The death last month of eight-term U.S. Rep. Richard Lawrence Ottinger (D-Westchester) brings to mind the remarkable career of his father, Lawrence (1884-1954), an important player in plywood history.
Lawrence was the youngest of four sons of Moses Ottinger, a real estate developer who as a child emigrated from the German kingdom of Wurttemberg in the mid-nineteenth century and became known for developing properties along Columbus Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
The three older boys were Albert, New York State attorney general from 1925 to 1928 and Franklin D. Roosevelt’ s opponent in the 1928 governor’s race; Nathan, who served as a state Supreme Court Justice; and Leon, who continued in the family real estate business.
To the tune of $100,000, Moses backed his youngest son Lawrence in various ill-fated business ventures over a number of years, according to a 1950 Time magazine profile. Among them: the early-twentieth century purchase of a large grove of gum trees near Corbin, Louisiana, about 20 miles east of Baton Rouge.
The gambit, according to a 1945 profile of “The Plywood Baron” in the New Yorker: “a method of coloring living trees so that third-rate timber would take on the complexion of mahogany, maple, rosewood, oak, or satinwood, as desired.
A shot of about twenty gallons of dye was injected into the tree with a kind of gigantic hypodermic needle. Within twenty-four hours the chemical diffused itself throughout the wood and even the leaves began to take on the color of the dye.”
But Lawrence couldn’t give the dyed gum wood away. Then nature struck lucky: after a hurricane blew down thousands of nearby oak trees, young Ottinger took possession by agreeing to haul them away, and found himself in the lumber business.
Self-educated in timber, mixed success, or lack thereof, followed for Lawrence – including when a venture exporting parquet flooring to Europe was submarined by the outbreak of World War I.
On the day he closed up shop, the legend goes, the 30-year-old ran into a friend who suggested he apply to become a lumber inspector for the War Department. “One hundred samples of wood were shown to him, and he correctly identified every one of them,” according to the New Yorker profile.
Much like the advice on “plastics” given to Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate, the word Lawrence Ottinger had to learn was “plywood.” He got the job and was assigned to a mill in Newport, Vermont, as an inspector of plywood.
“Ottinger could hardly spell the word,” the New Yorker wrote. “Reporting to the Vermont mill owner, he said, ‘I’m the plywood inspector. I’m usual in that I don’t know what I’m supposed to inspect, but I’m unusual in that I’m willing to admit it.’ ”
Plywood is a composite material manufactured from thin layers – or “plies” – of wood veneer stacked and glued together. It had a reputation for warping and splitting, and its prewar uses had been limited to things like chair bottoms and automobile floorboards.
But its lightness made it a good fit for early warplanes, and after a senior War Department inspector visited the Vermont plant, he was so impressed by Ottinger’s savvy command of numbers that he put him in charge of all U.S. aircraft plywood inspection and production.
At war’s end, Ottinger saw a big future in plywood. Switching financial backers, he borrowed $500 from his mother, not his father, and formed the United States Plywood Corporation.
Starting as a jobber, or wholesaler, he devised and heavily advertised new uses for plywood. During the 1921 recession, he bought vast quantities of the material, selling it for a profit as the economy improved.
But continuing as a middleman would only take him so far. As the Great Depression deepened, in 1932 a group of Seattle bankers asked Ottinger to take over a large plywood mill that faced bankruptcy. Perhaps expecting rejection, he demanded 50% of all profits; any losses would be borne by the bankers.
They agreed, and he was now in the manufacturing business. The mill became profitable, and Ottinger soon bought other mills, as well as large tracts of timber. Also in 1932, Ottinger moved his young family, including his three-year-old son Dick, the future congressman, to the leafy Westchester bedroom community of Scarsdale.
Lawrence Ottinger became a leading citizen of the village, serving as a director of the Scarsdale National Bank, a board member of Camp Rainbow serving underprivileged New York City children, and an honorary governor of nearby White Plains Hospital. He also donated 1.5 acres of land to the Fox Meadow Elementary School to expand its playground, and 2.5 acres for a nature park.
U.S. Plywood continued to thrive. Another World War (P.T. boats were made of plywood, for example) and postwar building boom followed, and by 1950, U.S. Plywood was projecting $100 million in annual sales and $9 million in profits, in a much-enlarged industry producing 2.8 billion board feet annually.
In September 1953, “L.O.” stepped back to become chairman of the 34-year-old company he founded, handing its presidency to S.W. Antoville, who had joined the fledgling concern as a salesman three decades earlier fresh from DeWitt Clinton High School.
Just over a year later, on Dec. 19, 1954, Lawrence Ottinger died at 70 of a heart attack in his sleep at home in Scarsdale.
U.S. Plywood continued as a major industrial concern under Antoville, eventually merging in 1967 with Champion Papers to form U.S. Plywood–Champion Papers, Inc., a diversified forest products company in building materials, paper, and packaging materials with annual sales exceeding $1 billion.
Later renamed Champion International Corp., the company was acquired by rival International Paper in 2000. As is the way of the corporate world, IP in turn sold its wood products division in 2007 to Canada’s West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd.
Dick Ottinger’s successes in politics and environmental law were in a way a reaction to his father’s hard-driving example. A 1970 New York Times profile of Dick as he undertook a run for U.S. Senate described L.O. as a larger-than-life, driven parent – the person “who most profoundly influenced” his son, with a friend saying, “Dick once told me that when he was a kidhis father used to throw snowballs at him to teach him not to flinch.”
L.O. apparently wanted his only son to follow him into the plywood business. But Dick was still in the Air Force when Lawrence died, not knowing that his son had decided against a plywood patrimony. Said a friend, Dick “figured that he could never get out of his father’s shadow that way.”
But Dick Ottinger in 1970 affirmed that he missed the Plywood Baron. “He was a wonderful guy. I wish he were with me now.”
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Is it still there? It is next to The Chelsea Hotel
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Illustrations, from above: Testing the strength of plywood for promotional purposes; plywood manufacturing, ca. 1960; and part of a full-scale house, built at the 1937 Madison Home Show to demonstrate the US Forest Product Laboratory’s plywood prefabrication system (courtesy of USDA Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory).
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
This selection of photos by photographer Harold Roth was taken in New York City between 1937 – 1950. Using his Graflex camera, Roth documented the city during the 1940s, capturing the everyday life around him and the transforming landscape. Today these captivating photos take us back to 1940s New York City.
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Behind the Curtain Wall w/ NYC Architect Richard Roth Jr.: 345 Park Ave
Uncover the challenges of designing a building large enough to have its own zip code
Untapped New York
Tuesday, March 10, 2026
ISSUE #1642
Every month, Untapped New York will release a new essay from Jo Holmes about the life and work of the late architect Richard Roth, Jr. of Emery Roth & Sons. Each essay explores a different building or developer from Richard’s career, intertwined with stories of his personal life and snippets of exclusive interviews conducted by Holmes and Untapped New York’s Justin Rivers (which can be viewed in our on-demand video archive). Check out the whole series here!
A Blockbuster on Park Avenue
Taking up an entire block, 345 Park Avenue is large enough to have its own zip code. The building’s site is bordered by Park and Lexington Avenues and 51st and 52nd Streets. Richard Roth Jr. designed the blockbuster building, which was completed in 1969, for one of New York’s most prolific real estate dynasties, the Rudins.
Richard saw this project as a significant challenge, and perhaps something of a poisoned chalice, not just because of the size of the site but also because of the location. It sits between two of the city’s most distinctive—but contrasting—structures: Mies Van der Rohe’s International Style Seagram Building, and the Byzantine Revival St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church (St. Bart’s).
This was an era when Emery Roth & Sons’ designs were in great demand—in fact, the term ‘Rothscraper’ was coined to describe the many tall office buildings the firm worked on. While the style may have changed from Emery’s day, the firm’s ‘modus operandi’ stayed the same for nearly 100 years of its existence. Its structure and processes were a little different from rival architectural firms, andRichard believed those differences often gave the firm an edge.
A Tricky Project
In the late 1960s, developer Rudin Management acquired the Park Avenue site of the Ambassador’s Hotel (demolished in 1966) and the surrounding parcels of land. They commissioned Richard to design the largest office building permissible at the site.
The Seagram Building, 345 Park Ave, and St. Bart’s
The site had two high-profile neighbors that couldn’t be more different from each other. To the north is the Seagram Building, completed in 1958. Designed by starchitects of the day, Mies Van Der Rohe and Philip Johnson, the 157-meter skyscraper won many awards and made history with its use of materials and structure.
To the south is the Episcopal church of St. Bart’s, built between 1916 and 1917. “St. Bart’s is a copy of a much, much older building in the south of France, outside of Avignon. I visited it some years later because I wanted to see it. And it had the same façade. There it sat in this little town. And St. Bart’s is a beautiful building,” Richard observed. He was anxious to make sure his new building wouldn’t cramp the style of either landmark.
“I said to the Rudins, you know this is a site that deserves something that is not going to look like an elephant between two magnificent buildings. And to tell you the truth, it’s the roughest design problem I’ve ever had,” Richard admitted.
St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church (St. Bart’s)
To an extent, Richard and the Rudins were on the same page. “They wanted a building ‘as of right.’” In other words, the plans should comply strictly with all zoning rules and not need special permits or ‘variances.’ “They didn’t want to build a building that would mean going to the Planning Commission, Landmarks, and local Community Boards. They wanted to stay as far away from that as possible. I agreed because I knew it would get negative. No matter what I did there, it would have gotten a negative response,” Richard explained.
But there were also disagreements, some of which Richard won, others he lost. “The color kind of got me, and I said we don’t want to put another black building on Park Avenue. I said the building should be light in color, which will make it disappear a little bit more. Though it’s difficult to make a 50-story building disappear…” The Rudins agreed to a taller version of an existing design Richard had done for the New Britain Bank & Trust. (That building was seven stories high. This one ended up 193 meters tall with 44 floors.)
“It’s a background color that doesn’t hit you in the face. It’s different from the church, and it should be, because it could overwhelm the church if it was the same. It’s lighter and therefore kind of blends in and is less noticeable—and I had done enough black buildings!” Richard said.
A Dubious Decision
Richard wanted to try and ‘co-ordinate’ with the Seagram Building but lost that battle. “I said the lobby should be the same height as the Seagram’s lobby. I said you got a huge building here, and what you’re asking me to do is a 15-foot lobby.”
Richard was arguing for a double-height lobby. “It would relate to the Seagram’s building very well, but Jack Rudin absolutely put his foot down and said no.” To Richard, that made no sense, as having a two-story lobby wouldn’t lose them rentable space—they could simply add another floor. “That lobby is much too low for the size of the building.”
This was a project where Richard took the lead on the design. That was always his favorite part of the job. But he would say that some of the firm’s biggest projects and most notable buildings were where they were ‘associate architects.’ Emery Roth & Sons had a reputation for bringing things in on, or under, budget and on time, or early. So that side of the business was attractive to clients.
An Alternative Approach
Richard explained that many architecture firms were organised into teams that were comprised of people with a range of skills and expertise usually required on a building project. Those teams would be dedicated to specific projects. “Other offices did teamwork—and they’d form a team of all these people, and the team would carry the project from start to finish with the partner in charge,” explained Richard.
Emery Roth & Sons had a different approach. They had various distinct departments, including design, design development, production, and construction. Each department was usually involved in every project. (They would use external structural and mechanical engineering firms.) Among other benefits, Richard felt this allowed them to work well when other firms were collaborating on a project. “This way of doing a job allowed us to be the construction document architect for a design architect…we would just slide them in and ‘eliminate’ the design development part of our office. They’d know nothing about the project. It also worked the other way – where we were the design architect, and we would produce the drawings in the design and design development departments, and it would never get to our production department.”
For example, when Walter Gropius took on the Pan Am Building, his firm slotted in as the design department. And Minoru Yamasaki led the design for the World Trade Center, while Emery Roth & Sons were appointed ‘associate architects,’ picking up the design and taking it through to construction.
MetLife (formerly PanAm) Building above Grand Central Terminal
When Richard was interviewed by architectural historian Annice Alt in 2018, he explained how the firm was asked to do the construction documents for the World Trade Center because they’d done more office buildings in New York than any other architects. What’s more, the firm had recently completed the very complex and complicated Pan Am Building.
“It started with Yamasaki designing a series of buildings…probably 100 different designs, as it was a huge site. The team from New York—my uncle, my father, Irving Gershon, who was Head of Design, and myself, who was Director of Architecture—went out to Detroit to look at the models. After a couple of hours of looking, talking, and discussing, it was very obvious that the twin tower scheme was the best scheme…The minute the design was approved by the Port Authority, it transferred to our office, where we probably had at one time almost 100 people working on the project.”
A Mysterious Miscalculation Emery Roth & Sons were associate architects on another significant Manhattan skyscraper, the Citicorp Center (now the Citigroup Center). With a distinctive sloping roof, it is 915 feet tall and has 1.3 million square feet of office space across 59 floors, at 601 Lexington Avenue. Renowned Harvard-trained architect Hugh Stubbins designed the building (which now has a food court on the ground floor called ‘The Hugh’). The building is notable, not just for its striking appearance, but also because of drama that unfolded behind the scenes as it was nearing completion.
“The structural engineer, Bill Le Messurier, came to see me in distress as he’d come to realize the building might collapse if there were winds of a certain speed hitting the corners,” said Richard. It transpired later that two architecture students, unbeknownst to each other, had been studying the plans and queried some calculations. One of them had contacted Le Messurier. To remedy the situation, extra cross-bracing was installed and a mass damper was constructed at the top of the building. “It was one of those rare things where an engineer made mistakes that nobody ever thought of…” Richard said. The story came to light in an article in The New Yorker in 1995, and historian Michael M. Greenberg explores the controversy in his 2025 book, ‘The Great Miscalculation.’
Citicorp Center
Despite the problems involved, Richard looked back fondly at the building. “I think the Citicorp building is a marvellous building. Stubbins did a superb job. It was the first building that used double-decker elevators in order to make the core smaller so that we would have more rentable space. I also thought the design of the shopping area was terrific. It was a very pleasant place to be, and we spent a lot of time there because it was very close to our office.”
As Richard explained, there were other projects where they only did the design. “For example, we did two buildings in Detroit, where we were the design architects. One was the Detroit Edison building…and the other was the Detroit Bank & Trust Building…I designed both buildings.” (Both these buildings have been renamed: DTE Plaza and 211 West Fort Street, respectively.)
A Satisfactory Outcome
Now almost 60 years old, Richard’s design of 345 Park Avenue stands the test of time. To this day, Rudin Management has offices there. Richard enjoyed going to free outdoor jazz concerts offered in the plaza during the summer at lunchtime. He did have reservations about the building. “I would have rather had a smaller building,” he explained. But in trying to complement the buildings on either side while giving the clients what they wanted, he wasn’t unhappy with the result. “With the restrictions that were put on me, I don’t think I could have created anything better.”
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Warmer weather is time and stop by the RIHS VIsitor Cener for a new cap. $20- each
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All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
In 1878, as the East Side blocks branching away from the new Central Park were being developed, Edward Kilpatrick set to work on four brownstone-clad houses at Nos. 8, 10, 12 and 16 East 64th Street. He commissioned brothers John and David Jardine to design the residences—two architects who were busy creating rows of such houses in the area for speculative developers.
Four stories tall over a English basements, the dwellings were completed in 1879. They were typical of D. & J. Jardine’s work with high stone stoops, regimented openings, and commodious interiors.
By the early years of the 1890s No. 16 East 64th Street was home to lawyer Austin Abbott and his wife. The pair were interested in the conditions of Native Americans. The 1894 Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners noted that they were members of the Mohonk Conference; a group organized to work “for Indian Reform.”
Within four years the No. 16 was home to German-born author Carl Schurz. Highly involved in American politics, Schurz’s first speech delivered in English was during the 1858 Douglas-Lincoln race for the United States Senate. On January 29, 1898 a reporter from The New York Times described Schurz’s home on East 64th:
“A visitor to Mr. Schurz’s literary workshop, at 16 East Sixty-fourth Street, finds nothing there that suggests Germany—except the distinctively German face of its master artisan and the Teutonic form of the dachshund that is always curled in a ball on the lounge within easy reach of caresses and kind words.” The journalist noted that the library shelves were laden with books in a variety of languages; and said that the entrance hall “is a veritable portrait gallery of immortals. No one enters this select company without having done something for the world. Warriors, statesmen, musicians, artists, and authors are al represented, but a certain spirit of selection, you can see at once, has directed the formation of the gallery. Men of thought rule here and not ‘men of destiny’ or of empire.”
Schurz’s impressive career included positions of Secretary of the Interior, Missouri Senator, and US Ambassador to Spain — photograph Library of Congress
The portrait gallery continued up the stairs into the sitting room, two flights up. Paintings of Voltaire, Napoleon, and Frederick the Great shared wall space with Abraham Lincoln. Like all upscale late Victorian homes, Schurz’s rooms were crowded with bric-a-brac and mementos. “There is also the inevitable collection of curiosities, knives and swords from the Malay Archipelago and articles of virtu picked up in all parts of the world. Among the more precious things of the collection are the cuff buttons work by John Quincy Adams when he fell in the Senate Chamber in 1848.”
Of course No. 16 was occupied only during the winter season. Like all wealthy New Yorkers, Schurz closed the house during the warm months to escape to his summer place. His was in Lake George, New York.
The author sold No. 16 in 1900 to William R. H. Martin, the head on one of Manhattan’s most recognized men’s shops, Rogers, Peet & Co. The haberdasher paid about $65,000 for the house—about $1.86 million in today’s dollars.
Martin and his family would stay in the Victorian house for just two years. When Stephen Pell purchased it in March 1902, he had plans for the building that did not include his own occupancy. Pell was one of the directors of the Real Estate Security Co. and he recognized that the location of the property was more valuable than the out-of-date house. To maximize his investment, he needed to make the house marketable to the wealthy home buyers filling the neighborhood.
Pell commissioned architect S. E. Gage to update the structure. The two-year make-over included removing the brownstone façade and redoing the interiors. The result was an up-to-date Edwardian home in the recently-popular neo-Federal style. The red brick was laid in Flemish bond and the headers burned to resemble aging. Gage moved the entrance to sidewalk level, while keeping the basement service entrance below ground. A handsome columned portico served as a balcony to the second floor, where two sets of tall French windows were framed in limestone. The third floor was a near-wall of small-paned openings, separated by engaged Doric columns and united by a stone entablature. The Federal motif was emphasized at the fourth floor with dramatic splayed lintels; and the high mansard roof was accented by three hooded dormers and three copper oculi.
The house as it appeared in 1913 — The Sun, March 23, 1913 (copyright expired) On March 30, 1905 The New York Times reported that Stephen H. P. Pell had sold the renovated house to Dudley Olcott, Jr. Olcott was a banker with the Central Trust Company of New York, and was recently married to Sarah C. Levick. The couple had been living at No. 171 West 71st Street and shortly after purchasing the house, The New York Times added that they “spend their Summers at Normandie Park, Morristown, N. J.” Among the items to be brought into the 64th Street house would be the newly-completed portrait of Mrs. Olcott by Maurice Fromkes.
Wealthy and modern-thinking, Olcott was an early automobile enthusiast. In 1911 he would be selected for the position of Treasurer of the Automobile Club of America. A year earlier, he discovered first-hand the potential dangers of the expensive pursuit.
On November 6, 1910 attorney John Ellis Roosevelt, cousin for the former President, was one of a group of Metropolitan Club members enjoying a three-day excursion in the country. In his big car were seven other “prominent New Yorkers” and a second chauffeur. Dudley Olcott, Jr. was among Roosevelt’s guests. “It was their purpose to make a leisurely pace and enjoy the beauties of the Autumn landscape,” explained The New York Times.
At one point Roosevelt decided to take the wheel and his chauffeur, Alexander Ehbel, moved to the front passenger seat. Passengers later said there was no speeding that Roosevelt was “going at not more than an ordinary country-road pace.” But at a bend in the road, the wheels on the passenger side slipped off the road into soft ground and skidded. The strain broke the axle and the car “turned turtle” as described by the newspaper.
Roosevelt’s chauffeur was instantly killed and several of the passengers were injured. Olcott escaped without serious injuries.
Three years later, in January 1913 Olcott sold the house to the Buek Construction Co. The Real Estate Record and Guide noted that Olcott’s asking price was $150,000 and “one of the features of this house is a large laundry on the roof.”
A month later the firm advertised No. 16 for sale, calling it a “beautiful, five story, American basement private dwelling.” The operators had apparently hoped for a quick turn-around, for a few weeks later, on Sunday, March 23, a different advertisement appeared in The Sun along with a photograph. The caption read “Above house for sale–$30,000 cash will purchase.”
No. 16 became home to Dr. George Emerson Brewer. Among the most esteemed surgeons in New York, he was Professor of Surgery in Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons; the Surgical Director at Presbyterian Hospital; and Consulting Surgeon to no fewer than six other hospitals and institutes.
Brewer’s high standing among the medical community was evidenced on the morning of November 15, 1915 when Mayor John Purroy Mitchel was stricken with appendicitis at his Riverside Drive home. After making a preliminary diagnosis, the mayor’s physician summoned Dr. Brewer. “They decided that an operation was necessary,” reported the New-York Tribune the following day.
Brewer, who made time also to hold the rank of Colonel in the Medical Section of the US Army Reserve Corps, stayed on in the 64th Street house until 1921. On January 25 that year the New-York Tribune ran a headline reading “Dr. G. E. Brewer Sells House in East 64th Street. Parts with Costly Dwelling Between 5th and Madison Aves.”
At the time architect Frederick Junius Sterner had made a name for himself in New York by transforming outdated brownstone rowhouses into unrecognizable neo-Tudor, Mediterranean or Gothic fantasies. It was Sterner who now bought Brewer’s house for what the Tribune said was about $130,000.
Although the house was still perfectly in fashion; Sterner did what he was best known for: renovate. He replaced the second floor French windows with four grouped, small paned openings. The two in the center formed a fanlight within their rectangu frames. The portico and balcony were removed and two columns, surmounted by lion figures, acted as an entrance. Above it all, the dormers were replaced with a single, broad studio dormer, nearly the width of the structure, that flooded the interior in light.
Sterner replaced the second floor windows and removed the portico. A single long dormer replaced the original three. from the collection of the New York Public Library.
Inside Sterner rearranged Gage’s first and second story floor plans, and installed new stairs. The completed renovation resulted in a 22-room house with six baths and an elevator. When Sterner offered it for sale in October 1922, the New-York Tribune deemed it a “fine house.”
Apparently Richard Delafield agreed. The 69-year old banker purchased the house for $110,000. He had just been elevated to the position of Chairman of the Board of the National Park Bank of New York. In reporting the sale the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide noted “Mr. Delafield, whose country home is at Tuxedo, will occupy the residence.”
Richard Delafield two months after the purchase of No. 16 — The Banker’s Magazine, December 1922 (copyright expired)
Following Delafield, in 1925, Richard Croker, Jr. moved in. Croker was the son of the notorious Tammany Hall leader who garnered millions; much of it through bribe money received from proprietors of saloons, brothels and gambling dens. Upon his death in 1922, the senior Croker left his second wife his entire estate, totalling upwards of $5 million. His children, including Richard Jr., received nothing.
Richard Croker, Jr. would stay in the house until 1934, during which time he was indicted for failing to pay $7,612 in 1925 New York State income taxes. He sold it to Miguel J. Ossorio who had made his fortune in the Philippine and Puerto Rican sugar industry.
Like almost all of the owners of the mansion, Don Miguel Ossorio would not stay long. When he sold the house six years later, The New York Times reported on July 23, 1941 that “the building has an electric elevator and many modern improvements, but the purchaser prior to making the place his town house, will make extensive alterations.” The newspaper made note of the elite neighborhood. “The homes of Mrs. J. Sargent Cram, Roy Howard, Mrs. Orme Wilson Jr. and Adolph Pavenstedt are near by.”
Although the alterations preserved the structure as a single family house; that status would last only eleven more years. In 1952 the Smith College Club of New York commissioned architects Rosario Candela and Paul Resnick to convert the interiors as a social club. The renovations, completed in December 1953, provided for a lounge and private dining room on both the first and second floors; a bedroom, card room and library on the third; three bedrooms on the fourth floor and offices on the fifth.
But it was not the Smith College Club which would occupy the new clubhouse. In 1952 a letter went out to the members of the St. Anthony Club of New York which said, in part, “After considering 50 locations, a building at 16 East 64th Street has been found which meets ALL [the] requirements.”
The social club of the Delta Psi fraternity founded at Columbia University, it had moved several times in its more than 100 year existence. The 16 East 64th Street Corporation was organized to purchase the $88,000 property, which in turn leased it to the St. Anthony Club.
The St. Anthony barroom was decidedly mid-century in decor. photograph from “St. Anthony Club” brochure, courtesy Tad Tharp
With remarkable sensitivity, Candela and Resnick had preserved much of the interior detailing. Even stained glass panels–the antithesis of 1950s design–survived. Nevertheless, some areas like the barroom, were quintessentially mid-century. A 1960s St. Anthony Club member brochure noted “It’s a comfortable bar–casual and masculine in appearance, but often pleasantly sprinkled with ladies in the evening.” Other areas retained their early 20th century details. photos courtesy Tad Tharp
The St. Anthony Club stayed on in the house until 1990 when it was sold to Linda and Stuart Schlesinger for $3 million. The couple began a four-year restoration that that returned it to a single family home. “Restoration” meant undoing Frederick Sterner’s 1921 remake of the second floor. The two arched French windows reappeared, as if they were never gone.
By 2005 the arched openings of the second floor had reappeared; however the portico and service entrance remained changed. photo New York Observer October 24, 2015.
The period touches that they did not bring back were the warm red brick (it was hidden beneath a slathering of white paint or stucco) and the below-sidewalk level service entrance (it had been moved up to what had previously been a ground floor window). Their hard work resulted in a $21.5 million sale in 2005.
Only the studio dormer remains of Sterner’s changes. photo by the author
The new owners picked up where the Schlesinger’s left off. The portico was closely restored, the façade cleaned, and the basement entrance lowered. The result is as near a match to S. E. Gage’s 1904 remake of the old Victorian rowhouse as could ever be expected. (The interiors–well, not so much.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
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Young Charles Tiffany opened his first tiny store opposite City Hall in 1837, in the middle of America’s first great depression. When he died 65 years later in 1902 leaving an estate of $35 million, his store had become the benchmark of the jewelry business in America and the name Tiffany & Company synonymous with quality. Tiffany’s store had moved to Union Square in 1870. The new cast iron store was praised by The New York Times as “a Jewel Palace…the largest of its kind in the world. A school of taste…a teacher of art progress.”
Charles Tiffany kept a staff of seven whose jobs were simply to keep files on the wealthy socialites across the country. Photographs, newspaper clippings and details of their financial position were kept at hand so that when moneyed patrons entered they were recognized, addressed by name and allowed to take their purchases without paying upfront. According to Tiffany, “When we give credit to anyone who had supposed himself unknown to us we are sure to retain him forever.”
At the time of this death at 90, Tiffany was planning to move his store once again. Fifth Avenue was the center of wealth in New York and the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel between 33rd and 34th Streets was where the well-heeled went to be seen. Diagonally across the street, at 401 Fifth Avenue between 36th and 37th Streets, the new Tiffany store would rise.
Tiffany’s vision moved ahead and the board of directors commissioned McKim, Mead & White to design the new store; a building appropriate to its surroundings. The move in 1905, along with Benjamin Altman’s great white marble emporium next door that would open a year later, would signal the upward encroachment of commerce into the Fifth Avenue stronghold of brownstone mansions and marble chateaux.
What Stanford White produced was, as novelist Henry James called it “a great nobleness of white marble.” Drawing on the Sixteenth Century Venetian Palazzo Grimani, the architect designed one of the most beautiful buildings of his career. The completed structure cost $1 million.
The side entrance — photo NYPL Collection
According to Francis Morrone and James Iska in their The Architectural Guidebook to New York, “There is a phenomenal lightness to this building that is an almost perfect amalgam of the Beaux-Arts and the Modern; the Tiffany Building is a truly underappreciated work that makes one wonder what White might have produced had he not died so tragically young.”
Indeed, Edmund Vincent Gillon and Henry Hope Reed felt White outdid the original. In their Beaux-Arts Architecture in New York: A Photographic Guide, they said “In some ways, thanks to the proportions given it by White, the Tiffany Building is superior to the model.”
Through its doors came brigades of New York’s and the world’s elite. In the days when society women draped themselves in pearl ropes and weighed themselves down in diamonds, the robin’s egg blue Tiffany & Co. box, introduced in 1847, had become a symbol of status.
With the Russian Revolution, which was quickly followed by World War I, times changed in Europe. As royal houses fell the exiled nobles sold off their jewels for desperately-needed cash. Many of these ended up in the vaults of Tiffany & Company. From their white marble palazzo, Tiffany customarily sold $6 million in diamonds each year. There were often over $40 million in jewels in the vault.
The one Tiffany & Company item no one seemed ready to purchase, however, was the Tiffany Diamond; the 128.5-carat gem still sits in the New York store, valued today at $22 million.
In 1940 Tiffany & Co. once again moved, this time uptown to Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. The move signaled a decline in what Morrone and Iska called “…maybe Fifth Avenue’s most beautiful building.”
While much of the upper building remained intact, the street level was brutalized. Pseudo-modern storefronts obliterated the Stanford White facade. “The beholder is shocked by the vandalism inflicted on the lowest row of columns on the Fifth Avenue front,” lamented Gillon and Reed.
In 2003 an aggressive restoration brought back the three-story Corinthian columns that had been obliterated mid-century. Yet today, where Astors and Vanderbilts once shopped for silver ewers and diamond brooches, tourists in sneakers and shorts inhale Whoppers. And the building that Gillon and Reed termed “underappreciated” is in fact mostly overlooked and ignored.
Charles Tiffany, during the midst of America’s first great depression, opened his first small store across from City Hall in 1837. His business thrived and ten years later he moved across the street to 271 Broadway. By 1853 Tiffany & Co. had established itself as a leader in the quality jewelry trade and Tiffany built an impressive new building at 550 Broadway. Feeling that the façade was “monotonous,” he commissioned his good friend Henry Frederick Metzler to carve a 9-foot tall figure of Atlas to be situated over the entrance, holding a clock, four feet in diameter.
Metzler was a carver of ships’ figureheads, or “bow portraits.” The bearded, lanky figure was a distinct departure from the hulking, muscular Atlases produced by most contemporary artists. Naked except for a crossed leather strap, Metzler’s Atlas does not bend under his burden, but stands upright and dignified. The left foot is poised to take a step off the statue’s base.
The carver did not attempt to present an heroic figure and instead created a realistic, natural human form; a masterpiece of woodcarving and design. When completed, the wooden Atlas, carved of fir, was painted to mimic the patina of weathered bronze.
Seventeen years later, in 1870, Tiffany & Co. followed the uptown movement of the retail establishments and opened a grand new store on Union Square. With the move came the clock, which was installed directly over the main entrance in a window opening.
Atlas Clock over the doorway of the Union Square Tiffany & Co. store – NYPL Collection
For 35 years the Atlas clock served shoppers and businessmen rushing along busy Union Square until Tiffany & Co. moved once again – this time to the imposing white marble palazzo designed by Stanford White on Fifth Avenue between 36th and 37th Streets. By now the Atlas clock was as much a symbol of Tiffany as was the robin’s egg blue box. With the clock on the façade, there was no need for advertising.
“Tiffany & Co. have decided to let the building remain practically unmarked,” reported The New York Times on September 6, 1905. “The only mark of Tiffany about the new building is the great clock outside of the third story on the shoulders of a giant Atlas. This ornament was taken from the Union Square store.”
The uptown odyssey was not yet over for Atlas. On September 7, 1940 a The New York Times headline read “Tiffany’s Atlas Moved; Clock Mounted on Wood Figure is Place on New Home.” Tiffany & Co. had built its next flagship store, a sleek modern structure at 727 Fifth Avenue at the corner of 57th Street. According to Tiffany & Co., “The limestone, granite and marble façade is free of ornamentation, except for the famous Atlas clock.”
The Atlas Clock in its present location at Tiffany & Co.’s 5th Avenue and 57th Street building, ca 1940 – NYPL Collection
In 1980 Tiffany & Co. introduced the Atlas wristwatch, based on the design of the iconic clock outside. Atlas was removed in 1990 for restoration and again in 2006.
After more than a century and a half, Henry Frederick Metzler’s functional sculpture remains a fixture on Fifth Avenue and a priceless symbol of a firm. Amazingly, the mid-Victorian design is comfortably compatible with the streamlined façade on which it rests.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
The original Blackwell Playground was an experience of timber, chains, ramps and ladders on a brick surface.This playground was replaced by something safer in the 1980’s
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UNTAPPED NEW YORK NATIONAL POSTAL MUSEUM/ SMITHSONIAN MUSEUM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
110 Years ago today the Manhattan Bridge opened to traffic. The bridge was the last of the East River bridges to be constructed, following the Brooklyn Bridge (1883) Williamsburg Bridge (1903) Queensboro Bridge (1909). Utilizing a weight-saving Warren Truss, the bridge was the first modern steel suspension bridge and paved the way for future record-breaking bridges. The grand Beaux-Arts arch and collonade entry on the Manhattan side of the bridge was designed by Carrere & Hastings and opened in 1915. On the Brooklyn side, two female figures representing Brooklyn and Manhattan designed by Daniel Chester French flanked the entrance to the bridge. The statues were later moved to the Brooklyn Museum.
Today the bridge carries over 450,000 commuters daily; 85,000 vehicles; 950 subway trains carrying 340,900 riders across four subway lines; and 4,000 bicyclists on a protected bike path. Over three-quarters of all bridge crossings are public transit!
Upper View of Brooklyn Tower from Main Cables 1996
Manhattan Bridge
View from Brooklyn Tower Balcony 1997
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Our campaign continues to have this food truck garage cleaned up or closed by the Sanitation Dept. Last summer it was reported and still no permanent improvements. East from a food truck…NO WAY!!
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UNTAPPED NEW YORK NATIONAL POSTAL MUSEUM/ SMITHSONIAN MUSEUM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Once Ubiquitous in Skyscrapers, Rochester’s Mail Chute Building Languishes
March 1, 2026
Western New Yorkers can always count on finding a little piece of home in the lobbies of historic buildings across the country and the world, including the Empire State Building, the Savoy Hotel in London, and the Bacardi Building in Havana.
It’s likely that the mail chute, which quickly conveyed letters from the highest stories of ever-growing towers to their lobbies for pick-up, is emblazoned with the eagle insignia and name of the Cutler Mail Chute Company of Rochester, New York.
The first mail chute was installed in the Elwood Building in Rochester in 1884. The experiment was successful and chutes were installed in two New York City office buildings. The first mail chutes were limited to railroad stations and public buildings.
By 1905, the US Postal Service allowed mail chutes to be placed in hotels taller than five stories and in apartment houses with more than 50 residential apartments.
Holding the patents of James Goold Cutler, a Rochester architect and mayor, the Cutler company exercised a virtual monopoly on mail chute production in the late nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth centuries, the boom years of high-rise construction.
A 1920 headline labeled the Cutler mail chute an “essential part of every skyscraper equipment,” with the subsequent article noting the company “has the only factory in the world devoted to the production of mail chutes.”
That factory is the humble 1908 structure at 76-94 Anderson Avenue in Rochester’s Neighborhood of the Arts (NOTA), but passersby who look carefully will see the Cutler eagle rendered in terracotta gazing down from its parapet.
With its history producing a singular product found in buildings across the world until its closure in 1971, as well as its well-preserved early twentieth century industrial architectural features including its intact sawtooth roof, the Cutler Mail Chute Company building uniquely testifies to the city’s and the nation’s industrial history and graces a neighborhood transformed by a focus on arts and culture.
However, recent redevelopment plans appeared online that were unsympathetic to the history embodied by the site and indicated demolition as a possibility, prompting concerned neighbors to enlist the help of The Landmark Society of Western New York.
Led by the NOTA Neighborhood Association and guided by preservation architect and researcher Christopher Brandt, former Landmark Architectural Research Coordinator, Cynthia Howk, and The Landmark Society, advocates quickly took action to pursue City Landmark designation — an important tool that would require the City’s Preservation Board to review and approve future changes to the structure’s character-defining exterior.
While the Preservation Board recommended designation, the Planning Commission denied the application, citing concerns that designation would hamper development efforts.
Yet adaptive reuse has proven to be a catalyst for redevelopment by retaining the character and history that make a place distinctive and community-supported. This has been the story of many of Rochester’s historically significant buildings.
With no further local recourse available, The Landmark Society has filed a lawsuit challenging the Planning Commission’s decision. The case is awaiting a ruling, but the vision remains the same: that one of Rochester’s foremost connections to our nation’s architectural heritage can be retained and repurposed for new use, rather than lost to demolition or incompatible alterations.
The Landmark Society of Western New York has included the Cutler Mail Chute Company Building in its 2026 Five to Revive — a list that identifies opportunities for targeted strategic revitalization. The list calls attention to sites across Western New York in need of rehabilitation.
Through this list, the organization hopes to facilitate investment and protect the area’s architectural heritage, by working with owners, developers, investors, and other partners to create connections and reactivate buildings in their communities.
Cutler Mail Box and Chute Natioan Postal Museum
As urban business centers flourished in the 19th century and buildings grew vertically, rather than horizontally in response to growing urban land values, the Post Office Department sought an easier way for occupants to mail their letters. It was more convenient to collect the mail inside the office buildings instead of forcing tenants to deposit their mail in boxes on the street or post offices. The answer was the creation of mail chutes that would extend from the top floor to a receiving box located at ground level.
The first mail chute was installed in the Elwood Building in Rochester, New York in 1884. The experiment was successful and chutes were installed in two New York City office buildings. The first mail chutes were limited to railroad stations and public buildings. By 1905, the postal service allowed mail chutes to be placed in hotels taller than five stories and in apartment houses with more than 50 residential apartments.
This receiving box, which was located at the bottom of the mail chute, was manufactured by James G. Cutler, who received patent #284,951 for his design. which stated that the box must “be of metal, distinctly marked ‘U.S. Letter Box,'” and that the “door must open on hinges on one side, with the bottom of the door not less than 2’6″ above the floor.” If a receiving box was to be placed in a building that was more than two stories high, the bottom of the box was required to be outfitted with an elastic cushion to “prevent injury to the mail.”
Mail chutes had to be accessible along their entire length and at least three-fourths glass fronted so that postal workers could easily locate and remove any lodged mail. Congress placed all chutes and subsequent mail matter under the exclusive custody of the Post Office Department in 1893 and made all chute construction work subject to postal regulations. Cutler’s company was the sole manufacturer of mail chutes and receiving boxes until 1904. During those 20 years, the company produced more than 1600 receiving boxes, and continued to produce them for several more years. This receiving box was constructed in 1920.
The wonderful mail box in Grand Central Terminal
PHOTO OF THE DAY
THE WONDERFUL ENTRANCE TO 575 LEXINGTON AVENUE, THE FORMER GENERAL ELECTRIC BUILDING
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UNTAPPED NEW YORK NATIONAL POSTAL MUSEUM/ SMITHSONIAN MUSEUM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
On 57 Great Jones Street in Greenwich Village sits the studio of Jean-Michel Basquiat, an artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent best known for his graffiti art. As part of the graffiti duo SAMO, Basquiat created works like the Irony of Negro Policemen series, and he would often use a crown above his signature. A number of Basquiat’s artworks are still found throughout Lower Manhattan, some of which are protected by preservation societies.
Behind the unassuming exterior of 1467 Bedford Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn is a flourishing event space with myriad historical connections to New York City’s political scene. The former campaign headquarters of Congresswoman and Brooklyn icon Shirley Chisholm, and later the community venue Alpha Space, the building that was built in 1906 has become the new home of Unbossed Media LLC, an initiative working to provide the resources for local artists who haven’t yet had them to get their projects off the ground. Chisholm was the first African American woman to serve in Congress, both the first woman and African American to run for the Oval Office, and the second woman and first African American woman to serve on the House Rules Committee. Chisholm was elected to Congress in 1968 and ran for the presidency four years after. A plaque for Chisholm, created by Alpha Space, was once hanging on the side of the building, but had fallen off due to the wind.
Nearby, the Shirley Chisholm Circle in Brooklyn’s Brower Park is a circular terrace named for her. Chisholm was born in Bedford-Stuyvesant and went on to earn a Master’s Degree in Elementary Education, often teaching her classes outside in Brower Park. As a champion of equal rights, Chisholm would introduce Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge (SEEK), a program designed to help disadvantaged students enter college. For her work in Congress, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama.
Today, a plaque in Brower Park includes her quote “When I die, I want to be remembered as a woman who lived in the 20th century and who dared to be a catalyst of change.” Chisholm is also honored by the newly-created Shirley Chisholm State Park in Spring Creek, Brooklyn, the largest state park in New York City.
Hunts Point Slave Burial Ground (1909)
Joseph Rodman Drake Park
In Joseph Rodman Drake Park in Bronx’s Hunts Point neighborhood is an enclosed cemetery and recently discovered slave burial ground. When Drake Park was originally created in 1909, an 18th-century cemetery of wealthy slave-owning families like the Hunts and Leggets were preserved. Yet in 2013, students at Public School 48 analyzed census data and maps to identify a potential spot where the remains of 156 Black and Indian slaves in Hunts Point, per the 1790 Census, ended up.
The students and their teacher Justin Czarka found a black-and-white photograph from 1910 showing several markers resembling headstones, labeled on the back, “Slave burying ground, Hunts Point Road.” The US Department of Agriculture sent scientists to perform soil tests using radar in the cemetery in the summer of 2013, and several areas of the park were determined to have “anthropogenic features” as “likely potential burial sites.” A plaque honoring the burial ground was put up in 2014.
Louis Armstrong House Museum (1910)
The Louis Armstrong House in Corona, Queens, was where jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong lived with his wife Lucille Wilson from 1943 until his death in 1971. The brick house was designed by architect Robert W. Johnson in 1910, and it now serves as a museum with archives from Armstrong’s writings and concerts. Many gifts that Armstrong received while on tour internationally are also displayed inside the museum, such as ornate paintings.
Originally from New Orleans, Armstrong is perhaps best known for singing “What A Wonderful World” with his characteristic gravelly voice. He pioneered scat singing with songs like “Heebie Jeebies,” and he also famously covered “West End Blues” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.” He led the “Hot Five” and “Hot Seven” ensembles in the 1920s, and he would also appear in films like Hello, Dolly! and High Society.
Addisleigh Park Historic District (1910s)
Addisleigh Park is a historic district in the St. Albans neighborhood of Queens that served as the home of many prominent African-American figures and today is an African American and Jamaican enclave. More than 400 houses were built in the area initially as a segregated area for white people, yet in the 1930s, this policy was reversed and many African-American families began to move into the area.
With easy access to Manhattan, the epicenter of the Swing Era, many African-American jazz musicians moved to the suburban haven of Addisleigh Park. Fats Waller, Count Basie, and Ella Fitzgerald each had homes in the area, as well as Jackie Robinson and W.E.B. DuBois. Many of the original homes have been preserved, and the area was declared a historic district in 2011 by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.
St. Philip’s Episcopal Church (1911)
St. Philip’s Episcopal Church on West 134th Street is the oldest black Episcopal parish in New York City, founded in 1809 by free African Americans. The church was originally named the Free African Church of St. Philip and was first located in the Five Points neighborhood, before moving north to Harlem. The church’s first rector was Rev. Peter Williams, Jr., an abolitionist who also supported free black emigration to Haiti and served on the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society.
Many of the church’s members were pioneers in their fields, including many teachers, doctors, restauranteurs, and marine traders. The church would suffer damage in the mid-1800s due to vandalism by whites and by the NYPD during the 1863 Draft Riots. The church moved to Harlem in the early 1900s and was designed by Tandy & Foster, prominent African-American architects, in the Neo-Gothic style. The church included among its parishioners Dr. James McCune Smith, the first African American to hold a medical degree. Among its members were W.E.B. DuBois, Thurgood Marshall, and Langston Hughes.
Audubon Ballroom (1912)
The infamous Audubon Ballroom at 166th Street is where Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965 while giving a speech. The building was originally built as the William Fox Aubudon Theater in 1912, designed by Thomas Lamb. Shabazz died either en route to or at the Harlem Hospital, across the street.
Today it is owned by Columbia University, which provides space for the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Education Center. Columbia University also preserved the facade of the theater.
Hotel Theresa (1913)
The Hotel Theresa in Harlem
The Hotel Theresa on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard is an iconic 13-story building in Harlem that served as a center for African-American life in the mid-1900s. Now an office building known as Theresa Towers, the hotel was considered the “Waldorf of Harlem” and was designed by German stockbroker Gustavus Sidenberg in 1913. As a symbol of Black culture in Harlem, the hotel actually only accepted white guests until 1940, when African-American businessman Love B. Woods bought the hotel and ended its policy of racial segregation.
The hotel served as the location of organizations like the Organization of Afro-American Unity, founded by Malcolm X, and the March on Washington Movement, organized by activist A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin. Politicians like Roy Brown, Secretary of Commerce under Bill Clinton, and Charles Rangel, member of the House of Representatives, worked in the hotel. Fidel Castro and his associates famously stayed at the hotel in 1960 for the opening session of the United Nations, renting out 80 rooms. Castro was visited at the hotel by figures like Nikita Khrushchev, Langston Hughes, and Gamal Abdel Nasser. However, the hotel closed in 1967 as the hotel suffered from business due to Harlem’s deterioration, and the building was renovated into office spaces in 1970.
Duke Ellington House (1915)
At 935 St. Nicholas Avenue in Washington Heights is the Duke Ellington House, a National Historic Landmark named for the noted African-American composer and jazz pianist who frequently played at the still-active Cotton Club in West Harlem. The Late Gothic Revival style apartment, specifically Apartment 4A, was where Ellington lived from 1939 to 1961, during which time he published the extended jazz work Black, Brown, and Beige.
Ellington was famous for performing Billy Strayhorn’s “Take the ‘A’ Train,” describing a route to Sugar Hill. Other of his noteworthy compositions include “Mood Indigo,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing),” and “In a Sentimental Mood.” His band included musical talents like saxophonist Johnny Hodges and trombonist Juan Tizol, and his album Such Sweet Thunder was actually based on the works of William Shakespeare.
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UNTAPPED NEW YORK
PHOTO OF THE DAY
A NEW WAY TO FIND 900 MAIN STREET Many Coler residents and visitors have been misdirected by APPs that lead them to the back of Coler instead of the Main Entrance at 900 Main Street.. While the APPs are being modified, new clear signage is being posted at the north end. THANKS TO COLER ADMINSTATION AND NYC H+H FOR HELPING SOLVE THIS. Pictured are Jovemay Santos, Christina Delfico and Verna Fitzpatrick.
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
For the last few hundred years, New York City has been one of the country’s epicenters of African-American and Black culture, from early free Black settlements in the 1820s to musical icons in the 1930s to modern-day Black activists. All throughout the city there are historic sites where influential Black figures lived and practiced their craft, from the Lewis Latimer House in Flushing to the Claude McKay Residence in Harlem. According to writer Laura Itzkowitz (an Untapped New York contributor and former managing editor) in her article for Architectural Digest “When Architecture and Racial Justice Intersect,” only 2% of the nearly 95,000 entries on the National Register of Historic Places focus on the experience of Black Americans, but you don’t have to search hard to find an abundance of sites connected to Black history around New York.
New York City is fortunate enough to have many relics of African-American struggles and victories preserved as landmarks. Yet there are many others, especially in the Bronx, that are forgotten or at best, commemorated only by a plaque. Here is our guide to Black historic sites in New York City across the five boroughs, including both landmarked and un-landmarked sites. Some have historic plaques, others do not.
We have organized the locations by date first built, but in some cases the connection to Black history may have occurred later than when the building was originally built, started in an earlier building that has been demolished, or have been connected to the site since the very beginning. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but we attempted to highlight here sites that should be known to the public as well as those that have slipped under the radar.
The African Burial Ground National Monument is found in the Civic Center area of Lower Manhattan that contains the remains of more than 419 Africans from the 17th and 18th centuries. It is estimated that there were as many of 10,000 to 20,000 burials in the 1700s, and it is considered New York’s oldest African-American cemetery.
In the 1600s, the Dutch West India Company brought over slaves from Angola, Congo, and Guinea, and by the mid-17th century, a village called the Land of the Blacks saw 30 African-owned farms in modern-day Washington Square Park. It was estimated that 42% of households in New York had slaves, which eventually totaled about 2,500 by 1740. Slavery was ultimately abolished on July 4, 1827, yet only one-third of the city’s blacks were free in 1790. The site was initially labeled on old maps as “Negro Burying Ground,” and the first recorded burials for people of African descent occurred in 1712, but it is speculated that the burial ground was in use two decades earlier.
Some of the bodies of the deceased were illegally dug up for dissection, which sparked the 1788 Doctors’ Riot. The city shut down the cemetery in 1794, and urban development began taking place over the burial ground. The land remained largely forgotten until bones were discovered in 1991 during an archaeological survey by the General Services Administration. Protests occurred just a year later after it was discovered that the GSA had damaged some of the burials and took little care in excavation efforts. George H.W. Bush signed a law to redesign the area and to install a $3 million memorial, which was dedicated in 2007 to commemorate the role of Africans and African Americans throughout New York City’s history. In 1993 the African Burial Ground was designated a New York City Landmark and a National Historic Landmark. It is also a National Historic Monument.
Dyckman Farmhouse
The Dyckman Farmhouse is Manhattan’s oldest remaining farmhouse, built around 1785 in the Dutch Colonial style. The home is situated in a small park in Inwood on the corner of Broadway and 204th Street, and today it serves as a New York City Landmark and a National Historic Landmark. William Dyckman, who constructed the home, died just three years after constructing the farmhouse, yet his son Jacobus would later inherit the house along with his wife Hannah, his eleven children, and a number of slaves and free blacks. Today, Inwood is home to a forgotten slave cemetery believed to have the remains of a number of the Dyckman family’s slaves.
As part of the DyckmanDISCOVERED initiative, the museum has investigated the stories of those enslaved by the Dyckman family. In 1820, a free black woman, a free black boy, and an enslaved man inhabited the home, and it is estimated that seven or eight slaves lived in the house when it opened. It was believed that freed blacks and enslaved workers would have used the house’s Summer Kitchen, a small one-and-a-half-story building adjacent to the farmhouse. A free black woman named Hannah worked as a cook for the Dyckmans and was born between 1784 and 1794. Although it was believed that the home housed a number of enslaved workers, the only one fully identified was Francis Cudjoe, who was set free in 1809. An official document stated:
“Recorded for and at the request of Francis Cudjoe this 11th day of January 1809. Know all men by these present that I Jacobus Dyckman of the City of New York on consideration of motive of humanity and sum of one dollar to me in hand paid Do hereby manumit and set free a Black man named Francis Cudjoe aged about Forty years. In witness whereof I have hereunto subscribed had my name and affixed my seal this eleventh day of January Anno Dominis one thousand eight hundred and nine. Jacobus Dyckman, Witness Peter.”
Seneca Village in present-day Central Park
Seneca Village was a settlement in the 19th-century in present-day Central Park, founded in 1825 by free blacks. With a population of around 250 residents at its peak, the village featured three churches, a school, and two cemeteries. Bounded by 82nd and 89th Streets, Seneca Village would exist for over three decades before villagers were ordered to leave due to the construction of Central Park.
A white farmer named John Whitehead bought the land in 1824 and sold three lots of it to an African American man named Andrew Williams and twelve lots to the AME Zion Church. After the outlawing of slavery, many African Americans began to move into the village from downtown. A number of Irish immigrants fleeing the Potato Famine also settled in the village. Most of the homes were well-constructed, two-story buildings, the Central Park Conservancy tells us, rather than shanties which were in the minority of the buildings. Workers typically were employed in construction and food service, with many women working as domestic servants. The African Union Church in Seneca Village was one of the city’s first black schools, named Colored School 3.
The Seneca Village Project, founded in 1998, was created to raise awareness of the settlement’s history as a middle-class, free black community. Today, a plaque commemorates the site where Seneca Village once stood. There have also been recent archaeological excavations to uncover traces of Seneca Village, and in 2011, researchers discovered foundation walls of the home of William Godfrey Wilson, who was a sexton for All Angels’ Church in the village. 250 bags were filled with artifacts during the digs, including the leather sole of a child’s shoe. Central Park recently celebrated the history of Seneca Village through new historic signage as well as free tours during Black History Month, of which Untapped New York partnered with the Conservancy to offer a special tour to our Insiders members.
Blazing Star Cemetery is in Rossville, Staten Island nearby the Sandy Ground community
Sandy Ground was a community in Rossville, Staten Island, that was founded by free African Americans around the year 1828. Only a few months after slavery was abolished in New York City, an African American man named Captain John Jackson purchased land in the area, and the area quickly became a center of oyster trade. Many settlers would harvest and sell oysters at the nearby Prince’s Bay.
Sandy Ground was also an important stop on the Underground Railroad, and the settlement is currently considered one of the oldest continuously settled free black communities in the U.S. A church, a cemetery, and three homes from the settlement are today designated as New York City landmarks, yet most of the original houses were destroyed in a 1963 fire. Today, the Sandy Ground Historical Museum is home to the largest collection of documents detailing Staten Island’s African-American culture, history, and freedom.
Historic Weeksville in Brooklyn
Like Seneca Village, Weeksville was a neighborhood that was founded by free African Americans, situated in modern-day Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Weeksville was founded in 1838 by James Weeks, an African-American longshoreman who bought land from Henry C. Thompson, a free African American land investor. The land was previously owned by an heir of John Lefferts, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
By the 1850s, Weeksville’s population had surpassed that of Seneca Village, with upwards of 500 residents from across the East Coast, with over a third of residents born in the south. Weeksville was home to two churches, a school (Colored School No. 2), and a cemetery, as well as the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum. Weeksville also had one of the first African-American newspapers called the Freedman’s Torchlight and served as headquarters of the African Civilization Society. Additionally, the area was a refuge for many African Americans who left Manhattan during the 1863 Draft Riots. Four historic houses dating back to the time of the village collectively make up the Hunterfly Road Houses, listed on the NRHP in 1972. The discovery of these houses led to the creation of the Weeksville Heritage Centerdedicated to the preservation of Weeksville.
A memorial in The Olde Towne of Flushing Burial Ground honoring the dead who are buried there.
The Olde Towne of Flushing Burial Ground is a small burial ground alternatively known as the “Colored Cemetery of Flushing.” A large circular monument notes the burial of 500 to 1,000 people, primarily African Americans, Native Americans, and victims of four major epidemics of cholera and smallpox in the mid-1800s. Acquired by the town of Flushing in 1840 from the Bowne family, the burial ground contains the bodies of slaves and servants of the Flushing elite, as well as members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Death certificates issued in the 1880s confirm that more than half of the buried were children under the age of five. About 62 percent of the buried were African American or Native American.
In 1936, Parks Commissioner Robert Moses decided to build a modern playground on the site of the burial ground. Local activist Mandingo Tshaka halted plans of renovating the cemetery to preserve its history. The Queens Department of Parks commissioned a $50,000 archaeological study in 1996 of the burial ground. In 2004, $2.67 million was allocated to this site, leading to the creation of a historic wall engraved with the names from the only four headstones remaining in 1919.
The Charlie Parker Residence at 151 Avenue B is a Gothic Revival-style rowhouse that served as the home of the legendary saxophonist from 1950 to 1954. Built in 1849, the rowhouse stands four stories tall and faces Tompkins Square Park. Parker lived on the ground floor with his wife Chan Richardson and their three children. By the time he moved, Parker had achieved great fame for helping to develop bebop with Dizzy Gillespie and for releasing standards such as “Ornithology” and “Yardbird Suite.”
He continued performing with jazz groups large and small while living at the home, releasing the album Bird and Diz in 1952. He notably performed at Massey Hall in Toronto in 1953 with jazz greats including Charles Mingus and Max Roach, resulting in the album Jazz at Massey Hall. Though, not all was smooth sailing at the rowhouse; he continued using heroin, and his health started to deteriorate. He spent time in a mental hospital after the death of his daughter in 1954 from cystic fibrosis and pneumonia. Parker died in 1954. In 1992, Avenue B between 7th and 10th Streets was renamed Charlie Parker Place. The Charlie Parker Jazz Festival is held annually at Tompkins Square Park.
St. George’s Episcopal Church, a National Historic Landmark, is located in Stuyvesant Square and is designed in the Early Romanesque Revival style. The original church was located near Trinity Church from 1752, and this new church was constructed from 1846-1856 by Charles Otto Blesch and Leopold Eidlitz, the latter of whom worked on the New York State Capitol Building.
Although not a predominantly African-American church, St. George’s is perhaps best known for having among its congregants Harry Thacker Burleigh, a Black composer and baritone. He was one of the first African-American composers to incorporate spirituals into much of his music. He was accepted to the National Conservatory of Music in New York and was known for his compositions like his versions of the spiritual “Deep River” and songs like “Little Mother of Mine.” Burleigh was hired as a soloist at St. George’s, at the time an all-white church, and the deciding vote in this decision was made by J.P. Morgan. Burleigh would go on to teach composer Antonín Dvořák “Negro melodies” and Native American music, which Dvořák would later incorporate into his famous Symphony From the New World and his American String Quartet.
Langston Hughes House
The Langston Hughes House on East 127th Street in Harlem was the home of Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes where he wrote works like “Montage of a Dream Deferred” and “I Wonder as I Wander.” Built in the Italianate style in 1869, the house is a three-story building added to the NRHP in 1982.
Hughes used the top floor as his workroom for the last 20 years of his life. In 2019, the home received a National Trust for Historic Preservation grant, and today this home is the base of the I, Too, Arts Collective nonprofit, which preserves Hughes’s legacy and supports emerging underrepresented artists.
Lewis Latimer House
The Lewis Latimer House in Flushing, a red and white Victorian home, honors Lewis Howard Latimer, an African-American inventor and humanist born to fugitive slaves who lived in the home from 1903 until his death in 1928. Latimer was one of the founders of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Queens, and he was known for his work with figures like Hiram S. Maxim, Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. The red and white house, which dates back to around 1889, contains a museum dedicated to Latimer’s work and the achievements of other black scientists.
George Latimer, his father, escaped from Virginia to Boston before his subsequent capture and imprisonment. Abolitionists like Frederick Douglass strove to grant George freedom through a publication called “The Latimer Journal, and the North Star.” Growing up in the Antebellum period, Lewis Latimer joined the Union Navy in 1864 and later became an expert draftsman while working at a patent law office. After learning about physics and engineering, Latimer would work with Edison, under whom he invented and patented the carbon filament, which improved the production of the incandescent lightbulb. He also authored “Incandescent Lighting,” the foundation for modern electrical engineering theory. He would also go on to draft drawings for Bell’s invention of the telephone.
CREDITS
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
PHOTO OF THE DAY
A NEW WAY TO FIND 900 MAIN STREET Many Coler residents and visitors have been misdirected by APPsthat lead them to the back of Coler instead of the Main Entrance at 900 Main Street.. While the APPs are being modified, new clear signage is being posted at the north end. THANKS TO COLER ADMINSTATION AND NYC H+H FOR HELPING SOLVE THIS.
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
The story of Harlem’s Last remaining Wood Clapboard House, Built at the Dawn of the Gilded Age
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2026
ISSUE #1635
Can you stand another story of a storybook–like wood clapboard holdout? I hope so, because this 3 and a half-floor charmer, at 17 East 128th Street, has a backstory that dovetails with the urbanization of all of Manhattan.
Built toward the end of the Civil War and at the start of the Gilded Age, it’s a totem of Harlem’s transition from isolated farmland to a vital part of Manhattan’s cityscape. It managed to survive more than 160 years more or less intact because in all that time, it’s only had a handful of owners.
Let’s go back to mid-19th century Harlem. Mostly rural with well-spaced estate homes, farmhouses, and shantytowns, the area was cut off from the main city thanks to unreliable roads, plus spotty train and streetcar service.
Harlem’s population at that time numbered just 1,500, according to the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) report on 17 East 128th Street. By contrast, Manhattan as a whole had more than half a million residents.
But 200 years of farming hurt the quality of the soil, and during the 1860s, the city’s population swelled. Developers began eyeing Harlem for its potential as a fine new residential area, especially with the impending arrival of elevated trains, which could whisk residents downtown and back.
Enter a real-estate investor named Abraham Overhiser. Owner of the lot at 17 East 128th Street, he sold it to another investor for $2,200, and in turn in 1864 that investor sold it to a James Beach for $5,900—which gives you an idea of how hot land in Harlem was toward the end of the Civil War.
The house probably went up in 1864 or 1865. The exact builder isn’t known, but “the design of the structure, its detailing, and the type of building materials used in its construction indicate that the house at 17 East 128th Street had to have been built at roughly this time,” states the LPC report.
The architectural design was the fanciful French Second Empire with Italianate touches, both popular residential styles at the time. As for the choice of wood, it had not yet been banned in Harlem as a building material in Manhattan (due to its penchant to go up in flames). That wouldn’t happen until 1882.
James Beach stayed in the house until 1874, watching before his eyes the transformation of this part of Harlem into an enclave of fine brownstones, row houses, and churches. That year, he sold it to a Hannah Van Reed for $11,000. Van Reed and her husband shared the house for 12 years.
(Below, similar houses with front porches on East 128th Street between Park and Madison Avenues, 1932
In 1886, Viola H. Banning purchased the house, now surrounded by lovely residential blocks and just three streets away from the shopping, theaters, and services on bustling 125th Street. Banning lived in the house with her lawyer husband, Hubert A. Banning, who worked on Nassau Street downtown.
Sadly, Viola lost her husband on an elevated train platform in 1916. The Sun ran a small new item on June 5 of that year stating that a man’s body was found on the northbound platform at 66th Street. “Banning was on his way home when he dropped dead,” a reporter tersely wrote, misidentifying him as Herbert, not Hubert.
Viola continued to live in the house, passing it on to her son and daughter-in-law, who put it in a trust. After Viola’s death in the late 1920s, a trustee named Palmer Brooks sold the house for $12,000 to Margaret Lane, who seven years later sold the house for $1 to Louis and May Seeley. (Third image: the house in 1932)
The $1 sale “suggests some arrangement between Lane and the Seeleys,” states the LPC report. “Indeed, when Seeley, at the age of 90, sold the property in 1979, he told the buyer that he had inherited the property from his nanny. Evidently Margaret Lane was his nanny.”
At the time the LPC report was completed in 1982, it notes the current resident of the house as Carolyn Adams. Raised in Harlem, Adams joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company as a dancer and is described as being involved in numerous performance, preservation, and community events in the neighborhood.
A new owner appears to have purchased the house in 2015, completely updating the interior while maintaining its Second Empire and Italianate details. That includes the slate mansard roof, wood clapboard facade, and “gingerbread pendants” over the porch, which is in its original place—as are all the windows and the main entrance, notes the LPC report.
The details about the renovation in 2015 come from a sales listing, which seems to be active. The link to the listing includes dozens of gorgeous exterior and inside photos of this Civil War–era survivor, including the curvy banister and small backyard.
The listing price for 17 East 128th Street, still a one-family residence, isn’t so bad at $2.95 million. But it’s quite a lot higher than the $2,200 it went for in a very different version of Harlem in 1864.
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
