What Columbus Circle looked like in the 1920s

The traffic around the circle seems chaotic, and the fountains that surround it now wouldn’t come for another 80 or so years.

The yellow Victorian-looking structure in the center is the Pabst Grand Circle Hotel, torn down and replaced by the much-maligned Lollipop Building. Redone in the 2000s, it now houses the Museum of Arts and Design.

I can’t figure out what the billboard on top of the white building says. United States something? Columbus Circle had big, bright billboards and signage for decades.

The pre-Lincoln Center Metropolitan Opera House

Before the Met relocated to the Upper West Side in the 1960s, its home base was this Romanesque beauty on 39th Street and Broadway.

Built in 1883, it enjoyed a decade or two in the center of the city’s theater district near the luxe mansions of the 40s and 50s, before the theaters moved northward and midtown in the 30s became the Garment District.

This postcard is stamped 1906—60 years before the Met lost a bid for landmark preservation. It was reduced to a pile of bricks in 1967.