

The clock and statuary, crafted in 1895 by Jean-Antonie Carles, are from the old Herald building; the goddess is Minerva, complete with owls, and the bellringers, which swing their hammers on the hour, are nicknamed Stuff and Guff.
















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Herald Center

NYC - Herald Center by wallyg, on Flickr Built for Saks & Company in 1901-02, as shopping moved to this neighborhood to take advantage of the new rail hubs. In 1966, after the area's appeal had faded, it became Korvette's. Rebuilt in 1982-85 as a mall with a glass elevator on the corner; Daffy's is the anchor store. At one point the mall was owned by Ferdinand Marcos.


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Herald Towers

Herald Square, NYC by doitintheroad, on Flickr

1300 (block): AKA McAlpin House; built as the Hotel McAlpin in 1913, at the time the largest hotel in New York; noted for its "silent floor" for the nocturnal. Converted to apartments in 1979; the murals of New York Harbor in the hotel's Marine Grill were removed and installed in the Fulton Street subway stop. Claims the dubious distinction of housing the highest-grossing Gap outlet in the country.


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Since May 24, 2009, Broadway between 35th and 33rd streets has been closed to vehicle traffic.

West:

Greeley Square

by Cresny, on Flickr

This triangular square is named for Horace Greeley, the founder of the New York Tribune. Though chiefly remembered as the guy who said "Go west, young man" (which was not actually his line), Greeley was actually one of the most influential journalists in American history. Statue of Horace Greeley by Elizabeth Thomsen, on Flickr

An advocate of social reform (Karl Marx was a European correspodent), Greeley supported abolition, worker's rights and (yes) Western settlement. As a reporter covering Congress in 1855, he was given a concussion by the cane of pro-slavery House Speaker Albert Rust. He helped found the Republican Party and was instrumental in making Abraham Lincoln the 1860 candidate. Surprisingly, he was the 1872 Democratic candidate for president; he was trounced by U.S. Grant and died a month later.

The statue of Greeley in a chair is an 1890 work by Alexander Doyle. The square was dedicated in 1894.

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1270-1280 (corner): The Wilson Building, 1912, houses Cambridge Members clothing store, founded 1966.















Hotel Martinique

Hotel Martinique

1270 (corner): Built from 1897-1911 and named for its owner, William R.H. Martin. Designed in French Renaissance style by Henry Hardenbergh, architect of The Plaza and The Dakota.

It went through a bad spell in the 1970s and '80s as a forbidding homeless shelter; refurbished by the Holiday Inn chain, it's now part of the Radisson family. The restaurant on the corner, Diner on the Square, has closed.


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In the movie Hospitality, made in 1923 but set in 1830, Buster Keaton on a proto-bicycle waits at this intersection—then a crossing of two country roads—for a buggy to pass. "Gettin' dangerous out here," a sheriff remarks.

West:

Broadway & 32nd by Vidiot, on Flickr

1271 (cor- ner): Speedy's deli restaurant




1265: Olden Camera

31st and Broadway by edenpictures, on Flickr

1255 (corner): Porox, wholesale outlet in a handsome 11-story building from 1909. This seems to have been the headquarters of the Empire State Bank.

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Woori Building by edenpictures, on Flickr

1250 (block): Big oddly-angled glass tower housed Woori America, a Korean bank, from 1982 until 2015. (32nd Street is the heart of New York's Koreatown.) The building is being rebranded as Nomad Tower On the southwestern corner was Style & Smile, a large wholesale outlet.

Previously on this lot was the Imperial Hotel, very fashionable when it opened in 1890.











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1239: Fair Deal is on the site of the Brighton Theater, which opened in 1878; later the Bijou. Demolished and rebuilt in 1883; demolished and moved uptown in 1915. The present 17-story highrise dates to 1917.

















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31st Street

1232-1238 (corner): Was the Grand Hotel (1868), once one of New York's grandest accomodations. Now home to wholesale joints like Design Time Watch Inc. Note the mansard roof, a French affectation that allowed Parisians, whose buildings were limited by stories, to pretend that their top floor was an attic. A thoughtless owner painted over the marble facade, in violation of the landmark law.

1226 (corner): Decent Trading Inc. is on the site of Wallack's Theater, which moved up from 13th Street in 1881.


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West:

Virgin Hotel

Virgin Hotel Construction

1225: Thirty-eight stories of crazy cantilever, designed by Stantec and scheduled to be completed in 2020.

In 1930, this was the address of the monthly American Hatter.




1221: The address of Wood's Museum, an early burlesque house that featured Lydia Thompson and her British Blondes in 1868. Later Daly's Theater, a highly regarded company. Became a movie house in 1915, torn down in 1920.

1217: The address of Dick Darling's saloon, where on November 7, 1881, forger/thief Billy Tracey shot and killed Charles P. Miller, king of the bunco men. Miller had previously shot and wounded Tracey in Tracey's own saloon.

1205 (corner): Before demolition for the hotel, this was Tomato Import & Wholesale.

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1216 (corner): Perfume Americana

1204: India Handicrafts and Jewelry is at the address of Shanley's, a popular ''lobster palace'' opened in 1912. Composer Victor Herbert sued the restaurant for playing his music without paying royalties, a case that went to the Supreme Court in 1917 and resulted in a victory for songwriters.



Gilsey House

Gilsey House

1200 (corner): This beautifully restored cast-iron Second Empire landmark is a former grand hotel (1872-1911), the first to offer telephone service to guests. Noted for its bar made of silver dollars, it was a favorite of Diamond Jim Brady and Oscar Wilde. Converted to housing in 1979. The ground floor is now occupied by wholesalers like New York Sunglasses and Hair Accessories.


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This block down to 28th Street was burned down during the draft riots of 1863.


West:

Jungley Bas Relief

1201 (corner): Building with Peace Trading and European Frangrances has a cool jungley bas relief strip.




Ritz-Carlton Nomad

Ritz-Carlton Crane

1185 (corner): The first Ritz-Carlton was opened in the United States in 1911, at Madison and 46th — named for the Ritz in Paris and London's Carlton Hotel. It was demolished in 1951, but the brand returned to New York City in 1988, with two successive locations on Central Park South. This 40-story building, designed by Rafael Vinoly, will be the first hotel in New York built as a Ritz-Carlton since the original. Supposed to be ready by 2021.

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Ace Hotel

Ace Hotel

1186 (corner): Opening in 1904 as the Hotel Breslin (designed by Clinton & Russell), it was noted in its heyday for attracting boxers like Joe Louis and Gene Tunney fighting at Madison Square Garden. In 1951, an 83-year-old W.E.B. du Bois was arrested here for running the anti-Korean War Peace Information Center. Later the Breslin Apartments, an SRO that fell victim to gentrification. Now a cool hotel with rooms ranging from shared bunks to high-end "loft suites."

Previously on this site was Sturtevant House, where on June 2, 1873, novelist (and accused Confederate spy) Mansfield Walworth was shot to death by his son for making threats against the son's mother.

1182-1184: Centurian Building houses Broadway Linen, Silver by Fenix.

1180: Designer's Mart, where you can get a string of pearls for $10.

1178: Young Town Jewelry


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The block of 28th Street west of Broadway to 6th Avenue was Tin Pan Alley, music publishing hub in the early 20th Century.

West:

Baudouine Building

1181 (corner): Clover Trading Corp. is in the Baudouine Building (1896); note Greek temple on roof.

This is the Wholesale District, where shops get their stuff from. Supposedly most of these places will sell to the public if you ask nicely, but do you really want to own this stuff?











1165-1175: Was the Coleman House Hotel, built 1907—note Chicago School-style bay windows. Housed such wholesale outlets as Fashion City, Lavish International, Manhattan Street Wear and Over Mars Ltd.—but after a 2019 renovation, it will likely have more upscale tenants.

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The NoMad

NoMad Hotel at Night

1170 (corner): Hotel named for the neighborhood North of Madison Square — a designation that was much less commonly used when the hotel opened in 2012. The building it occupies is the Johnston Building, a 1903 13-story structure by Schickel & Ditmars built for Caroline H. Johnston, a German lawyer. Note lions' heads, dome on roof. Cha Cha Matcha

1158 (corner): Cha Cha Matcha, selling a beverage made from pulverized green tea, is in a peculiar red-and-black vertically striped building. It used to hold wholesale shops like Source USA, Omi Perfume and Undefeated Wear—Lita Trading seems to be the last of these.


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West:

Broadway Plaza Hotel

1157 (corner): Broadway Plaza Hotel is in a fairly nondescript modern-looking building that actually dates to 1920; Broadway Pizza's on the ground floor.

1153: Three Kings Trading is on the site of Holland Brothers' Kinetoscope Parlor, the world's first movie house— where Edison's hand-cranked movies were first shown on April 6, 1894. Built on the site of the studio of John Rogers, a popular 19th Century sculptor.

1151: In front of this address, until 1880, stood the Varian Tree, named for the farm family whose land this once was. An old sign used to boast that the present building was once the nation's only distributer of Maxell batteries.

1149: Was Wallace & Co., according to the rusticated facade of this 1886 rowhouse by DeLemos & Cordes.

1147: Star Sportswear

1145: Lucky Trading/Broadway Boutique Trading Flatiron Hotel

1141 (corner): Flatiron Hotel opened in 2011, run by Toshi Chan, an actor who became a pirate hotelier before going legit. Toshi's Penthouse is the rooftop bar; there used to be a live music venue, Toshi's Living Room, on the ground floor. But I think the future of the whole place is in doubt.

Before the hotel Zena Coffee Shop, Fortuna Jewelry were here.

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Victoria Building by edenpictures, on Flickr

1150 (corner): The Victoria Building is on the site of the Victoria Hotel, where President Grover Cleveland lived between his two separated terms of office. The present 19-story building, a 1914 effort by Schwartz & Gross, houses the X-Tensions wholesale hair dealer (formerly Sportique), and the National Tree Company (Christmas trees, that is).

















Lowell Building

1140 (corner): Ground floor of the 1915 Lowell Building has The Little Beet (mostly vegetarian), Vin Sur Vingt Wine Bar on the ground floor. (The wine bar's name is a pun on "vingt sur vingt," meaning 20 out of 20—a perfect score.) Arnold Joseph, a bookstore for railroad fans, used to be upstairs here.


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The world's first electric streetlights, turned on December 20, 1880, lined Broadway from 26th Street to 14th.

West:

St. James Building

Broadway by lucathegalga, on Flickr

1133 (corner): This 1897 office building provided offices for architects, including its designer, Bruce Price, and the Flatiron's Daniel Burnham. Oscar F. Spate had his office here when in 1901 he made an ill-fated attempt to turn seating in Madison and Central parks into a for-profit enterprise. Future Israeli prime minister Golda Meir worked here for the Pioneer Women's Organization for Palestine (1932-34). From 1965 to 1968, this was the base of the Mattachine Society, the leading pre-Stonewall gay rights group.

Built on the site of the fashionable St. James Hotel, which Confederate saboteurs tried to burn down on November 25, 1864. Rizzoli Bookstore

On the corner is La Pecora Bianca ("The White Sheep"), Italian cafe. Next door is Rizzoli Bookstore, a celebrated bookshop specializing in art books and foreign titles. It was on 5th Avenue from 1964 until 1989, and on 57th Street from 1985 until 2014. This branch has been open since 2015. The founder, Angelo Rizzoli, was a publisher and producer of films—notably La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2. The majority owner of the store now is the Berlusconi family.

Upstairs is Photo Village, a high-end camera boutique. Townsend Building


1123 (corner): The Townsend Building, a 12-story 1898 highrise designed by Cyrus L.W. Eidlitz, houses Hill Country Chicken. The Broadway Cafe, next door, is closed.

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1134 Broadway

Corner (212 5th Ave): This 21-story neo-Gothic building, designed by Schwartz & Gross, went up in 1913; the FX cable channel was here in the 1990s. In 2019 the three-story penthouse was bought by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (along with two other apartments in the building), despite his cancellation of plans to build a second Amazon HQ in Queens.

1132: Dramatic bay windows and over-the-top detailing mark the Cross Chambers Building, a 1901 project of John B. Snook & Sons. On the ground floor is Wagamama, a British-based Asian fusion chain.

1122-1134 Broadway

1130: Was Broadway Deals & Electronics, earlier Yedsonic, in a seven-story 1915 building

1126: Memories of New York, elaborate souvenir shop. On the 3rd floor of the 5-story red-brick building used to be Urban Angler, fishing gear.

1124: Most of the facade of this 1913 building is taken up by a larged arched window. Houses Pentagram, an international design company that has done work for the Public Theater, the Mesa Grill and the New York Times Magazine, among other clients. Used to be MK, a 1980s nightclub where Moby played his first live electronic gig in 1989. IMG_2695 by CampoDiPace, on Flickr

1122 (corner): Showroom for Porcelanosa, Spanish ceramic tile maker founded in 1973. Was Commodore-Criterion, manufacturer of Christmas decorations—part of the Christmas District. The building, a Buchman & Kahn design from 1918, was earlier the flagship store (with Hall of Science) of the A.C. Gilbert Company, a toy company that made the Erector set, radioactive chemistry sets and American Flyer model trains. Built on the site of Worth House, a hotel that by 1900 housed the Berlitz School of Languages.


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West:

Broadway & 25th by Vidiot, on Flickr

1115 (corner): 40/40 Club, Jay-Z's sports-oriented nightclub, is named for the elite group of ballplayers who have hit 40 homeruns and stolen 40 bases in a season. Was Liu Imports, Chinese antiques. The building, which dates to 1912, is calling itself Toy Tower 25.

On this site was Hoffman House, elegant hotel whose bar shocked Victorian NYC by displaying Bouguereau's Nymphs and Satyr — which became a major tourist attraction. The painting belonged to Edward S. Stokes, an owner of the Hoffman, who had spent time in Sing-Sing for shooting financier Jim Fisk, his rival for singer Josie Mansfield's affections. Publisher William Randolph Hearst lived at the Hoffman when he first came to NYC in 1895. In 1901, the bar posted private detectives at every entrance during ax-wielding prohibitionist Carry Nation's visit to New York.

1111: Kurt S. Adler, aka, Santa's World, Christmas wholesaler since 1946, moved to 34th Street in 2006.

Toy Center North

Toy Center Traverse by LarimdaME, on Flickr

1107 (cor- ner): Note sky- walk con- necting to Toy Center South (see below). Built in 1911, replacing the Albemarle Hotel; Sarah Bernhardt stayed there when she made her U.S. debut in 1880, her room redecorated in Parisian style to remind her of home. Lillie Langtry stayed in the same suite on her first U.S. visit, in 1882, but on opening night watched the theater burn down through opera glasses from the hotel. ( See below.)

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Worth Square

NYC: Madison Square - General William Jenkins Worth Monument by wallyg, on Flickr

Memorial to Gen. William Jenkins Worth, namesake of Ft. Worth, Texas and downtown's Worth Street. After fighting in the War of 1812, he became commandant of cadets at West Point. During the Seminole Wars, he pioneered the targeting of civilian populations and the use of starvation as a tool of warfare. NYC - Madison Square: General William Jenkins Worth Monument by wallyg, on Flickr

Fighting in the Mexican-American War, he led the capture of Mexico City, and was given command of the newly conquered territories of Texas and New Mexico. He died of cholera in San Antonio, 1849, and was buried here in 1857.

The rectangular structure leads to Water Tunnel No. 1, carrying water from the Catskills.



















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International Toy Center

Toy Center by aka Kath, on Flickr

(Block (200 5th Ave): International Toy Center, since 1925 the center of U.S. toy business; note toy and holiday displays. The LA Cafe is on the ground floor. On the corner, you can still make out a sign for the Garfield National Bank, which was around from 1881-1929 before merging with the Chase National Bank.




Fifth Avenue Building by Rev. Santino, on Flickr

In The Sweet Smell of Success, it serves as the offices of The New York Globe, J.J. Hunsecker's newspaper.





International Toy Center by edenpictures, on Flickr

Replaced the Fifth Avenue Hotel (1858-1908), once the most exclusive hotel in NYC; presidents Grant and Arthur, as well as the Prince of Wales, stayed here. It was a gathering place for fat cats like Boss Tweed, Jay Gould, Jim Fisk and Commodore Vanderbilt, who would would trade stocks here after hours. A Republican bastion, it was here that the Democrats were first described as the party of "rum, Romanism and rebellion." But it was also a hangout for cultural figures like Mark Twain, O. Henry, Edwin Booth, Jenny Lind, William Cullen Bryant and Stanford White. It was used as the setting of Gore Vidal's 1876.


Earlier on this site was Franconi's Hippodrome (1852-59); before that was Corporal Thompson's Madison Cottage, a roadhouse described by the New York Herald as "one of the most agreeable spots for an afternoon's lounge in the suburbs of our city." It had been the house of John Horn, who used to own what is now Madison Square Park.




My Tourist Shot by alan(ator), on Flickr

Note the 1909 side- walk clock, a once- common sight in the pre- wrist- watch era.


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Madison Square Park

The Empire State Building through the haze of Madison Square Park by permanently scatterbrained, on Flickr

The 1807 plan set aside 240 acres in this vicinity as The Parade, to be used for military training. In that same year, the U.S. Arsenal was built here to defend the strategic intersection of the Bloomingdale Road (now Broadway) and the Eastern Post Road. By 1814, when the park was named Madison Square after the then-current president, it had been reduced to 90 acres. In 1847, when Madison Square Park was opened, less than seven acres remained. Madison Square Park by alistairmcmillan, on Flickr

The park, which was laid out in its current form in 1870, was the center of New York society in the 1860s and '70s. "The vicinity of Madison Square is the brightest, prettiest and liveliest portion of the great city," James McCabe wrote in 1872.

In July 1901, an attempt to turn seating in the park into a for-profit concession sparked rioting. Madison Square Park April 7, 2007 _MG_6845 by Darny, on Flickr

The park provides a setting for O. Henry short stories like "The Cop and the Anthem" and "The Sparrows in Madison Square").

The U.S. Arsenal was converted by 1824 to the House of Refuge of the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents—the first such institution in the country.

Eternal Light

World War I memorial flagpole (1918-23), said to symbolize the eternal peace produced by the "War to End All Wars." When Charles Lindbergh was given a parade in 1927—attended by an estimated 4 million spectators—he stopped here to lay a wreath.

Statue of William Seward

NYC: Madison Square Park - William H. Seward Statue by wallyg, on Flickr

An early abolitionist who became NY governor (1838-42) and a U.S. senator (1848-61), Seward served as secretary of state under Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. He's most remembered for paying Russia $7 million for Alaska in 1867.

Making the statue in 1876, sculptor Randolph Rogers re-used his cast of Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation for the body; Seward was actually short with a large head.


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Madison Square Park by Das Bobby 2000, on Flickr

Broadway—then known as the Bloomingdale Road—was opened in 1703 from here to the village of Bloomingdale, near what is now 114th Street.

Stage coaches left twice a week for Albany from this intersection in the late 18th Century.

In the late 19th-early 20th centuries, Broadway from 23rd to 10th Street was known as "Ladies' Mile" for its fashionable stores, which launched the American culture of "shopping."

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Flatiron Building

Flatiron Building by MCSimon, on Flickr

Built in 1903 as the Fuller Building, its unusual and striking shape (designed by Daniel Burhnam to match its triangular lot) quickly earned it its lasting nickname. It is not true that it is New York's first skyscraper— just one of its most memorable. A traditional publishing center, it's still home to St. Martin's Press. In 1910s, it housed the offices of the Socialist Labor Party, ancestor of most U.S. left parties. It features in the Spider-Man movies as the Daily Bugle building, and Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak are teleported here in Bell, Book and Candle. NYC - Flatiron Building (detail) by wallyg, on Flickr

The ground floor features parfumerie Jo Malone, and MAC, cosmetics chain worn by RuPaul and sung about by TLC.

The phrase "23 Skidoo" (supposedly) originated with a police officer chasing off loiterers at the 23rd Street corner hoping to catch a glimpse of stocking under a skirt blown up by the freakish Flatiron winds.

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Madison Green

MadisonGreen.23Broadway.NYC.25mar06 by ElvertBarnes, on Flickr

940 (block): This very large luxury condo building (with Benvenuto Cafe on the ground) was built after the Wonder Drugs Fire of October 17, 1966, which killed 12 firefighters—the worst disaster in FDNY history, until the World Trade Center attacks. An earlier fire (January 5, 1952) at No. 2 E. 23rd Street, which was then the address at this corner, destroyed the studio (and much of the work) of sculptor Jacques Lipchitz. The Bartholdi Hotel was found at the corner of 23rd and Broadway in 1911.

















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The modern rules of baseball were developed by teams who played near this intersection in 1846—though other accounts place the field near Madison and 27th.

West:

Albert Building

Albert Building by edenpictures, on Flickr

935- 939 (cor- ner): The build- ing that houses Re- nais- sance Hard- ware was built in 1861-62 as the Glenham Hotel by architect Griffith Thomas. Also known as the Albert or Mortimer Building. On the Broadway side, remains of letters that once spelled out "ALBERT" can be seen. According Waiting around by mystical_swirl, on Flickr to City Reads, this building once housed the saloon of Dr. Jerry Thomas, master mixologist (for whom the Tom and Jerry was named). Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr., son of the Commodore, shot himself here on April 2, 1882, after a night of drinking and gambling.

929-933: Former site of M. Gordon Novelty Inc.—last remainder of Broadway's former Novelty District. These three-story tenements date from 1902.

927: Bang & Olufson, high-end audio and video, is in a 1910 building 921 Broadway

921 (corner): Duxiana furniture was Victor Kamkin, Russian bookstore — in a 16-story building from 1918.

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936 Broadway by edenpictures, on Flickr

936 (cor- ner): This was once the site of the Buck's Horn Tavern, which as long ago as 1816 was described as "an old and well-known tavern." Later the first bicycle-riding school armani by killthebird, on Flickr opened on this site in 1868. Still later it was Abbey's Park Theater, where Lillie Langtry's American debut was scuttled by the theater burning down on October 30, 1882. Present building built for Brooks Brothers in 1883—it's been modernized since. Until recently housed Domain interiors, a casualty of the 2008 housing bust; Just Bulbs, which sold light bulbs, also used to be here, prompting a David Letterman routine where he tried to get them to sell him something that was not a bulb.









928: Obica Mozzarella Bar (formerly Bar Stuzzichini) is on the first of 12 floors from 1910, designed by William H. Birkmire.

924: Weirdly modernized black building used to house Eneslow, shoe store whose name seemed to spell something backwards, even though it didn't. Shine Deli by edenpictures, on Flickr

922 (corner): 21 Berry Deli's (formerly Shine Deli's) short, mansard-roofed building looks like it was built a lot earlier than 1925.


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West:

915 Broadway III by edenpictures, on Flickr

915 (corner): A castle-like 20-story building from 1926, designed by Joseph Martine. On the ground is the restaurant/club Strata, formerly Metronome, swanky jazz restaurant that appeared as "Balzac" in the TV show Sex and the City. Upstairs is the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine's clinic. On this site was the Park & Tilford grocery house. Punch by edenpictures, on Flickr

913: Punch Bar & Grill, snazzy bar with dangerous- looking sign, in a 1910 rowhouse. Upstairs bar, Wine Up, used to be Eau, a bar with a waterfall in the window.

911: Metropolitan Design Center was Ferdossi Rugs, 1905-2004. Expanded from No. 909 next door.

Warren Building

Warren Building Stanford White building in an ornate Renaissance Revival style. Design Within Reach on ground floor.

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920 Broadway I

920 (corner): A 1916 building with 16 floors houses Flying Tiger, Lunetta, Italian-American (with a Brooklyn older sibling) that replaced the long-running neo-diner Mayrose. Also at this address is also Zaro's Bakery, local chain founded in 1927— formerly See interior design. Upstairs is the ICF Group, which stands for International Contract Furnishings—est. 1962.
























906-908 (corner): Was B. Shackman & Co., a novelty company. Now houses Safavieh oriental rugs; the flagship of the Jennifer Convertibles sofabed chain is currently vacant. Previously at this corner was the Continental Hotel.


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Lord & Taylor Building

NYC: Lord & Taylor Store by wallyg, on Flickr

901 (Corner): A whimsical cast-iron Bohemian Renaissance building (James H. Giles, architect) that was Lord & Taylor's main store from 1873 to 1914. Current occupant Energie/Miss Sixty was Intermix, before that Villeroy & Boch china store. In the early 1990s, it housed a topless club.

895-899: ''Equinox Building'' houses the Equinox fitness club; it used to be part of the Lord & Taylor building, with the same cast-iron facade. It was redesigned by John H. Duncan to give it a neo-classical facade when Lord & Taylor moved to 38th Street in 1914.

893: Jennifer Leather sofas; Men's Suits New York

Gorham Building

Gothic by ShellyS, on Flickr

889 (Corner): A somewhat spooky red-brick structure built in 1884 by the Gorham Manufacturing Co. as a silver factory, store and residences—an early example of mixed-use development. Owned by the Goelet family, whose mansion was up the block. Now houses Fishs Eddy, which sells virtually indestructible china—the name is an upstate town where the owners used to buy a lot of antiques.

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Goelet Building

900 (corner): This orangish structure is another Stanford White design, erected in 1886 on the site of the old Goelet mansion, the last such house on Broadway—a Goelet Building by edenpictures, on Flickr gloomy place haunted by peacocks. The top five floors of the present building are an ill-conceived addition. Home of Beecher's Handmade Cheese — restaurant and artisanal factory. Was Bombay Co., Metropolitan Carpet Gallery; also houses craftbar, formerly the wine bar Morrells.

890-892 (corner): Lawrence A. Wein Center for Dance and Theater; houses American Ballet Theatre, a dance company founded 1939 whose artistic director from 1980 to 1990 was Mikhail Baryshnikov. (They're based here— they don't perform here.) Also home to Ballet Tech, AMC Loews 19th St. East 6, NYC, 5/30/08 - 1 of 8 by goodrob13, on Flickr the New York City Public School of Dance. Loews 19th Street cineplex is on the ground floor. From 1899 until c. 1920, No. 890 was the address of McLoughlin Bros., pioneering children's book and game company.


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Arnold Constable Building

Arnold Constable Building

881-887 (corner): ABC Carpets' rug department was the Arnold Constable department store (1869-1914), with a mansard roof worthy of the Addams Family; founded by Aaron Arnold and son-in-law James Constable, the old store offered "Everything From Cradle to Grave." Carnegies, Rockefellers and Morgans were frequent customers here.

By buying and renovating this building (designed by Griffith Thomas), ABC pioneered the revitalization of Ladies' Mile in the 1960s.













873 (corner): More of the Constable building, though a different color; houses Om Factory yoga (formerly Kundalini Yoga East), Sit Down New York (formerly Broadway Futon) and New Andy's Deli. Arnold Constable Building by edenpictures, on Flickr

The Constable store was built on the site of actor Edwin Booth's home (1862-65) at No. 28 E. 18th Street; his brother, fellow actor and assassin John Wilkes Booth, often stayed with him here.

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ABC Carpets & Home

ABC Carpets I

888 (corner): Fascinating furniture store in a beautiful red-brick-and-chocolate building; frequently featured on Sex and the City. Was W & J Sloane (1881- 1912), a carpet store that Window Fungus by Tom Harpel, on Flickr introduced oriental rugs to NYC; it carpeted the Waldorf-Astoria, the coronation of Czar Nicholas II and the homes of New York's elite. W(illiam) Sloane was the foreman of the jury that convicted Boss Tweed in 1873.

876: This quite lovely red-brick-and-cream building has fascinating detailing: workmen's tools—or Masonic symbols? Formerly ABC Carpets' annex, it's now home to Environment Furniture, which sells items made from recycled wood from Brazil's endangered Peroba tree.

McIntyre Building

moonrise by dmansouri, on Flickr

874: Mattress Firm (formerly Sleepy's, Klein Sleep) is in this over-the-top 1892 tower by Robert H. Robertson; note name behind awning. When it was first built, until 1898, it was occupied by the children's publishers McLoughlin Bros. In the 1970s, the seventh floor was the illegal nightclub Cobra Club; for years, escaped snakes were found in the building.


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Paragon Sporting Goods by edenpictures, on Flickr

867-869: Paragon Sporting Goods, since 1908; the building, dating to 1882, was home to the pioneering sheet-music store Charles Ditson Co. In the crime novel Drowned Hope, Dortmunder buys scuba gear at Paragon to rob a submerged town.

865: J&S Imports—"Africa, India, Haiti, Spain"—is in a strongly detailed five-story.


863: True Religion

861: Steve Madden Shoes

859: Nicely restored three-story. Isabel Bishop's Studio by edenpictures, on Flickr

857 (corner): Pret a Manger branch was Tisserie, Venezuelan bakery/cafe; before that Union Square Deli. Painter Isabel Bishop's studio was on the fourth floor here (1934-44), helping to name the "14th Street School" of social realism.

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872 (corner): Hawes Building houses Fresh, organic soap chain; was Dynasty Deli.

870: Roast Kitchen was goodburger, local mini-chain; earlier Nicholas Reggae, Rastafarian paraphernalia (oils and such).

868: The Doc Martens store Was Java 'n' Jazz, cool coffeeshop.

866: Scotch & Soda, Amsterdam-based fashion







862: Was Errico Brothers, retailers of Florentine carved furniture. Warhol's Last Factory by edenpictures, on Flickr

860 (corner): Building that houses Petco was Andy Warhol's Factory from 1974 until the artist's 1987 death—though by this time he was calling it "the Office," having declared the "Factory" concept "too corny." From 1980-89, it also housed Underground, a new wave dance club featured in the movie Liquid Sky. (Around 1987, it changed its name to Union Square.)


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Union Square

Union Square, New York City December 2005 by Trig's, on Flickr

Union Square was not named for labor or for the North, but for the fact that Broadway meets and briefly converges with the Bowery (now 4th Avenue and Park), once Broadway's rival as NYC's main street. In the city plan of 1811, Broadway was supposed to be eliminated north of 14th Street, permanently uniting it with 4th Avenue. Fortunately, NYC was unable to raise money to reroute Broadway, saving Manhattan above Downtown from complete predictability. NYC - Union Square: Greenmarket in the Fall by wallyg, on Flickr

The square has a rich political history: 250,000 gathered here to support the Union during the Civil War (1861), the largest crowd ever assembled in North America up to that point. Here were the first U.S. labor day parade (1882), Emma Goldman's arrest for telling unemployed to steal bread (1893), a funeral march for Triangle Shirtwaist Fire victims (1911), protests against Sacco & Vanzetti's execution (1927) and the Rosenbergs' (1953). After the destruction of the World Trade Center, Union Square became the site of an impromptu memorial and peace vigil.

The parking lot at the north end of the park hosts Union Square Greenmarket, Manhattan's biggest farmers' market. It used to be used for weekly recreations of medieval combat by the Society for Creative Anachronism.







Sand Playground I by edenpictures, on Flickr

The playground in Union Square is sometimes known as the Sand Playground. It underwent a revamping in 2008.




James Fountain

James Fountain by wallyg, on Flickr

This 1881 work by Karl Adolph Donndorf, surmounted by a statue of Charity, was intended to promote temperance. ''Here's something else you can drink—water!'' was a popular anti-alcohol message.


























Gandhi statue

Mohandas K. Gandhi by edenpictures, on Flickr Placed here in 1986 to commemorate Union Square's history of (mostly) non-violent protest. It depicts him on his famous Salt March, and there's flagstones in the garden beside his statue that invite you to march along with him.
IMG_2284 by mrgeneko, on Flickr

This structure dates to 1932. There's been activism against "privatizing" this space, but there's been a for-profit business here for quite some time: In the warmer months, there's an outdoor cafe here called Luna Park, named for the legendary amusement park at Coney Island.

Abraham Lincoln Statue

NYC - Union Square: Abraham Lincoln Statue by wallyg, on Flickr

Sponsored by the Union League Club and sculpted by Henry Kirke Brown in 1869. It used to be where the Gandhi statue is now, and it used to be surrounded by a fence inscribed ''with malice toward none; charity toward all'' from his Second Inaugural Address. Lincoln's body lay in state in Union Square on April 24, 1865, before being taken to City Hall.

Independence Flagstaff

NYC - Union Square: Independence Flagstaff - Tyranny by wallyg, on Flickr The flagpole in the center of the square, with a base by Anthony de Francisi and a quote from Jefferson about how we don't know how good we have it. Francisi's bas reliefs depict the subversion of democracy by empire; they're really quite radical. (Officially the flagpole is dedicated to Tammany Hall leader Charles F. Murphy, but public sentiment dissuaded the city from elevating the machine boss to the level of Lincoln and Washington.)

Statue of Washington

NYC: Union Square - General George Washington Statue by wallyg, on Flickr Equestrian statue by Henry Kirke Brown and John Quincy Ward (1856) was formerly on the traffic island next to 4th Avenue, where it supposedly marked the actual spot where Washington greeted the citizens of New York when he liberated the city from British rule after the Revolutionary War, on November 25, 1783. The present spot actually seems more likely to be where the roads met 220 years ago.



























Statue of Lafayette

Lafayette by Ayres no graces, on Flickr

By Bartholdi, sculptor of the Statue of Liberty; he made this statue to remind New York of Franco-American friendship as part of his campaign to raise money for Liberty's pedestal. Should be facing toward Washington, to whom Lafayette is offering his sword; as it is, he's more or less facing a tree.



















NEW YORK CITY - UNION SQUARE FOLKS by Punxutawneyphil, on Flickr

The steps at the south end of Union Square have become one of Manhattan's great public spaces—used by skateboarders, break dancers, political agitators and people just hanging out on the steps. The Critical Mass bicycle rallies gather here on the last Friday of every month, though they've largely been suppressed by extra-constitutional NYPD action. There's a craft fair here every year in December.



W <=== EAST 14TH STREET ===> E
The northern boundary of the Village.

The corner of 14th Street and Broadway was nicknamed Deadman's Curve for its fatal cable car accidents.

West:

851 Broadway by edenpictures, on Flickr

851 (corner): Shoe Mania is in a 29-story building from 1929 known as the Union Building. Previously here was the Union Place Hotel, later the Morton House and then the Hotel Churchill.

Earlier on this site was the home of Cornelius van Schaanck Roosevelt, Theodore's grandfather (and Eleanor's great-grandfather), who hosted celebrities like James Fennimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Louis Napoleon. Young Teddy watched Lincoln's funeral procession from a second-story window on April 25, 1865.

Roosevelt Building

cool building by gwarcita, on Flickr

839-841: Building with the Cosi cafe (formerly Xando Cosi) on the ground floor is named for Cornelius Roosevelt, who lived up the block. The rooftop was original site of Biograph Studios (1896-1908), which later made movie history on 14th Street. The building housed Cheap Jack's, a misnamed vintage clothing store.

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1 Union Square South

Metronome by Captain Chaos, on Flickr

842 (block): Like most of the new buildings on this stretch of 14th, designed by Davis Brody Bond architects (1999). There was a Virgin Megastore here that was a key location in the zombie novel Monster Island; replaced by Nordstrom's. There was also a branch of the reprehensible Circuit City, bankrupted when the karma bill came— now a Best Buy.

The stuff on the wall, including steam and 24-hour clock (counting forward and backward), constitute an art piece called Metronome.

850: Site of Wallack's Theater, which Newland Archer attends in The Age of Innocence. Later at this site NewYork200710 097 by Ecnerwal, on Flickr (as No. 842) were the offices of the Village Voice in the 1980s. The Union Square 14 multiplex is here now—in my experience, the cinema where movies are most likely to be sold out.


W <=== EAST 13TH STREET ===> E

West:

835 (corner): This was the home of the Harvard Club of New York from 1866-87.

A strip of antique stores, including...

833: Universe Antiques

827-31: Howard Kaplan Antiques (bath fixtures a specialty) and Lions Antiques; the AIA Guide calls this "a truly magnificent pair of Italianate business buildings." Used to house Belle Epoque, a restaurant evoking the Gilded Age.

825: Chinese Art and Antiques— porcelain, jade, ivory. A century ago this was the address of the St. George Hotel.













Old Forbidden Planet by edenpictures, on Flickr

821 (corner): No Difference shoes is in the former home of Forbidden Planet, when it was the greatest comic book store in town. Before 1981 it was the University Place Book Shop, which opened here in 1932. The 10-story building is an impressive prow-like red brick in the Rundbogenstil.

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Forbidden Planet

Everywhere Signs (And People) by J.L. McVay / StereoactiveNYC, on Flickr

840 (corner): Part of an international chain of comics stores. Gives out free boards-and-bags—for comic collecting. Used to have a great science-fiction section. Noted for its action figure selection. In a 12-story 1899 building.

836: Hyde Park Antiques, 18th Century English furniture is in a six-story mansard-roofed building.

832: Mavi Jeans (Turkish for "Blue") replaced Lawrence Michael Antiques, in an obsessively detailed building.

830: Detailing gets more hallucinatory as you go up. Used to house Philip Colleck of London. An automat opened here in 1902.

The Strand

The Strand by drauh, on Flickr

828 (corner): Billed as the world's largest used bookstore with "18 miles of books," this store opened 1927 on 4th Avenue's Booksellers Row, and moved to this location in 1957. A recent renovation kept all that was cool about the place and removed much that was annoying.


W <=== EAST 12TH STREET ===> E

West:

815: Abe's Antiques; Shala Yoga House, opened 2002

813: Simon Ross Antiques

Cast Iron Apartments

James McCreery & Co. by edenpictures, on Flickr

801 (corner): Was James McCreery & Co. dry goods, which opened here in 1869; it later moved to 23rd Street. Now Global Fine Repro, David Murray Collections.


W <=== E 11TH ST

Street skipped a block here to save landowner Henry Brevoort's apple orchard.

St. Denis Hotel by edenpictures, on Flickr

799 (cor- ner): Was the St. Denis Hotel (1848- 1917), one of NYC's most elegant. Guests included Lincoln, Grant, P.T. Barnum, Sarah Bernhardt, Buffalo Bill Cody. Alexander Graham Bell Hotel St Denis 01 by rollingrck, on Flickr demonstrated the telephone by calling Brooklyn from here in 1877. Now houses Far Eastern Antiques, Flores & Iva antiques, Bag House.

795: Was the offices of Grove Press, which helped fight censorship of literature by publishing Lady Chatterly's Lover and Tropic of Cancer.

791: Poet and art critic Frank O'Hara had an all-white loft here; this was his home when he was killed in 1966, run over by a beach buggy on Fire Island.






Brittany Hall

Brittany Residence Hall (NYU) by Bryan Bruchman, on Flickr

787: NYU dorm was formerly the Brittany Hotel, which has housed columnist Walter Winchell, actor Al Pacino and rocker Jerry Garcia. The penthouse, now a study lounge, was once a speakeasy. The ground floor features Broadway Windows, displays of often interesting student art.

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824 (corner): Proctor Galleries Fine Antiques is in Hewlett House, a 1963 white-brick building.

820: Bon Vivant Diner is in a building that was uglified in 2007.

818: The site of John Morrisey's Gambling Hall, noted for its imperviousness to raids, "thanks to an ingenious basement vault...that permitted all the gambling apparatus and the bank to be hidden rapidly behind a false wall."—Low Life.

816: Place de Vosges, named for an old square in Paris, is in a crumbling 3-1/2 story rowhouse from 1910.

814: Midtown Antiques is in a Greek Revival townhouse. Also here are Rafik Video and Digitpost.

812: Turbulence antiques, founded 1984, is in a c. 1900 building with layers of pillars.

810: Ariyoshi Sake Bar is in a seven-story neo-Gothic building, built 1907.

The Renwick

808: Halloween Adventure, a costume The Renwick by edenpictures, on Flickr super- store, is on the ground floor of this 1888 build- ing intended to form a backdrop to James Renwick Jr.'s Grace Church. Formerly Agostino Antiques. The detective in the novel The Alienist had his office here.

Grace Church

god is in the house by dickuhne, on Flickr

800- 804: One of NYC's archi- tectur- al jewels, erected 1843-46. James Renwick, Jr.—a member of the Brevoort family, whose land this once was—won a contest to design it, his first professional work; Calvert Vaux, co-designer of Central Park, landscaped the garden in 1881. Grace by edenpictures, on Flickr Circus star Tom Thumb mar- ried here, as did New- land Archer in The Age of Innocence; David Duchovny married Tea Leoni in the backyard here in 1997. The funeral for Commander Henry Honeychurch Gorridge, a naval officer who became a celebrity for transporting Cleopatra's Needle to New York, was held here in 1885. Grace Church @ night by Kelly McCarthy, on Flickr

Corner: The church yard was once Fleischmann's Vienna Model Bakery, whose daily donations of unsold bread gave rise to the term "breadline."


W <=== EAST 10TH STREET ===> E

The bend here in Broadway, like the interruption in 11th Street, was designed to save the Brevoort orchard.

West:

785 (corner): Was Mathew Brady's daguerreotype studio, where he took his famous photograph of Abraham Lincoln. The image, taken February 27, 1860, the day of Lincoln's Cooper Union address, was credited with changing the candidate's image and helping him win the election.

Randall House

771 (block): Apartments named for Capt. Robert Richard Randall, an old sea captain whose house was where Silver Spurs burger joint is now. Randall owned most of the land from 10th St to Waverly Place between 5th and 4th avenues; in his will, written by Alexander Hamilton and said to be unbreakable, he left it to establish Sailor's Snug Harbor, an old folks' home for sailors; the trust still owns 21 acres of prime Manhattan real estate. Snug Harbor used to be in Staten Island (1833-1975), and is now in North Carolina.







Silver Spurs salad, NYC, 7/18/08 - 2 of 2 by goodrob13, on Flickr









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Stewart House

Stewart House by edenpictures, on Flickr

786: Apartments built on the site of (and named for) A.T. Stewart's Cast-Iron Palace (1862), the first large store on Ladies' Mile, of which it was the southern endpoint. Stewart, called "one of the meanest men that ever lived," died in 1876, and his body was kidnapped from St. Marks' graveyard in 1878 and held for ransom; they were returned by parties unknown in 1881 in exchange for $20,000. Wanamakers NYC 03 by rollingrck, on Flickr

The store, purchased by John Wanamaker in 1896, closed in 1954 and burned down two years later in an inferno that injured 208 firefighters.

These apartments were home to Leon Klinghoffer, the man in a wheelchair on the Achille Lauro cruise ship who was shot and pushed overboard by Palestine Liberation Front terrorists, October 8, 1985.

Corner:Prior to being bought by Stewart, the 9th Street corner was owned by the art dealers Goupil & Co.


W <=== EAST 9TH STREET/WANAMAKER PLACE ===> E

9th Street between Broadway and 4th Avenue was renamed for the Wanamaker's stores that it separated.

West:




















757 (corner): Sbarro, Italian fast food, had Village-themed murals. Site of F.A.O. Schwartz's first toy store.

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Wanamaker's

by Heather Miller, on Flickr

770: Ann Taylor Loft and Chase branch are in a famous former department store (1907-1954) designed by Daniel Burnham, Flatiron's architect; it was the center of New York shopping in the early 20th Century. (It's on the sailor's must-see list in On the Town.) It was famous enough to get the name of this block of 9th Street changed.

a first for an American. He sparked a chess craze and had a cigar and a hat named after him.

754 (corner): This defunct address was the Sinclair Hotel c. 1903.


W <=== EAST 8TH STREET ===> E

West:

755 (corner): Perfumania

753: Hudson News




745: Was Star Magic, space agEew age gifts The Famous Cozy Soup 'n' Burger by aturkus, on Flickr

739: The Famous Cozy Soup & Burger is noted for its enormous burgers and omelettes.

735: Warehouse Wines & Spirits. Good bargains; I bought my wedding champagne here.

729 (corner): Delion Deli & Grocery. Sculptor Ana Mendieta landed on the roof of this business on September 8, 1985, when she plunged to her death from the adjacent apartment tower during an argument with her husband and fellow artist Carl Andre; Andre was tried for murder and acquitted.


W <=== WAVERLY PLACE

<

Tisch School of the Arts

NYU's Tisch School of the Arts by atp_tyreseus, on Flickr

715: NYU school named for media mogul Laurence Tisch is arguably the country's top film school; among its alums are directors Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Spike Lee, Joel Coen, Jim Jarmusch, Ang Lee and George C. Wolfe; actors Alec Baldwin, Billy Crystal, John Leguisamo and Adam Sandler; and playwright Tony Kushner.

Built on the site of the New York Hotel (1844-95), believed to be a hotbed of Confederate spies during the Civil War. It introduced room service and the ala carte menu. Bookseller August Brentano got his start with a newsstand here in 1853.















NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Named for Albert Gallatin, Jefferson's treasury secretary, who helped found NYU. My friend Kimberly Phillips-Fein teaches here.

713: Writer Bret Harte took an apartment at this address in 1875.


W <===WASHINGTON PLACE

nyu-hall-of-physics-2 by dandeluca, on Flickr

Corner: NYU's Meyer Hall of Physics. At one point the plan was to have all of NYU's buildings be this reddish color.










Corner (1 W 4th): Hebrew Union College's Brookdale Center, housing the Jewish Institute of Religion (founded 1922) and the School of Sacred Music (1948).

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Astor Place Building

Red building by Ed Yourdon, on Flickr Yet another reason to dislike the "Sculpture for Living"—the glass tower across from Cooper Union—is that it ripped off the address of this building—1 Astor Place—which had been happily using it for more than a century. This red-brick Victorian beauty went up in 1881 with the same builder—lawyer Orlando Potter—and architectural team—Starkweather & Gibbs— who later produced the Potter Building on Park Row. It was a very early example of the use of terra cotta for ornamentation—colored to resemble the then-ubiquitous brownstone. (Potter's buildings so popularized terra cotta that he went on to start the New York Terra Cotta Company.)

ASTOR PLACE ===> E

Broadway was paved to this point by 1809.

740 (corner): Vitamin Shoppe, a chain with an eye for good architecture. Also houses Papa Beard Sweets, an Asian cream-puff franchise.

This area, stretching east to what is now Cooper Square, was from 1806-55 the Vauxhall Garden, a popular amusement center featuring "mead booths, flying horses, fireworks, concerts, etc." (Historical Tour of... Broadway). In 1942, the newly formed Manhattan Savings Bank was headquartered here.

742: Village Tannery

740: Rubber Sole shoes, part of the Yellow Rat Bastard alterno-clothing complex

738: The Beez Neez clothes, one of many sportswear outlets along this stretch of Broadway

736: Tempo clothes, owned by Yellow Rat Bastard. At this address and its two neighbors to the south lived Mary Mason Jones—the inspiration for Mrs. Mingott in The Age of Innocence— and her two sisters, who between them had married two brothers and the brothers' cousin. The houses had separate entrances but with grand interiors that could be combined.

732: This 1882 building says ''Treffurth's'' near the cornice, marking the former home of a noted restaurant. More recently it housed XOXO clothes. Upstairs is Otakuden, an anime shop.

730: Headquarters of labor-owned Amalgamated Life Insurance; note the brass cockatrices above the doors. The building is on the site of the Broadway Atheneum, a theater converted from the Unitarian Church of the Messiah by A.T. Stewart in 1865. It also ran under the names Daly's New Fifth-Avenue Theater, Fox's Broadway Theater, The Globe and Harrigan & Hart's New Theatre Comique. Burned down in 1884.

724: The address of the Medical College for Women and Hospital for Women and Children, a homeopathic institution opened in 1862 with support from Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Also the address of the Church of the Messiah.

720: Jimmy Jazz clothes

718: The new home of Canal Jeans, which was the cool place to shop for clothes in the 1980s. In 1980, Unique Clothing Warehouse opened here, marking the rebirth of this stretch of Broadway as a hip retail zone; artist Jean-Michel Basquiat was an employee here. (It went bankrupt in 1991.)

716: An 1891 building by Alfred Zucker houses Shakespeare & Co., a great independent bookstore mini-chain, named for a famous Parisian bookshop. Look for the terra cotta devil's heads.

712-714: Was Antique Boutique, a vintage clothing store whose surreal window displays sometimes got it in trouble. In the 1970s, there was a "smoke-easy" here, a clandestine clearinghouse for the city's pot dealers.

708: Dome Boutique

704: Le Chateau clothes; formerly Bayamo, Chino-Latino restaurant that had a full-size 3-D dragon on the ceiling.

700 (corner): French Connection UK and Aldo shoes are on ground floor of the Audubon Building, HQ of the environmental society, a building supposed to be model of energy efficiency. Was the Schermerhorn Building.


W <=== 4TH STREET ===> E

From 4th Street on down, Broadway replaces 5th Avenue as the division between West and East.

West:

the owls... by IntangibleArts, on Flickr

693 (corner): Merchants Building has Bath & Bodyworks on ground floor. Note scary owls on 4th floor.

691: Was Andy's Chee-pees, vintage clothing chain. The site used to be the headquarters of the Union Club, New York's oldest social club, until 1855. In 1870 the state established a school for teachers here, the Female Normal and High School, under the leadership of Thomas Hunter; it moved to the Upper East Side in 1873 and was renamed Hunter College in 1914.

683 (corner): Le Basket, cafeteria, was Pamela's Cafe.

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Silk Building

Crossing over to the other side by j o s h, on Flickr

692 (corner): Tower Records was on the ground floor of this luxury apartment building, which has been home to Cher, Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Keith Richards, Britney Spears and other celebs.

New York established its first "Normal and High School on this site in 1869, under the leadership of Thomas Hunter.

Next to the Silk Building is a weekend flea market.

684 (corner): Au Bon Pain; note lions on cornice.


W <=== WEST 3RD ST /GREAT JONES ST===> E

West:

Mercer Street Residence by edenpictures, on Flickr

667-677 (corner): NYU dorms built on site of Metropolitan Hall, aka Tripler's Hall, which from 1850 to 1859 featured performers like Jenny Lind and Adelina Patti (only 10 when she sang here in 1852). That same year a memorial service for author James Fenimore Cooper was held here, conducted by Daniel Webster and featuring addresses by Washington Irving and William Cullen Bryant. In 1853, the theater hosted the World's Temperence Convention, featuring Susan B. Anthony, Horace Greeley and P.T. Barnum.

After fire destroyed the hall in 1859, the Winter Garden Theater was built here (originally called the New York Theatre and later Burton's Theater). On November 25, 1864 theatrical brothers Edwin, Junius and John Wilkes Booth performed here together for the only time in their careers, as a benefit to raise money for the statue of Shakespeare in Central Park—in Julius Caesar, a play about an assassination.

The theater was replaced by the Grand Central Hotel (aka the Broadway Central Hotel), on whose staircase on January 6, 1872, Edward Stokes fatally shot financier Jim Fisk, his rival for the affections of singer Josie Mansfield. It was also the home of Arnold Rothstein, a gangster who is said to be the inspiration for The Great Gatsby's Meyer Wolfsheim and Guys & Dolls' Nathan Detroit. Renamed the University Hotel, it collapsed in 1973, killing four tenants and destroying the Mercer Arts Center, which was in the same building on the other side of the block.

675: Herman Melville's family moved to this address in 1828, when he was about nine.

667: Was the address of the Bay State Hotel.

Transit

665: The best sneaker store in New York, according to Time Out New York. People come from as far away as Italy and Japan to buy shoes here. Was the address (along with No. 663) of the Marble Houses, which attracted great curiosity for being faced with that material. The two later became the Tremont Hotel.

663: The National Academy of Design, founded in 1826 by telegraph inventor Samuel Morse, opened its first building at this address in 1850. Louis Comfort Tiffany and Augustus Saint-Gaudens studied here. Later this was the address of a theater that was variously called the Old Stuyvesant, Academy Hall, Donaldson's Opera House, The Canterbury and Mozart Hall.

661: This 1891 building with a dramatically peaked roof was designed by Brunner & Tryon in the French Renaissance Revival style. Was the address of publisher G.P. Putnam & Son from 1866-70.

657-659: Blades, Board and Skate is at the address of the city's first YMCA, opened 1852—at that time more focused on Bible classes than on athletics. The current building is an Italianate cast-iron building from 1867, possibly designed by Griffith Thomas. One of a series of quite stunning and well-preserved cast-iron buildings on this stretch of Broadway, all reconstructed in 1979-81 after a fire.

655: Another 1867 Italianate cast-iron that might be by Thomas.

653: This Italianate cast-iron is from 1883 and is by Henry Fernbach. Starting in 1975, it Infinity, a pioneering gay/straight disco, gutted by fire in 1979.

649-651: Watch World is in the last of this Italianate cast-iron row, this one from 1872 and more confidently attributed to Griffith Thomas.

Pfaff's Beer Hall

647: The basement of what is now Mikai clothing was a hangout for pre-Civil War bohemians like Walt Whitman; satirist Artemus Ward; actress Ada Clare, the "Queen of Bohemia"; Henry Clapp, editor of the New York Saturday Press, the first U.S. countercultural newspaper; cartoonist Thomas Nast. Closed 1870, replaced by present building, originally a W. and J. Sloane carpet store (see above). On February 14, 1970, David Mancuso threw the first of a series of Love Saves the Day dance parties in his loft here—a space that came to be known as The Loft, a harbinger of the disco era. The parties continued here until 1974, when they moved to 99 Prince Street.

643: VG Restaurant; Mathew Brady briefly had his daguerreotype studio on this site.

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682 (corner): General Nutrition Center is on the site of the house of Philip Hone, mayor of NYC in 1826-27. He lived here from 1837-51.

680: Make 10 clothing

678: Upstairs from Paper House is The Cutting Room, a recording studio used by Wu-Tang Clan, Queen Latifah, Beastie Boys, Missy Elliott, etc. Also in this building is USA Shaolin Temple, a dojo run by a Shaolin monk who defected in 1992, who claims to have trained the Wu-Tang Clan in martial arts. Was Marap Leather, distributor.

676: Upstairs from Lighting Plus, on the fifth floor, was Keith Haring's studio, now the offices of his foundation. 1874 Brooks Brothers Building by Alan Cordova, on Flickr

670 (corner): Leica Galleries, Wet Seal clothing are in the former Brooks Brothers store (1874-1884); built on site of the Samuel Ward mansion, art patron (his private gallery here was said to be 1st in U.S.) and father of Julie Ward Howe, who composed "Battle Hymn of the Republic."


BOND STREET ===> E

666 (corner): 666 Broadway, current home to Harper's Magazine, Center for Constitutional Rights; first offices of the media watch group FAIR.

654: Co-Pilot Shoes. This was at one point the site of the Astor mansion, and later an address of the Broadway Atheneum.

648: Fat Jeans, owned by Yellow Rat Bastard. The Manhattan Savings Institute was founded here as a working-class bank in 1850.


























The One That Almost Got Away by rcherubin, on Flickr

644 (corner): This beautiful building was once the offices of the Manhattan Savings Institution; note MSI monogram. Atrium clothing complex on ground floor; was the Blue Willow Restaurant, opened in 1983. Scenes from Ghostbusters and Hannah and Her Sisters were shot here. An earlier MSI building was the site of the 19th Bleecker Tower by Alan Cordova, on Flickr Century's biggest bank robbery. Carried out by the King of the Bank Robbers, George Leonidas Leslie, on October 27, 1878, with a gang that included such notables as Jimmy Hope, Shang Draper, Red Leary, Johnny Dobbs, Worcester Sam Perris, Banjo Pete Emerson and Eddie Goodie Gearing. They made off with over $2.7 million; unfortunately for them, all but $12,000 was in non-negotiable bonds.


W <=== BLEECKER STREET ===> E

Two hundred police officers armed with clubs attacked and dispersed a mob of 5,000 here during the draft riots of 1863.

In the song "Myriad Harbour," The New Pornographers describe being "stranded at Bleecker and Broadway, and looking for something to do."

West:

641: Infinity Haircut

639 1/2: B&B News








627: Noho Building houses Stereo Exchange, Time Out New York's former offices

625: Gonzalez y Gonzalez, ironic Mexican. The modeling agency Clear is based here, as is the record label Matador—which has released some great music, like Guided By Voices, Belle & Sebastian and Cat Power.

623: Crunch Fitness. From 1886 until 1892, this was the address of the pioneering children's book and game publisher McLoughlin Bros.






Cable Building

Angelika Film Center by karlo, on Flickr

611-621 (corner): Designed in 1894 by Stanford White for Broadway Cable Traction Co., cable car operators. Ground floor now houses Manhattan Deli & Pizza, Crate & Barrel. Theaters Angelika Film Center, a popular art-house cinema, are in the basement, where machines once pulled cable cars from as far away as 36th Street. Also in the building is A to Z Music Services, CD-presser for indie labels.

Before the Cable Building, this was the site of St. Thomas Church, built 1824. John Jacob Astor was put to rest in the Astor family crypt here in 1848; Washington Irving was an honorary pallbearer. Astor was relocated in 1851 to Trinity Church Cemetery at 155th Street. The congregation moved to 5th Avenue and West 53rd in 1866.

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Nom De Guerre by the dancing kids, on Flickr

640 (corner): Underneath the Swatch outlet is a secret store called Nom de Guerre. Behind a door marked with a sign for a copy shop is a black staircase that leads to two subterranean stories of really expensive streetwear. The building dates to 1897, was designed by Macy's architects De Lemos & Cordes, and was the first structure to be named the Empire State Building (after the Empire State Bank on the ground floor).

632: Was Looking Glass Studios, a recording facility used by a remarkable array of artists: David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, David Byrne, Patti Smith, Philip Glass, Grace Jones, Bjork, Beck, etc.

628-630: Urban Outfitters; built for New York Mercantile Exchange. (Note name on facade.) Later was home to Commercial Plastics.

622-626: Fiorucci is on site of Laura Keene's Varieties Theater (1856); Keene played in Our American Cousin the night Lincoln was assassinated. Later the Olympic; destroyed by fire, 1880. Current building from 1882; heavily modernized.

620: David Z shoes is in an outstanding (and early) cast-iron building from 1858, designed by John Butler Snook. Adidas Building on Houston by erik jaeger, on Flickr

Corner: The Adidas Building is on the former site of "Whale of a Wash," a car wash that mostly served taxis. It had the one billboard on Houston that I actually liked.

BROADWAY/LAFAYETTE STATION: B/D/F/Q trains to West 4th
F train to 2nd Avenue
B/D/Q trains to Grand Street

In the 1980s, as many as 200 people were living in the subway tunnels between this and the 2nd Avenue station.


W <=== HOUSTON STREET ===> E
The boundary of Greenwich Village and Soho

Near this intersection was the Thieves' Exchange, where, according to historian Herbert Asbury, "criminals and their fences met each night and dickered openly over their beer and whiskey for jewelry and other loot."

West:

Houston Street by Rafael Chamorro, on Flickr

Corner: This building's north wall featured a 1972 art installation called The Wall, by Forrest Myers, consisting of blue girders arranged in a grid. The owner of the building had it removed in 2003 so that he could sell the wall as ad space, but after a long legal struggle it was replaced in 2007— spiffed up and moved up somewhat so an ad can fit underneath.

599: Was The Flamingo—pioneering gay disco.

597: This 1867 building looks cast-iron, but is actually marble. Houses Kenneth Cole shoes.









Museum for African Art

593: The Classical-style building dates to 1860; the interior, redone for the museum's 1993 move, is by Maya Lin, architect of D.C.'s Vietnam Memorial. Also the address of The Lounge boutique.

591: Eastern Mountain Sports, gear for rock-climbing, yoga and the like




585: Tony Pastor, the inventor of Vaudeville, moved his theater here from The Bowery in 1873. Lillian Russell debuted here November 22, 1880, a year before Pastor moved his theater to Tammany Hall on 14th Street.

583: The Astor Building, designed by Cleverdon & Putzel in 1896, was built on the site of the house where John Jacob Astor, the richest man in the U.S., died March 29, 1848. His last regret: not buying "every foot of land on the island of Manhattan." In 1983, it became the home of the New Museum of Contemporary Art— which is now building a new home on The Bowery.

579: ALDO shoes is at the address where Stanwix Hall once stood, a fancy saloon that witnessed the February 24, 1855 shooting of Know-Nothing leader Bill ''The Butcher'' Poole, which inspired the Gangs of New York film. DSC06336 by Kramchang, on Flickr

575 (corner): What was in the 1990s the Guggenheim Museum Soho, the downtown branch of the uptown museum, is now a futuristic Prada outlet. Carrie spends her book advance here on Sex and the City. The structure itself was built in 1882 (to a Thomas Stent design) for the Rogers Peet clothing store, Prada SoHo by edenpictures, on Flickr which helped intro- duce such inno- vations as the price tag, the fabric label, the money-back guarantee and the illustrated advertisement. It had moved out of this location by 1904.

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Liberty by Joel Bedford, on Flickr

600-602 (corner): With its cast-iron, prefab facade, this is an example of the characteristic Soho building— collectively representing some of the finest commercial architecture in the world. The Corinthian-columned loft building, finished in 1882, has stories that get progressively shorter to create an illusion of greater height.

596: Was the Empire theater, later the Santa Claus, from 1853-59. The Salmagundi Club, an artists' society, was founded here in 1871 as the New York Sketch Club in the studio of Johnathan Scott Hartley. Now the address of New York Model Management.

594: This was the home of the Alternative Museum, founded in 1975 to promote socially conscious art, from 1991 until 2000, when the institution relocated to cyberspace. The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art is now housed here.

590: Ricky's, an extra-large outlet of the funky local cosmetics chain

588: Offices of the Academy of American Poets. The writers group PEN held a reading of The Satanic Verses here on February 22, 1989, to protest the fatwah against its author, Salman Rushdie; authors like E.L. Doctorow, Gay Talese and Susan Sontag read. On the ground floor is Express, fashion chain.



















568-578 (corner): the site of Niblo's Garden, one of New York's longest-standing theaters—built in 1827 as the Sans Souci, it was rebuilt after several fires and was finally demolished in 1895. It featured actors like Edwin Forrest and orators like Daniel Webster (who spoke here in 1837), but it is most famous for the 1866 premier of The Black Crook, which some consider to be the first musical. It was a huge hit, being the first Broadway show to run more than a year.

After 1852, the theater was part of the Metropolitan Hotel, one of the city's most luxurious; Japanese Crown Prince Tateish Onojero stayed here in 1860. The hotel bartender, Professor Jerry Thomas, is immortalized as the creator of the Tom and Jerry cocktail. Corner Building on Broadway & Prince St in Manhattan by bitchcakesny, on Flickr

The current building is an 1890s Renais- sance Eclectic building by George B. Post, architect of the New York Stock Exchange. It now houses Bliss Soho, upscale spa; upstairs is Bway.net, a friendly neighborhood ISP.


W <===         PRINCE STREET         ===> E

A log cabin was set up at this intersection in 1840 to promote the presidential campaign of William Henry Harrison. On April 12, 1861, Walt Whitman bought a newspaper at this corner and learned that the Civil War had started.

West:

565 (corner): Victoria's Secret Soho is in the former Ball & Black Jewelry store, with appropriately Corinthian columns. The first five stories are marble, built in 1860, and the upper four are brick, added in 1893. In 1992, apartment 2C here served as the setting for the first season of The Real World.

Little Singer Building

Little Singer Building by edenpictures, on Flickr

561-563: Designed by Ernest Flagg in 1902 for the sewing machine company, it was little compared to Flagg's Singer Tower, one of New York's great lost buildings. This survivor is "one of the outstanding architectural achievements of the early 20th Century" (Guide to the Metropolis), the delicate metal and glass skin foreshadowed the modernist curtain wall. Replaced Anglo-American Church of St. George, a satellite of Trinity. The ground floor was Kate's Paperie, fancy stationery; now Mango, Spanish clothing brand. Scholastic Dinosaur by edenpictures, on Flickr

557: The headquarters of Scholastic Books, world's largest children's publisher, are in the last building designed by Aldo Rossi before his untimely 1997 death; it includes the Scholastic Store, for all your Clifford the Big Red Dog and Harry Potter needs. Charles Broadway Rouss by edenpictures, on Flickr

549- 555: This granite building, built in two sections from 1889 to 1900, is the Charles Broadway Rouss Building, named by and for a businessman who changed his middle name to honor the street that took him from rags to riches. A native of Virginia, he also funded the construction of a number of public buildings in his home state, including the Battle Abbey Confederate war memorial.

In 1853, this was the address of the New York Free Love League, a group founded to oppose coercion in sexual relations. On the ground floor was Taylor's Saloon, a magnificent restaurant that Walt Whitman liked to take visitors to.

No. 555 is now Sephora, where makeup is alphabetized.

545: 1885 cast-iron by Samuel A. Warner.

543: Tailor James McCall, founder of McCall's magazine, started the McCall Pattern Company at this address in 1876. The present building dates to 1903.

537-541: Three cast-iron buildings from 1888, housing Fossil and Guess. Nos. 539-41 had been the second site of P.T. Barnum's American Museum which moved here in 1865 after a disastrous fire; this incarnation, too, burned down, in 1869. Previously, this space had been the Chinese Rooms.

535: In 1974, a resident here claimed that the ghost of Juliana Elmore Sands— a woman who drowned in the Spring Street well on New Year's Day, 1800—emerged from his waterbed. Sands' sweetheart, Levi Weeks, was accused of murder, but was acquited after being defended by both Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.

531: Lush, green bath products

529 (corner): This was the site of the Prescott House hotel. Today there's Cafe Bari; upstairs is a club called Upstairs, described as a "celebrity sanctuary."

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Dean & Deluca

Dean and DeLuca Soho by Shiny Things, on Flickr

560- 566: An 1883 ma- sonry buil- ding by Thomas Stent houses this famous gourmet food store.

558: H & M, Swedish fashion bargains (stands for Hennes and Mauritz).

556: David Z, hip shoe mini-chain

552-554: Built to a John Snook design in 1855, these buildings are among the oldest on Broadway.

550: This 1854 building was originally the Tiffany & Company jewelry store; a cast- iron facade was put on in 1901.





























548: Church of the Divine Unity, a Unitarian church, was located here; novelist William Thackeray made his first U.S. apperance here on November 19, 1852, lecturing "On the Humorous Writers of Queen Anne's Reign."














542-544: An 1864 marble building with notable caryatids.








540: An 1867 marble building, designed by David and John Jardine with a fleur-de-lis motif.

536: Levi's store, one of the jeans maker's two direct outlets in Manhattan.




532: Scoop, trendy super-boutique





W <===         SPRING STREET         ===> E

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525 (corner): Nine Muses and Apollo Incorporated, literary agency

521-523: The last remnants of the St. Nicholas Hotel, which used to stretch from 507 to 527. One of the city's most opulent hotels when it was built in 1853 (at a cost of more than $1 million), it boasted the novelty of central heating. In 1854, the last murder committed with a sword cane occurred here—when one guest killed another who told him to make less noise. In 1863, the hotel was the headquarters for Mayor George Opdyke's efforts to suppress the Draft Riots. Later in the Civil War, on November 25, 1864, Confederate saboteurs attempted to burn down this and other hotels. Mark Twain and his future wife, Olivia Langdon, met here for the first time in 1867. The hotel closed its doors in the 1870s.

No. 521 now houses Puma, a sneaker superstore. H & M SoHo by edenpictures, on Flickr

513-519: H&M's second SoHo outlet is in a striking 1884 Queen Anne building by Samuel Warner. SoHo Lighting was the previous occupant.

503-511: Three 1878 cast-iron buildings by John B. Snook—now much altered. No. 509 was once a vacant lot where, in 1838, two giraffes (survivors of a group of 11) were exhibited—the first such animals seen in the U.S.

499: SoHome, home decor New York by Clafou, on Flickr

491: The New Era Building, an 1897 art nouveau structure built for a printing company, looks like it could be in Tim Burton's Batman. Features the New Era Cafe, and the Exstaza clothing store.


SoHo by jwowens, on Flickr

489 (corner): Brisas del Caribe (''Smiles of the Caribbean'')

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524 (corner): Bayard Building dates to 1903.

520: DNA, hot modeling agency.














514: The address of Wood's Minstrel Hall, also known as Wood's Theatre and Wood's Theatre Comique, a converted synagogue that between 1862 and 1881 featured minstrel shows, Lydia Thompson's British burlesque troupe and Harrigan and Hart's musicals— their Mulligan Guard Picnic, produced here in 1878, has a claim to being the first musical comedy.

502-504: This 1860 cast-iron building was cast by Daniel Badger's Architectural Iron Works; the white marble columns are in what's known as the "sperm candle" style. This was for many years the home of Canal Jeans, a funky clothing store that recently moved to Brooklyn. Now it's Bloomingdale's ''edgy'' Soho branch.

496: So Good Jewelry Soho, budget-priced bling

494: Anita's, eclectic menu in a Madrid hacienda.

Haughwout Building

Edificio Haughwout by Mossaiq, on Flickr

488-492: Pronounced "HOW-out," this landmark 1857 building is "the most beautiful commercial cast-iron building in the country" (Guide to the Metropolis). Designed by John P. Gaynor, the cast-iron facade is by Daniel D. Badger Architectural Iron Works—the oldest such ironwork in the city. Haughwout's was a tableware store whose china was used at the White House; this store featured the first passenger elevator, a steam-driven model designed by Elisha Otis. The building now houses an office supply chain and Corcoran real estate.


W <===         BROOME STREET         ===> E


West:

Soho Style Skyscraper by bicameral, on Flickr

487 (corner): A dramatically detailed 12-story building by John Townsend Williams (1896)—like a slice of wedding cake. Casket, a trade publication, was published at this address in 1930. The original Rogers Peet clothing store opened at this address in 1874.

485: Address of Wallack's Lyceum Theatre, which opened in 1850 as Brougham's Lyceum and was bought by the Wallacks—a prominent theatrical family—in 1852. wrong way by Runs With Scissors, on Flickr After Lester Wallack moved his productions uptown in 1861, this venue operated as the Broadway Music Hall, the Olympic and the Broadway Theatre before being demolished in 1869.

483: Sloppy Joe/Dirty Jane, jeans— part of the Yellow Rat Bastard empire

481: Alice Underground, vintage clothing, shoes etc.

Pearl River Mart

Peoplewatching by LarimdaME, on Flickr

477: This five-story cast-iron building holds an amazing array of Chinese imports. Moved here from Canal Street. Pearl River is the main waterway of Guangdong Province, where many Chinatown immigrants are from.

473: The address of Mme. Demorest, the dressmaker who in 1863 made a wedding gown for Lavinia Warren, diminutive bride of Barnum performer Tom Thumb.

465: Bose, hi-tech audio Broadway and Grand by edenpictures, on Flickr

Corner: Lord & Taylor had its department store here, in a building by Griffith Thomas put up from 1860-72. The store armed its employees against draft rioters in 1863. The company moved up to Ladies Mile around 1900; this building was demolished after a 1967 fire. Currently here is 40 Mercer, a Post-Modern glass-and-steel condo.

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486 (corner): Madewell, Broadway & Broome by Vidiot, on Flickr funky, pricey clothing with a DJ booth; was West- ern Spirit, cowboy stuff. Building dates to 1882.

484: Universal News is said to sell 7,000 magazine titles. Yellow Rat Bastard by Lab2112, on Flickr

478-482: Roosevelt Building, 1873; built to make money for Roosevelt Hospital. This is the only surviving commercial building in New York City designed by Richard Morris Hunt, architect of the Metropolitan Museum. Now houses Yellow Rat Bastard, flagship of an alterno-clothing empire that was caught paying subminimum wages in 2008.

476: Thread Waxing Space, art/performance space opened 1992 in an old thread factory. taken over to just such a point by beigeinside, on Flickr

474: Miro Cafe

472: The address of Mechanics Hall, which featured blackface acts such as E.P. Christy's Minstrels, who played here for a record-breaking decade. The song "Dixie" was premiered here in 1859 by Bryant's Mistrels.

466-468: Was Brooks Brothers




French Culinary Institute

inside by roboppy, on Flickr

462 (cor- ner): Stu- dents here show off their skills at the restaurant here, L'Ecole. There's a Daffy's branch at the same address.

The building is an 1879 cast-iron design by John Correja, made for the linen and lace importing firm Mills & Gibb. Earlier, Brooks Brothers opened a store here in 1858; during the Civil War, the company supplied uniforms for Union troops, and was a target of draft rioters.


W <===         GRAND STREET         ===> E


West:

broadway-and-grand-street by dandeluca, on Flickr

Corner (459 Broadway): The Devlin Building, a five-story cast-iron built in 1861 to house a branch of Devlin & Co., a clothing store founded in 1843. This branch closed in 1879. Bway.net, the local Internet provider, was based here for a time.

455: Muji, utilitarian housewares from Japan. Was Iceberg Army Navy of Soho.

451: CB2, more affordable sibling of Crate & Barrel. Was (is also?) Dance Space Center.

443-445: This 1860 neo-Renaissance building by Griffith Thomas housed the offices of D. Appleton & Co., publishers of the memoirs of Matthew C. Perry, William Tecumseh Sherman and William H. Seward; this may have been where Darwin's Origin of the Species was first published on U.S. soil.

Corner: The plaza used to house an octagonal neo-Georgian bank building, a Franklin National Bank branch, that dated to 1967 but looked much older. It was surrounded by trees— badly needed in this neighborhood—and nicknamed the Bank in the Park. The trees were cut down, and then the bank was torn down; whatever replaces it is unlikely to be nearly so charming.

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458 (corner): This 9-story building, built in 1896 and designed by Alfred Zucker, has been home to Meryl Streep, Sandra Bullock and author Olivia Goldsmith. Previously, this was the site of the Singer sewing machine company's first headquarters and showroom, built 1857.

454: Amsterdam Boutique




444: Address of Robert Butler's Varieties, also known as the Olympia; Tony Pastor worked here before starting his own theater on the Bowery, considered the birthplace of Vaudeville.

442: Site of Mitchell's Olympic Theater, later the American Music Hall.








434 (corner): Address of Barnum's Hotel, aka the Howard House, where Margaret and Kate Fox held seances in 1850 that popularized spiritualism in America. Years later Margaret confessed that she produced the spirits' ''rapping'' by cracking her joints.


W <===         HOWARD STREET         ===> E


West:

427 Broadway by edenpictures, on Flickr

427 (corner): An 1870 cast-iron building by Thomas Jackson in the Venetian Renaissance style. Home to American Apparel (formerly Chill on Broadway clothing), NARAL Pro-Choice New York.

425: The original site of Hearn's, a dry-goods store that opened in 1842. It eventually moved to 14th Street, where it became Macy's chief rival. George Arnold Hearn had earlier worked with his uncle, Aaron Arnold, who went on to found Arnold Constable, another major department store. The current building, housing Accord Footwork, is a cast-iron building designed by Griffith Thomas that dates to 1869. by antiparticle, on Flickr

419 (cor- ner): A one- story stall with a green awning labeled "Perfumes"

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428 (corner): OMG, local clothing chain with good prices on jeans











Traffic Jam by D2 Photography, on Flickr

418 (corner): The Oltarsh Building houses the Mall of the Great Wall—Chinese import market, formerly the Pearl River Market. It was built as the Major Theater, aka Cinema Giglio, which opened in 1927 and seated 599. The building and theater were both named for builder David Oltarsh, who was a major in the Army Corps of Engineers. Today it is a flea market-style retail space.


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West:

2008-03-02 New York 097 Tribeca Canal Street by Allie_Caulfield, on Flickr

415 (corner): Formerly the First National City Bank of New York— the predecessor of Citibank. This triangular space was once the location of Brandreth House, a hotel run by one Doc Brandreth, a dope peddler who later did time in Sing Sing. On the hotel's steps Broadway & Canal by ranjit, on Flickr on July 23, 1859, Virginia Stewart was shot and killed by her lover Robert C. MacDonald, who had pursued her from North Carolina. He killed himself with opium while awaiting trial in the Tombs.


W <===     LISPENARD ST



401 (corner): A 29-story 1930 Art Deco office tower designed by Jardine, Hill & Murdock. It has (or maybe had) a concentration of Chinese-American lawyers, so much so that this address is said to be known in China as the place you find a lawyer in New York. Broadway Cafe is on the ground floor.

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416 (corner): Was 416 B.C., "B.C." standing for Below Canal—Bulgarian restaurant that relocated to the Lower East Side. Gogol Bordello used to play here frequently.

414: The address of the New Haven House hotel

412: Site of Apollo Hall, where the New York Philharmonic gave its first concert on December 7, 1842—making it the oldest permanent orchestra in the English-speaking world. Here on May 10, 1872, the Equal Rights Party was founded, which ''advocated free love, birth control, vegetarianism, easier divorce laws and the end of the death penalty''—All Around the Town. The party nominated Victoria C. Woodhull for president—the first female presidential candidate of any U.S. party—and Frederick Douglass for vice president.

410: Site of Euterpean Hall



















402: The address of Allen Dodworth's Dancing Academy, founded in 1842, where New York's upper crust learned to waltz. Dodworth was a violinist with the Philharmonic.

400 (corner): The address of the Florence Hotel. The current four-story building dates to 1915.


W <===     WALKER STREET     ===> E

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395 (corner): Self-Service Stores; ''Serve Yourself and Save.''








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396 (corner): A 10-story brick-and-limestone building from 1899, designed by William Birkmire, architect of the Mexican National Opera House.

392: Boys and Chicks, part of Yellow Rat Bastard's alterno-clothing empire





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379 (corner): World Journal Bookstore












365: This was the address of the New York Garden—from 1809 to about 1850, the most fashionable resort of its kind in the city.

361 (corner): James S. White Building

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376: Site of Union Club HQ Bernard Semel Building by edenpictures, on Flickr

366 (corner): The Broadway-Franklin Building was put up in 1907 as the Bernard Semel Building, a 12-story office tower named after a Jewish philanthropist. It's also been called the Broadway Textile Building and the Collect Pond House Apartments— the latter name referring to a filled-in lake in what is now Chinatown. On the ground floor is Antique Orange, owned by Yellow Rat Bastard.


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West:

Franklin / Broadway by Laplander, on Flickr

361 (corner): The New York branch of Nyack College, a Christian school that quotes Jonah 4:11 on its website: ''Should I not love that great city?''






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350 (corner):


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343: Site of the first Union Club HQ, opened in 1837— owned by William B. Astor.


















337: The address of the Broadway Museum and Menagerie, where Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins, were on public display between November 1853 and April 1854.

335 (corner): American Savings Bank

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U.S. Office Building II by edenpictures, on Flickr

346 (block): U.S. Office Building is used as offices by the city; was New York Life Insurance Building until 1928, when the company moved to Madison Square. A Stanford White design completed in 1899.

Earlier the D. Appleton publishing company was found here. Before that, the Society Library was at the corner of Broadway and Leonard, its second home. In the 1840s it also housed the Academy of Design, which in September 1847 exhibited Hiram Power's The Greek Slave, the first time a sculpture of a female nude was displayed in public in the U.S.


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Saranac Apartments by edenpictures, on Flickr

Block (95 Worth): Saranac Apartments are a 16-story building from 2000, named for an Adirondack lake.

On this block, at No. 340-344, was the Broadway Tabernacle, a Presbyterian church founded in 1836 by Rev. Charles Grandison Finney, whose passionate abolitionist sermons led a pro-slavery mob to burn down the church. Finney left for Oberlin, Ohio soon after (where he later became president of the college), and his replacement at the rebuilt church was anti-abolition, leading the members to switch denominations to Congregationalist, the first such church in Manhattan. It was the site of many abolitionist meetings, as well as the Women's Rights Movement Convention in September 1853, attended by Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth and other leading early feminists. Later, in 1856, former President Millard Fillmore was nominated here as the candidate of the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party. In 1857, the church sold its building to the Erie Railroad and moved to 6th Avenue and 34th Street.


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Between 1773 and 1870, the area between Worth (then Anthony) and Duane streets, from Broadway to Church, was the grounds of the New York Hospital. In April 13, 1788, in what came to be known as the Doctors' Riot, a mob of citizens occupied the hospital for two days, outraged over graves being robbed to provide cadavers for medical students. Arome Cafe by edenpictures, on Flickr

325 (corner): Five-story building from 1915 houses Arome, tasty deli/buffet with a balcony dining area.

319 (corner): Former Met Life Home Office; ''a cast-iron gem of the first order'' (AIA Guide), designed by David & John Jardine in 1869 and fabricated by the Daniel D. Badger Architectural Iron Works. Met Life Home Office by edenpictures, on Flickr On the ground floor was Stark's Veranda, an Italian restaurant that opened in 1894 and closed c. 2009. In the 1840s, this was the address of John Anderson's cigar store, where Mary Rogers worked; her puzzling death in 1841 inspired Poe's ''The Mystery of Marie Roget''.


W <===         THOMAS ST

315 (corner): At approximately this spot was the Rutgers mansion, which later housed the Ranelagh Garden tavern from 1765-69. The Rutgers family owned the property until 1790.

305 (corner): Langdon Building, an 1894 Romanesque Revival building by William H. Hume, contains a Duane Reade outlet— the DSC05130 by Kramchang, on Flickr closest one to the drug store chain's original loca- tion, which was between Duane and Reade streets.

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Federal Plaza

26 Federal Plaza: Jacob K. Javits Federal Office Building Federal Plaza in Manhattan by jfhatesmustard, on Flickr
is named for the U.S. senator for New York from 1956 until 1980. He's remembered for his work passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the War Powers Act of 1973. They don't make Republicans like him anymore.

The building, which houses the New York offices of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (formerly the INS), was begun in 1963 to a design by Kahn & Jacobs et al, with an expansion completed 1977.

326: Pearl Street used to come through this block to intersect Broadway; at that time the fashionable Broadway Theatre stood here between Pearl and Worth (then Anthony). Built in 1847, collapsed and rebuilt in 1855. It was here that Edwin Forrest's portrayal of Macbeth in 1849 inspired a riot against rival Charles Macready's version at the Astor Place Theatre.

322: In 1848, the address of William Rudde's Homeopathic Medicines and Books.

314-316: In 1826, a Masonic Hall was built here in Gothic style, designed for concerts and other public events. The same year it was built, however, the arrest and mysterious death of William Morgan, a Mason who threatened to expose the club's secrets, drove Masonry into unpopularity; in 1841 the building reopened as Gothic Hall.






Manhattan Sentinels by edenpictures, on Flickr

The four cast-iron pylons in Federal Plaza are the Manhattan Sentinels, a 1996 sculpture by Barbara Pepper.


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West:

299 (corner): Ungar Building, 19 stories from 1905. The New York Society of Architects is based here.
















East River Savings Institution Building by edenpictures, on Flickr

291 (corner): East River Savings Institution Building, a 1911 Classical building from Clinton & Russell.

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Ted Weiss Federal Building

Ted Weiss Federal Building by edenpictures, on Flickr

290 (block): This 1994 Post-Modernist building by Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum houses the New York offices of the Environmental Protection Agency. After September 11, the EPA had this building cleaned as a toxic waste site even as it was falsely assuring rescue workers and residents that Ground Zero air was safe. Previously, the NYC Department of Transportation was on this site. African Burial Ground Monument by julz91, on Flickr

During construction of this building in 1991, workers uncovered the old African Burial Ground (1712-1795), which the federal government tried to relocate. After protests prevented the move, it became a National Historic Landmark in 1993.


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West:

NYC - 287 Broadway by wallyg, on Flickr

287 (corner): ''Lovely,'' says the AIA Guide of this 1872 cast-iron building by John B. Snook.

283: The original address of A.T. Stewart's dry-goods shop, opened in 1823, which later grew into the first department store.

281: There was an Emigrant Bank branch here—it was torn down along with the rest of the middle of the block c. 2009.

NYC - Civic Center - Broadway Chambers Building by wallyg, on Flickr

277 (corner): Broadway Chambers Building, Renaissance Revival from the Woolworth Tower's Cass Gilbert (1900). Nedick's used to have a hot dog stand on the corner. Built on the site of Irving House, which Magyar patriot Lajos Kossuth used as a base in December 1851.

In 1841, printer Sam Adams went to collect a $50 debt here from John Colt, brother of revolver inventor Samuel Colt. Broadway Chambers Building II by edenpictures, on Flickr Colt killed Adams — with a hammer, not a revolver — and tried to ship the body to New Orleans. He was caught and convicted; on the day scheduled for his execution, he married his fiancee in prison, then committed suicide in his cell by stabbing himself in the chest.

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280: Argosy was published at this address in 1930.

Sun Building

Broadway and Chambers by Razmataz', on Flickr

274 (block): New York State Office Building, which houses the city's Buildings department, was built by A.T. Stewart in 1846 for the the world's first true department store, known as the Marble Palace. The building's marble-clad Italianate design inspired hundreds of other commercial buildings. The Sun by 917press, on Flickr

Later used (1919-50) as the offices of the New York Sun, a newspaper best remembered for its 1897 "Yes, Virginia" editorial and for the 1835 Great Moon Hoax. It was Sun editor John B. Bogart who said, in 1882, "When a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a dog that is news."

The paper's clocks, with the motto "The Sun—It Shines for All," are still on the building's corners. Broadway & Chambers by Peter Comitini, on Flickr

Built on site of the Washington Hotel (1812), which served as the Federalist Party HQ.


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Manhattan Project HQ

270 (corner): Manhattan Project Building by edenpictures, on Flickr
In 1848, Chemical Bank built its headquarters here, replacing it in 1907 with another building. That in turn was torn down for this 28-story building, put up in 1930, designed by E.H. Faile & Co. (which ought to be embarrassed to put up a building that looks like this across from a building like Broadway Chambers). It was during World War II that this building won its claim to fame, serving as the headquarters of the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb. (It was part of the regional office of the Army Corps of Engineers, which apparently is in charge of doomsday weapons as well as flood control.) In 1946 it was sold to the state of New York and became the Levitt Building, housing state legislative offices.

263: The first photograph taken in the Western Hemisphere was displayed on September 16, 1839, at this address, in the drugstore of Dr. James R. Chilton. The subject was St. Paul's Chapel.

261 (corner): Built 1906


W <===         WARREN ST

258 (corner): City Hall Tower, a 1915 building with eight floors. Home Life Insurance Building by edenpictures, on Flickr

257: Home Life Insurance Building, completed 1894 by Napoleon LeBrun & Son. ''Lordly''—AIA Guide. This was the address of Peale's Museum and Gallery of the Fine Arts, where the first rhinoceros in the United States was exhibited in September 1826.

No. 259, now defunct, was from 1837-41 the address of Charles Lewis Tiffany's first jewelry shop. The first subway train was built in the basement here in 1870.

253: Postal Telegraph Building, built 1894. ''Pallid''—AIA Guide.

252: The address of Peale's Museum (aka the Pantheon Museum), Scudder's chief competitor. A two-headed terrapin was exhibited here in 1826.

251 (corner): This was the address of the New York Dental Depot, where Solyman Brown had his practice. Known as the "poet laureate of dentistry," Brown helped found the first dental school, the first journal of dentistry and the first national society of dentists. In the winter of 1851, when the East River froze over, he walked to work from Brooklyn over the ice floes.

In 1857, the Great Western Despatch office here guaranteed delivery of goods as far west as Dubuque, Iowa within 12 days. It was also the office of Herring's Patent Champion Safes, which in 1865 received a letter from P.T. Barnum thanking them for a fire-proof safe that preserved his records when the American Museum burned down.


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NYC's 1st sidewalk ran along Broadway from Murray to Vesey.

City Hall Park by kamaru, on Flickr

250 (block): This 1963 building, a series of stacked boxes, has the headquarters of the New York City Housing Authority and other official offices.

245: William Sloane opened a carpet store here in 1844; it eventually became W & J Sloane, which built the building that is now ABC Carpet and Home.


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The Woolworth Tower

NYC Feb. 2006 - Woolworth building by OliverN5, on Flickr

233 (block): This Gothic, 792-foot tower was the world's tallest building from 1913 until 1930—and is called ''possibly the most beautiful commercial building in the world'' by architecture writer Gerard Wolfe. Designed by Cass Gilbert as headquarters for the five & dime chain. Called the ''Cathedral of Commerce,'' largely because of its splendid lobby. Woolworth Building Tower by Aaron G Stock, on Flickr

In On the Town, sailor Chip wants to ''see New York/ In all its spreading strength and power/From the city's highest spot,/ Atop the famous Woolworth Tower''—only to be told ''You're just a little late/We got the Empire State.'' During World War II, atom spy Klaus Fuchs worked for a Manhattan Project front company that was based here. Today the offices of Harlequin Romance are located in the tower. sunset behind the woolworth building by Pennance368, on Flickr

The Tower was built where Philip Hone, mayor from 1826-27, had his home at No. 235.

231: The address of the Jennings Building, which burned down April 25, 1855, killing 11 firefighters.

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City Hall Park

Tweed Courthouse and City Hall by Vidiot, on Flickr

This was originally set aside in 1686 by the Dutch colonial govern- ment as The Commons, a pasture adjacent to the Collect Pond where townsfolk could take their livestock to eat and drink. It soon became the city's main park, serving as a gathering place for celebrations—and protests.

On August 11, 1766, New Yorkers angry that their Liberty Pole protest in the park had been taken down, threw bricks at British soldiers here, who retaliated with bayonets—resulting in the first (non-fatal) bloodshed of the Revolutionary era. General George Washington had the Declaration of Independence read here on July 9, 1776. In 1826, African-Americans rioted here against slave-catchers pursuing escapees from the South. Another riot here in 1837 opposed the raising of the price of flour from $6 to $15 a barrel. During the Draft Riots of 1863, rioters attacked blacks here.

When Albany in 1857 replaced the corrupt Municipal Police with a new organization known as the Metropolitan Police, the two forces clashed here in a melee that left one officer permanently crippled. Closer to the present, police rioted here in September 1992 against Mayor David Dinkins' Civilian Complaint Review Board proposals.

Tweed Courthouse

Historic New York County 'Tweed' Courthouse by joseph a, on Flickr

52 Cham- bers: Built between 1861 and 1871, this former Criminal Courts Building was supposed to cost $250,000; it ended up costing as much as $14 million, with much of the difference being pocketed by William ''Boss'' Tweed and his Tammany Hall cronies. This graft, excessive even for those days, helped land Tweed in jail, but it is a remarkably beautiful building.

This site was earlier the New York Institution, the city's almshouse; the residents were transferred to Bellevue in 1816, after which the building served to house the New-York Historical Society, the Society Library, the American Academy of Fine Arts and the Bank for Savings.














City Hall

NYC: City Hall Park, by Wally Gobetz, on Flickr

This has been called the city's ''greatest archi- tectural treasure'' — I wouldn't go that far, but it is pretty nice. Built in 1811 to a design by John McComb and Joseph Mangin, it was originally faced with marble on three sides and brownstone on the north — because nobody important lived north of City Hall in those days. By 1954, the marble was decaying, and the entire building was refaced with limestone. City Hall Park, Manhattan, New York, 14 Feb. 2008 by PhillipC, on Flickr

Abraham Lincoln lay in state in City Hall's rotunda on April 24-25, 1865. Other prominent citizens who have received the same honor include President Grant and editor Horace Greeley.






Statue of Nathan Hale NYC - Civic Center - City Hall Park - Nathan Hale statue by wallyg, on Flickr

Put up in 1893 to honor the 21-year- old Revolu- tionary spy, executed by the British in New York on September 22, 1776. The statue is by Frederick MacMonnies and the pedestal by Stanford White.







When author Jack London was homeless for a time, he spent his nights in City Hall Park— a time that inspired his novel The People of the Abyss.









Fountain by capnsponge, on Flickr

When the Croton Reser- voir finally brought a safe and reliable water supply to New York City in 1842, this fountain fed by the reservoir was opened here to mark the accomplishment.



The southern end of City Hall Park used to be occupied by the Mullett Post Office—named for architect Alfred Mullett. The 1878 Second Empire building was considered an eyesore and demolished in 1939; it looks a lot better to modern eyes, gracing the cover of one popular New York architectural guide.


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225 (corner): The Transportation Building, a 1927 York & Sawyer building where several major railroads used to have offices. This was also for a time the home of the Pace Institute (now Pace University).

Block: This block used to be spanned by the Park Hotel—better known as the Astor House Hotel— an ultra-fashionable hotel built in 1834 by John Jacob Astor. (Astor had previously lived on the site, in the house of Rufus King, one of New York's two original senators.) Its guests included Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, Davy Crockett, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Sam Houston, Jefferson Davis, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Jenny Lind. The psychologist William James was born in the hotel on January 11, 1842. Inventor Nicola Tesla lived there from 1889-92. The hotel was torn down in 1914.

217 (corner): Was the Franklin Society for Home Building and Savings, a savings & loan.

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Millennium Park

A pano of the clock on our one snowy day. by p0psharlow, on Flickr

A nicely landscaped traffic island.

















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St. Paul's Chapel

NYC - St. Paul's Chapel by wallyg, on Flickr

Depending on whether you count the starting date (1764) or the date of completion (1766), this may be the oldest building in Manhattan. (The Morris-Jumel Mansion in Harlem was built in 1765.) It was and is St. Paul's Chapel by joseph a, on Flickr a satellite of Trinity Church; it survived the 1776 fire that destroyed the first Trinity because its flat roof allowed rescuers to stand atop it and put out falling embers. The steeple was not added until 1796.

This was the church George Washington attended when New York was the new nation's capital; his pew here is marked, as is that of New York Gov. George Clinton. St. Paul's Chapel by jwowens, on Flickr Other notables who worshipped here are King William IV (as a prince), Lord Cornwallis, the Marquis de Lafayette, and presidents Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison and the elder George Bush. NYC - St. Paul's Chapel - Sycamore Tree by wallyg, on Flickr The church served as a sanctuary for rescue workers after the September 11 attacks; the stump of a sycamore tree that protected the church from debris is preserved as a memorial.

This was the southeastern corner of the Queen's Farm, a large tract of land donated by Queen Anne to Trinity Church in 1705.

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P1020125.JPG by JayeClaire, on Flickr

222 (block): From approxi- mately this corner to the northwest corner of Pearl and Maiden Lane was the farm of Anthony ''the Turk'' Jansen, whose wife, Grietse Reyniers, was New Amsterdam's first prostitute, arriving here in 1633.

Later, this corner was the site of the Spring Garden, New York's first pleasure garden, which opened ealy in the 18th Century and lasted until 1768.

By 1834, this was the site of Scudder's Museum, which featured elaborate dioramas, a mummy, scalps, John Hancock's signature, live boa constrictor feedings and a wax statue of Daddy Lambert, known as the fattest New Yorker ever.

In 1841, Scudder's became P.T. Barnum's enormously popular American Museum, where midget Tom Thumb and Siamese twins Chang and Eng performed. The famous sign marked ''This Way to the Egress'' tricked visitors into exiting. When the museum burned down on July 13, 1865, a Bengal tiger escaped and had to be killed on Broadway by a firefighter.

From 1866-96 here was the New York Herald Building, home of the racist, anti-Semitic newspaper founded by James Gordon Bennett. It introduced such features as the gossip column and Wall Street coverage, and was the paper that sent Henry Stanley to look for the missing Dr. David Livingstone.

From 1898-1958 the St. Paul Building was here, which one architecture critic called ''perhaps the least attractive design of all New York's skyscrapers.''

The current building served as the offices of Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen in the movie Wall Street.



216: Chemical Bank, a subsidiary of the New York Chemical Manufacturing Co., opened here in 1824.

Corner: Knox the Hatter, located here, got a court order to remove the bridge over Broadway at this intersection, fearing that he was losing business to rival Philip Genin on the opposite corner. Abraham Lincoln got a silk hat here on February 27, 1860.


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Loew's Bridge allowed pedestrians to cross this dangerous intersection in 1867, but was soon removed.

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205-207: At this address was Mathew Brady's National Gallery of Daguerrotypes, opened in 1844. Presidents James Polk, Martin Van Buren and Millard Fillmore all had their pictures taken here, along with other powerful politicians like Daniel Webster and Henry Clay.

Former AT&T Building

NYC - Financial District - American Telephone and Telegraph Building by wallyg, on Flickr

195 (block): Designed by William Wells Bosworth in 1913 as the headquarters for a company that was then as much or more Telegraph as Telephone. The building, patterned after the Septizodium in Rome, is said to have more classical columns than any building in the world, and more marble than any other New York building. 195 Broadway by niznoz, on Flickr

The bronze decorative elements are by Paul Manship.

Previously the site of Western Union's headquarters, which, as one of the city's tallest buildings, had a ball on the roof that was dropped every day at noon, upon a signal from the Naval Observatory in Washington. Ships in the harbor set their chronometers by it, and pedestrians their watches.

195 was Edgar Allan Poe's address in 1845.

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206: This was the address of Mrs. Poppleton's fashionable confectionary shop.

204: Caruso's Pizza & Pasta was in a two-story building from 1942, demolished 2007 along with most of the block, to make way for the Fulton Street Transit Terminal.

200: Original address of Daniel Appleton's publishing company, founded 1825. A one-story building was here from 1920 until 2007.

198: The 12-story Girard Building, c. 1902, demolished 2007. Grace Deli the last tenant.

196: OMG ("Oh My God") jeans was in a three-story building (1911-2008).

194: A branch of the Childs pancake chain was built here in 1911—torn down in 2007.







Corbin Building by epicharmus, on Flickr

192 (corner): Renaissance Jewelers is in the Corbin Building, an 1880s Queen Anne building with cast-iron bay windows—the sole survivor on this block. In 1864, at this address, Ebenezer and Ellen Butterick pioneered the marketing of paper patterns for making clothes.


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West:

189 (corner): A two-story building from 1940, demolished 2008, housed New York Stocking Exchange, Cookie Island, World of Golf.

175: Century 21 Shoes, part of the noted discount store, is in the Germania Building, an 1865 Italian Renaissance survivor.

Corner: Daikichi Sushi chain. The widow Jane Renwick, a friend of Washington Irving's, the inspiration for Robert Burns' ''Blue-Eyed Lassie'' and the grandmother of architect James Renwick Jr., lived at the corner of Cortlandt and Broadway.

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180: Cafe Nanu

176: Record Explosion is on the site of Howard's Hotel.

174 (corner): William Barthman Jeweler was founded at this location in 1884. Barthman (1840-1914), who came to New York as a 12-year-old orphan by working as a cabin boy, was later an officer in Grant's army.


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Liberty Plaza

73.ZuccottiPark.LibertyPlaza.LowerManhattan.NYC.05sep07 by ElvertBarnes, on Flickr

165 (block): A hulk built by U.S. Steel (1971-73), designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill to show off the client's product—the facade is mainly steel. in 1971 for U.S. Steel. Owned for a time by Merrill Lynch, it also serves as the headquarters of NASDAQ, and houses the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

Torn down for 1 Liberty Plaza was the Singer Tower, a 1908 building by Ernest Flagg that housed the sewing machine company's headquarters. Briefly the tallest building in the world at 47 stories, it became the tallest building ever demolished when it was torn down in 1968. The handsome Second Empire structure is considered one of New York City's great architectural losses, up there with Penn Station.

155: In 1848, the publisher G.P. Putnam had his offices here; his former partner John Wiley at No. 161. Together or separately, they published most of the major figures of early American literature, including James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville and William Cullen Bryant.

153: The first commercial showing of a motion picture projected onto a screen took place in a storefront here on May 20, 1895— a four-minute film of a boxing match.

149: Site of John Jacob Astor's home and offices, 1794-1803.

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160: Broadway Cafe

156-158: The Manhattan Life Insurance Co. moved here in 1865.



















150 (corner): Westinghouse Building is on the former site of Wallach's department store. Dr. Barry Goldman, who has an office here, saved my life.


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West:

Liberty Plaza Park

Liberty Plaza by  Flatbush Gardener, on Flickr

Once an uninviting "brutalist" vacancy that allowed 1 Liberty Plaza to justify its bulk—particularly after the September 11 attacks killed off all its trees—as of 2006, it's been reimagined and reclad in pink granite (and renamed Zuccotti Park).




04.JoieDeVivre.MarkDiSuvero.ZuccottiPark.NYC.05sep07 by ElvertBarnes, on Flickr A new sculpture has been added, the 70-foot high Joie de Vivre by Mark DiSuvero, whose bright red echoes the Noguchi across Broadway.

From September 17 until November 15, 2011, this was home to Occupy Wall Street, a protest encampment that put inequality back on the national agenda.

It's still home to the statue Double Check, by J. Seward Johnson, Briefcase guy at Zuccotti Park by bnittoli, on Flickr a lifelike bronze of a seated stockbroker that became a symbol of survival after the September 11 attacks. One thing that didn't survive was the sign here marking Temple Street, which was eliminated in the 1960s.

145: After consolidating with virtually all other telegraph companies in 1866, Western Union moved its headquarters from Rochester to this address, moving them up the street in 1875.

133: John Jay, the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, lived in a house at this former address in 1787 when he co-wrote the Federalist Papers.

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Marine Midland Building

Noguchi's Red Cube, far by Peter Kaminski, on Flickr

140 (block): This 1967 black-glass modernist skyscraper by Skidmore Owens & Merrill is considered to be more successful than their nearby Chase Manhattan Tower. (They also did Lever House and the Sears Tower, among many others.)

Marine Midland started out as the Marine Trust Company in 1850, a Buffalo-based company financing the Great Lakes grain trade. By 1929 it had become a bank holding company, eventually controlling dozens of local banks. In 1980 it was acquired by HSBC—the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.

An anti-Vietnam War bombing here on August 20, 1969 injured 20 people.




NYC - Financial District: Helmsley Plaza - Noguchi's Red Cube

The red, off-kilter cube with a hole through it is Isamu Noguchi's Cube, a 1968 sculpture that is supposed to evoke rolling dice and hence the concept of chance.


130: This was the second outlet of the Childs pancake chain. In 1898, the branch became a cafeteria, revolutionizing the restaurant business.


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West:

NYC: U.S. Realty Building by wallyg, on Flickr

115 (block): The U.S. Realty Building, like the Trinity Building across Thames Street, is a widely admired 1906 Gothic design by Francis H. Kimball; a catwalk connects the two.

This was earlier the site of the City Hotel, an early example of the modern hotel, built 1794. The most fashionable hotel of its day, a ball was held there on February 22, 1819, honoring Gen. Andrew Jackson. John Lansing Jr., a retired New York Supreme Court chief justice who represented the state at the Constitutional Convention, left the hotel on December 12, 1829 and was never seen again. In 1835, the hotel displayed "a grand moving panorama of the Moon," depicting lunar life as described in the New York Sun's Moon hoax. A dinner was held here for Charles Dickens on February 18, 1842, with Washington Irving as toastmaster. The hotel was torn down in 1850.

Before the hotel, the mansion of Etienne De Lancey stood here, built c. 1700, home to perhaps the richest family in colonial New York. It became the Province Arms Tavern (later known as the City Arms, Burns' Coffee House and the State Arms), where on October 31, 1765, the Sons of Liberty met to plan resistance to the Stamp Act. On May 5, 1789, George Washington's inaugural ball was held here, with John Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Hancock in attendance. Thomas Jefferson lived here in 1790 when he moved to New York as the first U.S. secretary of state.


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NYC: The Trinity Building by wallyg, on Flickr 111 (corner): Before the present Trinity Building was built in 1906, an 1852 building of the same name stood on the site. The five-story structure was an early prototype of the office building, and was designed by Trinity architect Richard Upjohn, who had his offices in it.

This was earlier the address of Elam Bliss' bookstore, which in 1831 published Edgar Allan Poe's third volume of poetry—prompting Poe's first visit to the city.

The current building is home to WOR Radio, as well as the offices of Rabinowitz, Boudin et al, a law firm that has defended Alger Hiss, Paul Robeson, Benjamin Spock, Daniel Ellsberg, Jimmy Hoffa, Castro, Khomeini, Khadafy, Noriega, the Church of Scientology, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Norman Mailer and Isaac Asimov.

Trinity Churchyard

trinity in the trinity church cemetery by striatic, on Flickr

A burial ground dating back to 1681, before Trinity was built, this cemetery was decreed off limits to blacks when the church took it over, resulting in the creation of the African Burial Ground. Among the most noted residents on the north side of the church are Declaration of Independence signer Francis Lewis, Treasury Secretary and NYU founder Albert Gallatin, steamboat pioneer Robert Fulton, William Bradford, publisher of New York's first newspaper (whose headstone has a typo), and seduction victim Charlotte Stanley, who inspired a wildly popular novel. (Her grave bears the name of her fictional counterpart, Charlotte Temple.) Trinity Church - Memorial for Unknown Revolutionary War Heroes by wallyg, on Flickr

Here also is the Martyr's Monument, dedicated to the patriots who died in British prisons during the Revolution. ''It is stated that this was erected by Trinity Corporation to prevent the city from cutting Pine Street through the graveyard, there being some law on the State's statute books to prevent the removal or injury of any public monument for purposes of highway improvement.'' — A Historical Tour of...Broadway NYC: Trinity Church and Burial Ground - John Watts by wallyg, on Flickr

There is a prominent statue here of John Watts, a relatively obscure politician—he was speaker of the New York State Assembly from 1791-93, and was later a U.S. congressmember and a Westchester County judge.



Trinity Church

Trinity Church by blhphotography, on Flickr

Established by a grant from England's King William III in 1697, after the Anglican church became the official church of New York, the church's first building lasted from 1698 until it burned down in 1776. It was replaced by 1790, but the new structure was unsound and had to be demolished in 1839. The current edifice was completed in 1846, an early Gothic revival building designed by Richard Upjohn. Trinity Church Door by riacale, on Flickr The bronze doors are a 1890s memorial to John Jacob Astor III and were designed by Richard Morris Hunt, with sculptural work on the central doors by Karl Bitter. The All Saints Chapel was added by 1913. lost by mudpig, on Flickr

A 1705 grant from Queen Anne gave Trinity all the land west of Broadway from Fulton to what is now Christopher Street; the church continues to be a major Manhattan landowner. It also was given the right to all shipwrecks and beached whales.

Trinity Churchyard Alexander Hamilton's America by Tony the Misfit, on Flickr

Buried on the south side of the church are Constitution framer Alexander Hamilton, diarist George Templeton Strong and War of 1812 hero Capt. James Lawrence (''Don't give up the ship!''), et al.


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Starting on July 10, 1924, Broadway had the world's first synchronized traffic signals, with operators in towers coordinating light changes from this intersection to 85th Street.

1 Wall Street and Empire Building by epicharmus, on Flickr

71 (corner): Empire Apartments were the Empire Building, built in 1895 by Francis Kimball and serving as the headquarters of U.S. Steel from 1901-76. An earlier building of the same name housed the office of financier IMG_0430 by monkico, on Flickr Russell Sage, who was almost killed by a suicide bomber on December 4, 1891; Sage threw his secretary at the dynamite-wielding assailant to protect himself. From 1809-46 this was the site of Grace Church, opened after a split in the Trinity congregation. In 1710 a Lutheran church was built here by German exiles from the Palatinate; it burned down in the fire of 1776.

65: This Beaux-Arts structure by Renwick Aspinwall and Tucker was the American Express Company Building, that company's headquarters from 1917 until 1975. Now the Standard & Poors Building.

61 (corner): The Adams Building, built in 1914, is featured in Berenice Abbott's photo Canyon. The most prominent boardinghouse of the 1830s, that of ''Aunt'' Margaret Mann, was at this address.

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Corner: This was the site of the National Hotel, where in 1826 a chess-playing automaton known as The Turk made its American debut. It turned out to have a dwarf hidden inside. The Equitable Building by plemeljr, on Flickr

120 (block): The Equitable Building, built in 1915 to replace an earlier Equitable Life headquarters that had burned down, managed to fit 1,200,000 feet of floor space on a one-acre lot—a density so great that zoning laws were changed in 1916 to require setbacks. During World War I, master spy Sidney Reilly—an inspiration for James Bond—had an office here, from which he sold arms to both Germany and Czarist Russia.

The old Equitable Building, erected in 1870, had the U.S. Weather Bureau's station on its roof. Equitable Building by Geff Rossi, on Flickr













110: At this defunct address was the Tremont Temperance House, a hotel.


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108: The Manhattan Life Insurance Co. was founded at this address in 1850.

104: The Chase National Bank was founded here in 1863 by 75-year-old banker and journalist John Thompson. Thompson named the bank in honor of the late Salmon P. Chase, who in addition to being Supreme Court chief justice was responsible for reorganizing the national banking system as Lincoln's treasury secretary (earning him a place on the $10,000 bill). NYC - American Surety Building by wallyg, on Flickr

100 (corner): The 1895 American Surety Building was designed by Bruce Price, a 21-story neo-classical structure that was greatly influential on early skyscraper design. (It led the trend of trying to make skyscrapers resemble classical columns.) This was the first New York City building with ''a complete steel frame supporting both the interior and the exterior masonry,'' and one of the first large buildings to be supported by cassions. It features classical sculptures by John Massey Rhind at the third story.

The building was expanded in 1920-22, and renovated in 1973-76 to serve as the Bank of Tokyo's U.S. headquarters. Detail of Entrance at 100 Broadway by chaostrophy, on Flickr Dean and Deluca has a cafe here, and there's a Borders bookstore.












































Corner (2 Wall): Banco Portugues do Atlantico


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Bank of New York

Irving Trust Co. (now Bank of New York) by Jim in Times Square, on Flickr

Block (1 Wall St):

This landmark was put up in 1929-32 for the Irving Trust Co., a company formed in 1851 and named for author Washington Irving simply because his was a prestigious name at the time. (Coincidentally, the building occupies the lot where Irving had his law office at 3 Wall Street.) Ralph Walker's blueprint is considered a masterpiece of Art Deco skyscraper design; the lobby in particular is praised. Bank of New York by mr.seymour, on Flickr

The Bank of New York acquired Irving Trust in 1988, and moved its headquarters here by 1998. BONY, New York's oldest bank, was founded in 1784 under the guidance of Alexander Hamilton, who was soon arranging loans from the bank to the new U.S. government as Washington's treasury secretary. The Bank's was the first corporate stock to be traded on the New York Stock Exchange in 1792. It helped finance the Erie Canal and the New York subway system. It merged with New York Life in 1922.

This building served as the Manhattan City Bank in Ghostbusters, which gave the heroes a loan to set up their paranormal small business.



64-68: This was the address of the Manhattan Life Building, the world's tallest building (at 348 feet) from 1894 until 1899, when it was surpassed by the Park Row Building. Demolished 1930.



















































At the southern end of this block was the North American Building (1907).


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One of America's first circuses, led by John Bill Ricketts, performed near this intersection in 1793.

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1 Exchange Plaza

55 (corner): A post-modern 1982 tower by Fox & Fowle. Built on the site of the orchard of Hendrick Van Dyck, whose murder of a Native American woman picking peaches here sparked the last major Indian attack on Manhattan, September 15, 1655, in which 50 settlers were killed. Later, as No. 57, it was the architectural offices of McKim, Mead and White, 1879-94.

Papoo's Italian Cuisine & Bar moved here from Greenwich Street after September 11.

45: Broadway Atrium was meant to be part of 1 Exchange Plaza, but the fast-food business in between refused to sell.

39: This building is on the site of first European habitation on Manhattan—"four small crude huts" where the crew of Capt. Adrieaen Block spent the winter of 1613-14 after their ship, the Tiger, caught fire in the bay. Later the site of the Alexander McComb Mansion, where President George Washington lived in 1790 until the capital moved from New York to Philadelphia. In 1821, the house became a hotel, Bunker's Mansion House, where former President John Quincy Adams stayed in 1844.

37: From this defunct address down to Morris Street was the Old Church Yard, the first recorded cemetery on Manhattan—it was "old" by 1649. The bodies were relocated shortly after 1676.

29 (corner): A 31-story, 1929 Art Deco skyscraper by Sloan & Robertson.


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Cunard Building

Cunard Line building: 25 Broadway by niznoz, on Flickr

25 (corner): A 1917 work by Benjamin Wistar Morris (with help from Carrere & Hastings) built for the owners of the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth, when these ships were the height of elegance in travel. During World War II, the Belgian businessman who supplied two-thirds of the uranium for the Manhattan Project, Edgar Sengier, had his office here. Since 1977, the building has housed the Bowling Green Post Office.

In 1846, this was the address of the Delmonico Hotel, opened by Lorenzo Delmonico of the famous restaurant family. Though considered a great success, Lorenzo shut it down in 1856, deciding that the city's social center was moving northward.

Bowling Green Building

9-11: A ''Hellenic Renaissance'' building raised in 1895 by Spencer Trask, the investor who bankrolled Edison, started General Electric, chaired the New York Times and founded the writers' colony Yaddo. This building housed the White Star Line offices, where anxious crowds gathered in 1912 for news of the company's Titanic.

5: At this defunct address was the house of Robert Livingston, a Revolution-era official who administered the presidential oath to George Washington; he later negotiated the Lousiana Purchase with Napoleon. When he lived here, his back garden extended to the Hudson.

3: Benedict Arnold lived at this former address after betraying the American Revolution.

International Merchant Marine Building

1 Broadway

1 (corner): Built in 1884 as the Washington Building, it was remodeled in 1921 for J.P. Morgan's shipping company, later U.S. Lines; note nautical motifs. Remodeled again in the 1980s, it now houses a Citibank branch. NYC - Bowling Green: Number One Broadway by wallyg, on Flickr

In 1760, a mansion was built on this site by Archibald Kennedy, a Royal Navy captain; this building served in 1776 as the headquarters of Gen. George Washington, and then as British headquarters after they occupied Manhattan. The plot to have Benedict Arnold hand over West Point to the British was hatched here.

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52 (corner): Chemical Bank. Replaced Exchange Court, a 12-story building from 1898. Since 2004, the headquarters of the United Federation of Teachers.

50: Site of 1888's Tower Building, believed to be the first building with a steel frame. (Its small plot made traditional load-bearing walls impossible.) People supposedly feared the narrow, unconventional building would topple in a strong wind, so architect Bradford Lee Gilbert made his office on the top floor. The building was torn down in 1914, but was hugely influential.

42: Goldome Bank, formerly The Bank for Savings.



















Old Standard Oil Building

26 Broadway by warsze, on Flickr

26 (corner): Starting in 1886, this was the headquarters of the Standard Oil Trust during the height of its power; John D. Rockefeller had his offices here, as did his partner Charles Pratt, founder of the Pratt Institute. When Standard Oil was broken up in 1911, this became the headquarters of Socony, later Mobil, which greatly expanded the building in the 1920s before moving to 42nd Street in 1956. (The expansion was begun by NYPL architects Carrere & Hastings, and the tower added by Shreve, Lamb & Blake.) Upton Sinclair organized pickets here in 1914 in protest of the Ludlow Massacre. Sports Museum of America by Joseph Hoetzl, on Flickr

The building used to house the the Museum of American Financial History, opened in 1988. Now it's home to the Sports Museum of America.

On this site on December 6, 1732, New York's first recorded play was performed. Alexander Hamilton and John Jay both lived at this address.

16: Washington Irving lived at this former address with his friend Henry Brevoort.


BEAVER ST         E ===>

The first elephant in North America (post-Ice Age, that is) was exhibited near this intersection on April 29, 1796.











4: Site of the house of Aaron Burr (1790-94), when the future vice president was involved with New York politics.




2 Broadway

2 Broadway, From New Street by Frankenstein, on Flickr

2 (corner): This building was designed in 1958 by Emery Roth & Sons, the WTC architects, and reskinned in 1999 by the modernists Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. It replaced George Post's 1882 Produce Exchange, a huge red Romanesque structure that ''was one of the city's greatest architectural losses'' (AIA Guide).


W <===     BATTERY PL/STONE ST     ===> E


S <===   STATE ST/WHITEHALL ST   ===> S

Charging Bull

Fearless Girl Reaction NYC - Bowling Green: Charging Bull by wallyg, on Flickr This popular statue was cast in bronze by Arturo Di Modica and left by the artist in front of the New York Stock Exchange on Broad Street in 1987 as an unasked-for Christmas gift to the city in the wake of a recent stock market crash. The city impounded the sculpture as a 7,000-pound act of vandalism, but public support for the artwork and the gesture compelled the parks department to reinstall it here.

From March 2017 until November 2018 the bull was counterbalanced by Fearless Girl, a statue intended to promote a stock fund that invested in gender-diverse corporations, but which was embraced by the public as a symbol of feminist populism. The statue was removed despite its popularity because its juxtaposition with the bull suggested the messages that maybe unbridled capitalism wasn't so great after all.

Bowling Green

Bowling Green Park by Shiny Things, on Flickr

This may or may not have been the site of the celebrated $24 purchase of Manhattan from the Canarsie Indians—who in any case got the better part of the deal, as the island was not actually theirs to sell. (They lived, as their name suggests, in what's now Brooklyn.) NYC: Bowling Green Fence by wallyg, on Flickr

By 1733 this spot had been dedicated to the ''Beauty & Ornament'' of Broadway and the ''Recreation & delight of the inhabitants''— recreation in those days often involving lawn bowling (ala Rip van Winkle).

In 1765 the colonial governor was burned in effigy here in protest of the Stamp Act. In 1770, a statue of George III was erected here to thank him for repealing that act— only to be torn down (and melted down into Revolutionary musket balls) on July 9, 1776, in celebration of the Declaration of Independence. The present fence dates from that era, and is still missing the decorative crowns that were snapped off by the anti-royalists.

National Museum of the American Indian

Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, Manhattan, New York

A branch of the Smithsonian, opened in 1994. The former Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customs House, designed by Cass Gilbert in 1907 and considered the finest Beaux Arts building in the city. Old Customs House by T.SC, on Flickr In front, four massive sculptures by Daniel Chester French represent Asia, America, Europe and Africa; above are statues symbolizing 12 great mercantile nations. Reopened as a museum of Native American culture in 1994. The building serves as the Ritz Gotham Hotel in the movie Batman Forever, as a haunted museum in Ghostbusters II, and as the Trask Company in Working Girl.

The building is on the site of Fort Amsterdam, the Dutch colonial fort first built in 1623. This was the scene of the city's frst recorded murder, on May 15, 1638, when Jan Gysbertsen killed Gerrit Jansen in a knife fight at the fort's gate. Renamed Fort George by the British, it caught fire in 1741, sparking a hysteria about a ''Negro Conspiracy'' that resulted in 18 blacks being hanged and 14 burned alive.

The complex was demolished in 1787, replaced in 1790 by Government House, which was intended as a presidential mansion but had to settle for the governor, the nation's capital having moved during construction.



What's missing on Broadway? Write to Jim Naureckas and tell him about it.

New York Songlines Home.

Sources for the Songlines.

NYSonglines' Facebook Fan Page.

An extensive 1911 history of Broadway, A Historical Tour of the Greatest Street in the World, is online.

Sampling Broadway is a multimedia site about the street.

A Walk Down Broadway, with photos of every block, by Vidiot.

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