In this postcard, stamped 1913, it looks like a cathedral. But it’s actually the flagship building at City College’s Hamilton Heights campus, built in 1906 at 138th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.
It’s a lovely campus in a beautiful neighborhood—one of the Manhattan’s hidden gems.
I don’t think the two Gothic-inspired gates flanking the drive exist anymore. But the terra cotta-topped structure with the two towers remain.
When the Hotel Martha Washington opened its respectable doors in Murray Hill in February 1903, it was the first women-only hotel in the city. And management took the women-only part seriously.
Not only were men prohibited in rooms, few could work there. Though the elevator operators, head waiter, and bell boys were male, the rest of the staff was female.
The place was a big hit. The wave of professional women moving to the city at the time—nurses, stenographers, teachers, doctors—thronged the waiting list for a $1.50 to $5 per day room.
Over the decades, as other women-only hotels opened, it remained a safe place for fresh-off-the-bus models, actresses, and students. 1920s actress Louise Brooks stayed there (she was asked to leave, according to this account). The hotel even scored a mention in Valley of the Dolls.
By the 1980s, the MR had become an SRO, home to long-term elderly tenants, shorter-term drug dealers, and, in 1998, men, according to the Village Voice.
On its 100th anniversary, this dowager of a hotel was rebranded Hotel Thirty Thirty and more recently Lola. I love the way copywriters put a 21st century spin on its single-gender past.
When the Williamsburg Bridge opened on December 19, 1903, Scientific American (by way of nycroads.com) had this to say about a structure critics conceded wasn’t nearly as breathtaking as its neighbor, the Brooklyn Bridge:
“Considered from the aesthetic standpoint, the (Williamsburg) Bridge is destined always to suffer by comparison with its neighbor, the (Brooklyn) Bridge,” the magazine wrote.
“It is possible that, were it not in existence, we would not hear so many strictures upon the manifest want of beauty in the later and larger (Williamsburg) Bridge, which is destined to be popular more on account of its size and usefulness than its graceful lines.
“As a matter of fact, the (Williamsburg) Bridge is an engineer’s bridge pure and simple. The eye may range from anchorage to anchorage, and from pier to finial of the tower without finding a single detail that suggests controlling motive, either in its design or fashioning other than bald utility.”
Amazing that a century-old penny postcard can capture the beauty and magic one still encounters on a stroll across this magnificent bridge.
Venice’s “Bridge of Sighs,” built in 1602, connected the city’s prisons to the interrogation rooms in the Doge’s Palace.
The name comes from a Byron poem suggesting that condemned prisoners walking back over the bridge would view Venice and then sigh before being locked up for years—or executed.
New York had its own Bridge of Sighs. It linked the criminal court building and the infamous Tombs prison bounded by Centre, Franklin, Elm (Lafayette), and Leonard Streets.
The inspiration for the name is the same. “The span was called ‘the Bridge of Sighs’ because condemned prisoners passed over it on the way to their deaths,” explains correctionhistory.org.
“The gallows were set up in the courtyard near the Bridge of Sighs and taken down immediately afterwards.
“Before the state began employing the electric chair at Ossining and Auburn prisons, the Tombs gallows had hanged some 50 convicted murderers.”
The postcard above shows the Bridge of Sighs connecting the criminal court building on the left with the new Tombs built in 1902 on the right.
Based on what correctionhistory.org says about gallows in the prison yard, plus the fact that the last hanging at the Tombs took place in the 19th century, there must have been a previous Bridge of Sighs connecting the first Tombs, constructed in 1838.
Perhaps this is it, in an illustration from the NYPL Digital Collection.
By day, the turn of the century waterfront must have looked industrial and gritty, the air choked with smoke.
But at night, as this vintage postcard shows, it’s another world. The city is enchanting—lit up by the glow of the moon and electric lights inside and outside buildings.
Early 20th century Brooklyn offered lots of ways to get around: elevated trains, trolley cars, and automobiles, as this postcard, stamped 1918, shows.
Is this another view of the same intersection circa 1925? It’s from the Brooklyn Historical Society’s wonderful blog.
“This image of a ragged fellow begging from a well-dressed woman in Washington Square . . . testifies to Washington Square’s split personality at the end of the 19th century,” writes Emily Kies Folpe in her terrific book, It Happened in Washington Square.
Folpe quotes an 1892 Century magazine article about the Square, which notes that one section was populated by homeless men and called “Tramp’s Retreat.”
This Harper‘s piece from 1900 identifies as on the southwest end.
While the northern, Fifth Avenue side of Washington Square was as elite and genteel as it was 50 years earlier, the southern side was now bordered by rooming houses . . . and filled with tramps.
“To the tramp, who is attracted hither in summer by the cool shade, the square serves several purposes. It serves him first in the capacity of a restaurant, where he may eat his luncheon unmolested,” states the Harper’s article.
Lastly it serves him as a lodging house, where he slumbers peacefully until the ‘sparrow cop’ comes around and awakens him.”
[Washington Square postcard from the NYPL Digital Collection]
Hard to believe that New York’s city hall building was already a century old at the time this vintage card was stamped with a postmark.
It’s also strange to think that when it was completed, New Yorkers thought City Hall was located too far north of the center of the city.
Construction was delayed for decades, thanks to some minor calamities like the Revolutionary War, labor disputes, and a yellow fever outbreak.
But for workers who stuck it out, the take-home pay was $1.50 a day.
There was just the plain-old Empire Building, an 1898 neoclassical office tower at 71 Broadway at Rector Street.
Impressive enough to warrant is own postcard, it held the distinction of being one of the city’s first steel-framed skyscrapers and was praised for its ornate beauty.
[One critic, however, did complain that it had a “grotesque resemblance to a waffle iron” according to this 1996 report by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.]
For 33 years, it was the only skyscraper with Empire in its name. Then in 1931 came the Empire State Building—82 stories taller and an instant icon.
The humbled Empire Building stuck it out until 1997, when it was converted to apartments.
Ephemeral New York 
