Part two of this series will focus more on modern marvels that still polarize the city today. The nineteenth and early twentieth century was a period booming with construction and growth for New York. So let’s take a chronological dive into these buildings and landmarks that claim a great significance in the city’s evolution.
New York City Hall (City Hall Park, Manhattan)
New York’s City Hall is the oldest one in the United States that still performs its original government functions. Joseph Francois Mangin and John McComb Jr. designed and constructed the building with a French Renaissance inspiration for the exterior and an American-Georgian inspiration for the interior in 1812.
The area surrounding City Hall is known as the Civic Center and is primarily composed of government buildings and, more recently, upscale residential buildings. In 2008, City Hall began a facelift project, costing roughly $150 million and lasting over five years of construction.
In 1966, City Hall was deemed a landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. In 1993, the entire park, including City Hall, the African Burial Grounds and the Commons, was classified as a Historic District. There are reservation-based tours offered on weekdays for free, including non-reservation tours on Wednesdays at 12 PM.
New York City Hall Subway Station (City Hall Station, Manhattan)
The City Hall subway station, which opened with the first subway lines in 1904, has a polished look that still encapsulates the time period in which it was built. This station, which was underused due to ease of access issues, saw a relatively quick decline as other nearby stations had more convenient features without the disadvantages of the City Hall stop.
It was ultimately shut down in 1945 for these reasons, though its splendor can still be witnessed if you take the downtown-headed 6 train from the Brooklyn Bridge station, where it makes a turnaround at City Hall station. Be sure to lay low though, because this turnaround is after the subway’s last stop, and passengers are all supposed to leave by that point. Though if you are less of a daredevil, there are select dates to take a tour of the abandoned station, find out when here.
Trinity Church (75 Broadway, Lower Manhattan)
The Trinity Church that currently resides on Wall St is its third incarnation. The first church was burned down in the Great New York City Fire of 1776, and the second was demolished after severe snow and weather effects had compromised the building’s structural integrity between 1838 and 1839.
By the time the third Trinity Church had been built in 1846, there was a division in church-goers due to the expanding growth of the parish. This separate faction of parishioners founded the Grace Church on Broadway and 10th St, while the remainders attended the newly built Trinity Church.
The current version of the church was the tallest building in the United States from 1846 until 1869 when St. Michael’s Church in Chicago surpassed its height. It then remained New York’s tallest structure at 281 feet until 1883 when the Brooklyn Bridge’s stone towers took the mantle. It’s height and notable gothic spire marked the way for ships coming into New York Harbor.
Cleopatra’s Needle/Egyptian Obelisk (Central Park, Upper Manhattan)
Finding its third home in Central Park, the Egyptian Obelisk nicknamed Cleopatra’s Needle, is a 220-ton piece of granite that was initially erected in 1450 BC Egypt. It was built near the Nile River for a Pharaoh that wanted to immortalize his 30-year reign.
In 1880, during a time when Egypt was Turkish-ruled, the Egyptian Khedive wanted to modernize his country, therefore offering the obelisk to America for funds. The process of transporting this massive monument from the banks of the Hudson to its final resting place in Central Park took 112 days. It was finally turned upright in January 1881 and still stands as New York City’s oldest man-made object. You gotta peep this.
Brooklyn Bridge (Brooklyn)
After taking fourteen years to build, the Brooklyn Bridge was completed in 1883. It was the first steel-wire suspension bridge and serves as one of the oldest roadway bridges in the United States. Its civil engineering ingenuity has stood the test of time and serves as one of New York’s most beautiful landmarks.
While obviously a marvel of the modern world, the Brooklyn Bridge is also a testament to the human desire to connect. Originally titled the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, and the East River Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge received its final moniker in 1867 from a letter to the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and was officially redubbed by the city government in 1915.
One of the bridge’s anchorages is built on a piece of land that housed the Samuel Osgood Mansion until it was demolished in 1856. What is notable about this mansion is that during the time New York was the nation’s capital, George Washington, along with his family and staff, took up residence from April 1789 to February 1790.
Carnegie Hall (881 7th Ave, Manhattan)
Carnegie Hall is one of the most famous venues in the world. Built in 1891 by Andrew Carnegie, this building is the home to over 250 annual performances and has over 3,600 seats throughout it’s three auditoriums: the Main Hall, with 2,804 seats, Zankel Hall with 599 seats, and Weill Recital Hall with 268 seats.
Its construction was notable because of being the largest building in New York built entirely of masonry, with no steel frame. It stayed this way until the turn of the 20th century, when steel framework was conjoined to existing parts of the infrastructure to add studio flights to the building. Carnegie Hall stands as a testament to the arts as well as a marvelous piece of architectural ingenuity. With an exterior made up of narrow Roman bricks, it’s designs and flourishes are formed with terracotta and brownstone.
In 1986, Carnegie Hall was greatly renovated and faced criticism due to complaints of the acoustics being diminished. Those involved in renovations denied any changes to the sound quality, but after nine years of objection, they discovered a slab of concrete under the stage that did, in fact, alter the sound. The slab was removed and all was restored in the universe.
69th Regiment Armory (68 Lexington Ave, Manhattan)
The 69th Regiment Armory was built in 1906 and made to be the New York Army National Guard’s headquarters to present special events. It was the first armory built in New York City that didn’t resemble a medieval fortress but drew inspiration from the Beaux-Arts style. This location became the site of the 1913 Armory Show, where modern art was first publicly presented in the United States to a controversial reception.
Pieces from legendary artists such as Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, and Henri Matisse were displayed at this show. There were mixed reactions due to the new art forms such as cubism, post-impressionism, and fauvism, but it ultimately led to success and traveled to Boston and Chicago.
Since the Armory Show, it has housed many other events including roller derby games, Victoria’s Secret fashion shows, and the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art festivals. It was deemed a National Historic Landmark in 1965 and a New York City landmark in 1983.
Lightship Ambrose LV87 (South Street Seaport Museum, Lower Manhattan)
Built in 1908, the Lightship Ambrose (LV87) was a steamboat vessel that served her station until 1932, when it was reassigned closer to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. It was parked at the entry point of the Ambrose Channel, New York Harbor’s main shipping waterway, and it was the last steam-powered ship to mark the channel’s entrance.
This ship was renowned because it received the first radio beacon that assisted ships who entered through the heavy fog. Since it’s retirement at Ambrose Channel, it was used at various other stations, but kept the name of its original post. This ship is a registered national historic landmark that is now owned by the South Street Seaport Museum in Lower Manhattan, docked at Pier 16 on the East River.
American Stock Exchange Building (86 Trinity Place, Lower Manhattan)
In 1911, a group of curbstone brokers called the New York Curb Market traded on the literal curb of Broad Street near Exchange Place. Early brokers were buying and selling stocks from the sidewalks below the New York Stock Exchange. It wasn’t until 1921 that the ‘New York Curb Market’ moved into their own building off Greenwich Street in Lower Manhattan, at 86 Trinity Place.
In 1929, the group changed their name to the New York Curb Exchange proceeding a large upgrade to their headquarters. The Curb Exchange was redubbed the American Stock Exchange in 1953. Fast forward a half a century to 2008 when the Curb Exchange building was closed down, the American Stock Exchange’s trading floors were then moved into the New York Stock Exchange trading floor on Wall St.
Chrysler Building (405 Lexington Ave, Manhattan)
The Chrysler Building, which was built in 1930, is a testament to the ingenuity of 20th-century engineering. It was the tallest building in the United States for a short amount of time before being surpassed by the Empire State Building 11 months later in 1931. But what remains is one of the best and most iconic buildings in the city, and the third greatest building in the country ranked by architectural critics.
This structure represents an example of Art Deco architecture, focusing on luxury, exuberance and technological progression. During the Great Depression, this style took the back seat to a more streamlined modern art that focused on smooth, polished surfaces and less prestigious, regal architecture. It was a call to bring back simplistic art forms, while many rare and expensive materials were less attainable.
Over the years, the Chrysler Building has been featured in several movies, but never acted as the primary setting. It was jokingly referred to as the “Best Supporting Skyscraper” by architect and author James Sanders, who said it should win an award for never being a prominent set piece in films but appearing in so many. You can spot the building in The Wiz, Armageddon, Deep Impact, Independence Day, Spider-Man, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and Men In Black 3.
Robert F. Kennedy/Triborough Bridge (Bronx, Queens, Manhattan)
This bridge was proposed as a way to connect three major land masses of New York City to each other. Something this grand in scale was never conceived before and it ended up necessitating 31 million man-hours of work across twenty states to build this junction. The “Y-shaped sky highway” creates a connective force that is comparable to the subway system’s importance.
This prestigious bridge conjoins locations that would otherwise be gridlocked, creating parks and public spaces at anchorage points along the bridge’s reach. With a price tag of over $60 million in the 1930s, this bridge is worth the equivalent of over $1 billion in 2018.
Louis Armstrong House Museum (34-56 107th Street, Corona, Queens)
The godfather of jazz, Louis Armstrong, has a house in Queens where he lived from 1943 until his death in 1971. It is a now a museum, national historic landmark, and serves as a place that celebrates jazz music and its profound impact on New York through concerts and educational programs.
Armstrong was a legend that completely changed the way people performed, perfected the idea of improvisational solos, and brought scatting into the mainstream. He implemented swing-vibe and the aforementioned improv and scatting, to completely shake up the jazz world. Celebrate Louis in the place where he spent a majority of his days, by heading to Queens to get an inside look at his life.