Is this the oldest photograph of New York?

It just might be, according to New York: An Illustrated History, by Ric Burns and James Sanders. Taken at Broadway between Franklin and Leonard Streets, it’s believed to date to May 1850.

Looks like workers have torn up the street. On the far left, at 360 Broadway, is a building advertising carriages, and a block down Broadway is an ad for “Moffat” on the side of a taller structure. 

Who was Moffat? John Moffat was a doctor whose “Moffat’s Life Pills and Phoenix Bitters” made him quite wealthy in the mid-19th century. He and his family lived on Union Square, but he also owned the building that bore his name, at 337 Broadway.

Turkey Day with the inmates at the Tombs

On December 1, 1903, The New York Times ran a long article covering how city orphanages, missions, hospitals, “Magdalen” asylums, and other charitable institutions celebrated the holiday. That almost always meant a big turkey dinner and religious speakers.

The Times also reported how Thanksgiving was celebrated in city jails—like the Tombs, the nickname given to a secession of jail complexes located downtown. The moniker stemmed from the original Tombs, built in 1838 on Centre Street, which looked like an Egyptian mausoleum. 

Here’s a couple of inmates—or guards?—hanging out in the interior of the Tombs in the late 19th century.

What the Times had to say about how the men there spent turkey day:

“There were 424 prisoners in the Tombs. They had 150 turkeys, chicken ad lib, 200 pounds of potatoes, 100 mince pies, and cranberries, nuts, and other goodies. Then they listened to addresses by the Rev. J.J. Munro and the Rev. W.W. Gilliss, respectively Presbyterian and Episcopal clergymen. Mr. Gilliss passed a cigar to each of the men prisoners.

“Such an array of prisoners were in the various Police Court prisons as to lead to the suspicion that many had gotten themselves locked up in order to be sure of a Thanksgiving dinner. None was disappointed.”

Winged chariots and lions on West 30th Street

Not too many Manhattan buildings feature terra cotta panels and friezes inspired by ancient Assyrian art.

Then there’s 130 West 30th Street. Constructed in 1927 as the SJM building (that’s for Solomon Manne, who made a fortune in the fur business), it was renamed in 2003 after going co-op in honor of its architect, Cass Gilbert.

Gilbert is the man behind many great early 20th century New York City landmarks, from the Woolworth Building downtown to the New York Life skyscraper near Madison Square Park.

The 20-story Cass Gilbert Building is no Garment District slouch. It has 45 luxury loft apartments, not to mention these triumphant, exotic panels above the entrance. Take a tour of the penthouse here.

The mysterious names on a midtown building

De Soto. Montcalm. Vespucci. La Salle. Marquette. The names of these men and others are inscribed above the second-floor windows of a building at 840 Eighth Avenue, a pretty typical early 20th century structure at 51st Street.

So who were these guys, and why are their names inscribed on the building?

They were Catholic explorers, missionaries, or war heros who helped settle and strengthen the New World. It makes sense that their names are here, considering that the building was put up in 1925 by the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic fraternal organization, as a hotel and clubhouse.

The Knights of Columbus didn’t have the building for long. It changed hands in 1933 and in the 1960s wound up as a YWCA. Today, it’s senior-citizen home . . . with some illustrious names giving it character.

A sumptuous 22-room mansion on the East River

The breathtaking house looks like it belongs in Newport, Rhode Island, or on Long Island’s North Shore.

Instead, here it is at the quiet junction of Evans and Little Streets in Brooklyn’s tiny Vinegar Hill neighborhood, on several bucolic, rolling acres along the East River.

So what’s it doing there? Called the Commandant’s Mansion, Matthew C. Perry House, or just “Quarters A,” it was built in 1806 to house Commanders of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, right up the East River. Perry and his family resided there in the 1840s.

It’s a pretty impressive house, particularly for a former working-class Brooklyn nabe: Federal-style, with three floors, fireplaces in every room, a White House-like oval room, plus a widow’s walk.

Sealed off from onlookers by a tall iron fence, it may be one of the most hidden homes in New York City. It was sold by the Navy after the Navy Yard was shut down in the 1960s and is now privately owned.

Madison Square Garden on the move

Ever wonder why it’s called Madison Square Garden—when it’s not near Madison Square? 

The current Garden, on 33rd Street, is the fourth incarnation of New York’s premier sports and entertainment arena.

The first, at right, opened in 1879. Occupying an old railroad depot at Madison Avenue and 26th Street, it became a successful, 10,000-seat venue that featured boxing, bike racing, and ice hockey.

A decade later it was torn down. Famed architect Stanford White designed the second MSG in 1890, below left. This beautiful, 8,000-seat Moorish structure sported cupolas, arches, and a 32-story tower that made it the second tallest building in the city. 

 Madison Square Garden II’s rooftop restaurant became a chic place for New York’s Gilded Age elite to socialize. It’s also where White was murdered in 1906.

He was shot point-blank by Harry Thaw, the jealous husband of a teenage showgirl the 40-ish White had been having an affair with.

By 1925, White’s palace met the wrecking ball, and the third MSG was completed at 50th Street and Eighth Avenue. This arena was home to the Rangers, Knicks, and lots of boxing matches.

Outdated by the late sixties, it was replaced in 1968 by the fourth and current Garden, built on the hallowed grounds of the original Penn Station.

Riverside Drive’s Hendrik Hudson apartments

From a publication called The World’s New York Apartment House Album comes this sketch and description of a beautiful turn-of-the-century residential building, the Hendrik Hudson.

Spanning the entire block between Riverside Drive and Broadway at 110th Street, the Hendrik Hudson must have been a striking sight when it was completed in 1907. The facade was modeled after an Italian villa and the roof made from Spanish tile, topped by two imposing towers.

As ambitious as the facade was, the 7- to 9-room apartments were also innovative, explains Andrew Alpern’s Luxury Apartment Houses of Manhattan:

“Walnut paneling, wood-beamed ceilings, mahogany doors with glass knobs, and the latest designs in porcelain bathroom fittings were all used to attract tenants,” writes Alpern. “Also offered was a billiard parlor, a cafe, a barber shop, and a ladies hairdressing salon—all for the exclusive use of the building’s occupants and guests. Rents ranged from $1500 t0 $3000 per year.”

As Morningside Heights became kind of sketchy in the post World War II years, so did the Hendrik Hudson; at some point, one of its towers disappeared. The building went co-op in 1970. It looks like an terrific place to live today.

Mysterious building names on Ninth Avenue

Most city tenements are marked at the top by a name, presumably of the builder, and the year the structure was completed. 

But at 744 Ninth Avenue, off 50th Street, the tenement is named “9th. Ave. Flat.” It seems to be a pretty fanciful moniker for a typical red-brick tenement building; “French flats” at the time were usually higher-end apartments for middle-class New Yorkers. 

Perhaps the builder had amenities inside—private baths?—that put it a notch above the usual late 19th century tenement apartment.

Also on Ninth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen is another strangely named tenement building. I wonder what “Foresters Home” was—just a tenement put up by a man named Forester? Or maybe some kind of charity residence that housed orphans or the indigent. 

Only two 8s remains from the two inscriptions announcing the date it was built: 1880.

Brownstoner’s Montrose Morris has more on the French Flats building boom. 

The faces on the Flatiron Building

The Flatiron Building is so striking and unusual, it’s easy to get caught up gazing at the overall shape and design and not notice that near the top of its 22 floors are some rather unfriendly faces.

These grotesques, like this one below, have been staring pedestrians down since 1902, when the Flatiron Building—originally called the Fuller Building—opened. It was New York’s first skyscraper and its tallest for years.

Though not an immediate architectural hit, its cultural impact was established fast. Artists photographed and painted the building, and writers referenced its beauty.

In 1906, H.G. Wells wrote: “I found myself agape, admiring a skyscraper—the prow of the Flatiron Building, to be particular, ploughing up through the traffic of Broadway and Fifth Avenue in the late-afternoon light.”

Fun fact: The term “flatiron” was used before the building was ever conceived; it’s what locals called the iron-shaped triangular plot at Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and 22nd, and 23rd Streets upon which the building was eventually constructed.

Why are tenements mainly named after girls?

Or maybe the question should be why unremarkable five- and six-story apartment buildings have names at all. Sometimes you see one with a male name, but mainly they’re named after women.

I guess it was a way for the builders to honor their wives, mothers, and daughters. I wonder who Henrietta was, and why her name graces this tenement on Madison Street:

The Bertha, with this lovely flower motif, is in Harlem:

Here’s more on the women who gave their names to New York City buildings.