SIMON FIELDHOUSE
ARTIST Email enquiries: Simon Fieldhouse
|
SIMON FIELDHOUSE ARTIST Email enquiries: Simon Fieldhouse
|
|
|
NEW YORK ARCHITECTURE
MANHATTAN - NEW YORK Manhattan , in New York Harbor, is the largest part of the Borough of Manhattan, one of the Five Boroughs which form the City of New York. The Borough of Manhattan covers the same territory and the same people as the County of New York, a subdivision of theState of New York in the Northeastern United States. With a 2007 population of 1,620,867[1] living in a land area of 22.96 square miles (59.47 km²), New York County is the most densely populated county in the United States at 70,595 residents per square mile (27,267/km²). It is also one of the wealthiest counties in the United States, with a 2005 personal per capita income above $100,000.[2] The borough (and the county) consist of Manhattan Island, Roosevelt Island, Randall's Island, Governors Island, almost one-tenth of Ellis Island,[3] the above-water portion of Liberty Island, several much smaller islands, and Marble Hill, a small section on the mainland of New York State adjacent to The Bronx. Manhattan is a major commercial, financial, and cultural center of the United States and to some extent the world.[4][5][6] Most major radio, television, and telecommunications companies in the United States are based here, as well as many news, magazine, book, and other media publishers. Manhattan has many famous landmarks, tourist attractions, museums, and universities. It is also home to the headquarters of the United Nations. Manhattan has the largest central business district in the United States, is the site of both the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ, and is the home to the largest number of corporate headquarters in the nation. It is indisputably the center of New York City and the New York metropolitan region, holding the seat of city government, and the largest fraction of employment, business, and recreational activities. The name Manhattan derives
from the word Manna-hata, as written in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, an
officer on Henry
Hudson's yachtHalve
Maen (Half Moon).[7] A
1610 map depicts the name Manahata twice, on both the west and east sides of the
Mauritius River (later named the Hudson
River). The word "Manhattan" has been translated as "island of many
hills" from the Lenape
language.[8] The
Encyclopedia of New York City offers
other derivations, including from the Munsee dialect of
Lenape: manahachtanienk ("place
of generalinebriation"), manahatouh ("place
where timber is procured for bows and arrows"), or menatay ("island"). The skyscraper, which has shaped Manhattan's distinctive skyline, has been closely associated with New York City's identity since the end of the 19th century. From 1890–1973, the world's tallest building was in Manhattan, with nine different buildings holding the title.[109] The New York World Building on Park Row, was the first to take the title, standing 309 feet (91 m) until 1955, when it was demolished to construct a new ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge.[110] The nearby Park Row Building, with its 29 stories standing 391 feet (119 m) high took the title in 1899.[111] The 41-story Singer Building, constructed in 1908 as the headquarters of the eponymous sewing machine manufacturer, stood 612 feet (187 m) high until 1967, when it became the tallest building ever demolished.[112] The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, standing 700 feet (213 m) at the foot of Madison Avenue, wrested the title in 1909, with a tower reminiscent of St Mark's Campanile in Venice.[113] The Woolworth Building, and its distinctive Gothic architecture, took the title in 1913, topping off at 792 feet (241 m). The Roaring
Twenties saw a race to the
sky, with three separate buildings pursuing the world's tallest title in the
span of a year. As the stock market soared in the days before the Wall
Street Crash of 1929, two developers publicly competed for the crown.[115] At
927 feet (282 m), 40
Wall Street, completed in May 1930 in an astonishing 11 months as the
headquarters of the Bank
of Manhattan, seemed to have secured the title.[116] At Lexington
Avenue and 42nd
Street, auto executive Walter
Chrysler and his architect William
Van Alen developed plans
to build the structure's trademark 185-foot (56 m)-high spire in secret, pushing
the Chrysler
Building to 1,046 feet
(319 m) and making it the tallest in the world when it was completed in 1929.[117]Both
buildings were soon surpassed, with the May 1931 completion of the 102-story Empire
State Building with its Art
Deco tower soaring
1,250 feet (381 m) to the top of the building. The 203 ft (62 m) high pinnacle
was later added bringing the total height of the building to 1,453 ft (443 m)). The former Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, once an iconic symbol of the City, were located in Lower Manhattan. At 1,368 and 1,362 feet (417m& 415m), the 110-story buildings were the world's tallest from 1972, until they were surpassed by the construction of the Sears Tower in 1974.[120] By the end of the 20th century the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were arguably among the world's most famous and recognizable buildings until their destruction in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The Freedom Tower, a replacement for the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, is currently under construction and is slated to be ready for occupancy in 2012. In 1961, Penn
Central unveiled plans to
tear down the old Penn
Station and replace it
with a new Madison
Square Garden and office
building complex.
Organized protests were aimed at preserving the McKim,
Mead, and White-designed structure completed in 1910, widely
considered a masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts style
and one of the architectural jewels of New York City.] Despite
these efforts, demolition of the structure began in October 1963. The loss of
Penn Station—called “an act of irresponsible public vandalism” by historian Lewis
Mumford—led directly to the enactment in 1965 of a local law
establishing the New
York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, which is responsible for
preserving the "city's historic, aesthetic, and cultural heritage".[123] The historic
preservation movement
triggered by Penn Station's demise has been credited with the retention of some
one million structures nationwide, including nearly 1,000 in New York City. The theatre district around Broadway at Times Square, New York University, Columbia University, Flatiron Building, the Financial District around Wall Street, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Little Italy, Harlem, the American Museum of Natural History, Chinatown, and Central Park are all located on this densely populated island. The city is a leader in energy-efficient "green" office buildings, such as Hearst Tower, owned by Englishman Samuel Fox, and the rebuilt 7 World Trade Center. Central Park is bordered on the north by West 110th Street, on the west by Eighth Avenue, on the south by West 59th Street, and on the east by Fifth Avenue. Along the park's borders, these streets are usually referred to as Central Park North, Central Park West, and Central Park South, respectively. (Fifth Avenue retains its name along the eastern border.) The park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. The 843 acre (3.4 km²) park offers extensive walking tracks, two ice-skating rinks, a wildlife sanctuary, and grassy areas used for various sporting pursuits, as well as playgrounds for children. The park is a popular oasis for migrating birds, and thus is popular with bird watchers. The 6 mile (10 km) road circling the park is popular with joggers, bicyclists and inline skaters, especially on weekends and in the evenings after 7:00 p.m., when automobile traffic is banned. While much of the park looks natural, it is almost entirely landscaped and contains several artificial lakes. The construction of Central Park in the 1850s was one of the era's most massive public works projects. Some 20,000 workers crafted the topography to create the English-style pastoral landscape Olmsted and Vaux sought to create. Workers moved nearly 3,000,000 cubic yards (2,300,000 m3) of soil and planted more than 270,000 trees and shrubs. 17.8% of the borough, a total of 2,686 acres (10.9 km²), are devoted to parkland. Almost 70% of Manhattan's space devoted to parks is located outside of Central Park, including 204 playgrounds, 251 Greenstreets, 371 basketball courts and many other amenities. The African
Burial Ground National Monument at
Duane Street preserves a site containing the remains of over 400 Africans buried
during the 17th and 18th centuries. The remains were found in 1991 during the
construction of the Foley
Square Federal Office
Building. The Empire State Building has been named by the American Society of Civil Engineers as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. The building and its street floor interior are designated landmarks of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, and confirmed by the New York City Board of Estimate.[3] It was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1986.[4][5][6] In 2007, it was ranked number one on the List of America's Favorite Architecture according to the AIA. The building is owned and managed by W&H Properties. The present site of the Empire State Building was first developed as the John Thomson Farm in the late 18th century. At the time, a stream ran across the site, emptying into Sunfish Pond, located a block away. The block was occupied by the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in the late 19th century, and was frequented by The Four Hundred, the social elite of New York.
NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is a stock exchange based in New York City, New York. It is the largest stock exchange in the world by dollar volume and has 2,764+ listed securities. It ranks fourth in the world in terms of company listings with 3,200 companies, behind the Bombay Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange, and NASDAQ. As of December 31, 2006, the combined capitalization of all New York Stock Exchange listed companies was $25 trillion. The NYSE is operated by NYSE Euronext, which was formed by the NYSE's merger with the fully electronic stock exchange Euronext. Its trading floor is located at 11 Wall Street and is composed of four rooms used for the facilitation of trading. A fifth trading room, located at 30 Broad Street, was closed in February 2007. The main building, located at 18 Broad Street between the corners of Wall Street and Exchange Place, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978. Carnegie Hall, one of America’s greatest concert halls, was built by Andrew Carnegie as part of his efforts towards the “improvement of mankind.” Known originally as the Music hall, The Carnegie Hall auditorium opened in 1891 with the American conducting debut of Tchaikovsky and since then has hosted many of the world’s leading musicians. The building, faced in Roman brick and terra cotta and designed in an Italian Renaissance-inspired style, was originally crowned by a mansard roof; this roof was replaced by a full top floor early in the 1890’s. The hall has two major additions: Tuthill’s office tower on West 56th Street and Hardenbergh’s studio tower on West 57th Street. Carnegie hall was saved from demolition in 1960 when it was purchased by the city; it was refurbished in 1981-90 by James Poleshek & Partners. Carnegie Hall is a concert hall located at the southeast corner of Seventh Avenue and 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park, in New York City. It is one of the most significant venues for classical as well as popular music in the United States. Opened in 1891, this historical structure is known not just for its beauty and history but also for its fine acoustics. After the Civil War, Americans became transfixed with music. Thus the need for a suitable concert hall arose in the minds of New Yorkers which led to the construction of Carnegie Hall. This heritage building, located in New York State, was constructed and named for its principal benefactor, Andrew Carnegie. The chief architect was William Burnet Tuthill, who designed the building in a revivalist brick and brownstone Italian Renaissance style. Carnegie Hall is made up of three distinct structures - the Main Hall, the Chamber Music Hall, and the Recital Hall. The Main Hall has a seating capacity of 2,804. This large and tall hall has a balcony which can be reached by an elevator as it is difficult for visitors to climb 105 steps from the ground floor to reach there. The main hall’s lobbies are adorned with signed portraits and memorabilia. In 1996, the hall was dedicated as the Isaac Stern Auditorium. The Chamber Music Hall lies on the third floor of Carnegie Hall. This 268 seated elegant auditorium evokes a Belle Epoque salon and is remarkable for the symmetry of its proportions and the beauty of its decorations. It is an intimate auditorium ideal for recitals, chamber music concerts, symposia, discussions, and master classes. In 1986, the Chamber Music Hall was renamed as the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Recital Hall. A studio floor and a 10-story tower were also added in the same year. The Recital Hall, the third one, is now known as Judy and Arthur Zankel Hall. It was leased to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1895 and was used as a theater by various groups until the early 1960s, when it was converted to a cinema. The interior of Carnegie Hall contains marble in its foyer with great slanting arches in the ceiling and the doors. In the corners of the foyer there are columns with intricate carvings. The exterior portion is comprised of bricks which give the building a reddish hue. The building was extensively renovated between 1983 and 1995, by James Polshek. In 1987-1989, a 60-floor office tower, named Carnegie Hall Tower, was completed next to the hall on the same block. The Rose Museum that chronicles Carnegie Hall's history and exhibits its archival treasures was opened as part of Carnegie Hall's 100th anniversary celebration in 1991. The Carnegie Hall Archives, which documents the various aspects of the Hall's history, is a later addition. More information on Carnegie Hall and Carnegie Hall - Wikipedia 1071 Fifth Avenue. Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright, 1956-59 Established by Solomon R.
Guggenheim as a repository of non objective (i.e. abstract) art, the Guggenheim
Museum is housed in one of the most acclaimed buildings of the 20th
century. The museum is the major New York City work of the American master Frank
Lloyd Wright and is often considered to be the crowning achievement of his later
career. The building’s organic form, a reversed spiral, was intended as a
reflection of the natural shapes to be found across the street in Central park.
The interior, with its vast open space and spiralling cantilevered ramp,
punctuated by exhibition alcoves, is among Wright’s most spectacular. In the
basement is a circular auditorium also designed by the architect. In 1989-92 an
addition by Charles Gwathmey was constructed and Wright’s building was restored.
As of 2007, the Met measures almost a quarter mile long and occupies more than two million square feet, more than 20 times the size of the original 1880 building.
Stokes would list himself as
"Architect in Chief" for the project and hired Duboy, a sculptor who designed
and made the ornamental sculptures on the
Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument (New York), to
draw up the plans. A contractor sued Stokes in 1907 and he would defend himself
saying that Duboy was in an
insane asylum in Paris -- and should not have
been signing plans for the hotel. Erected between 1899 and 1904, it was the first air conditioned hotel in New York. The building has an 18-story steel frame structure. The exterior is decorated in the Beaux-Art style with a Parisian style Mansard roof. A striking architectural feature is the round corner towers or turrets. Unusually for a Manhattan building, the Ansonia features an open stairwell that sweeps up to a huge, domed skylight. The interior corridors may be the widest in the city. For several years Stokes kept some farm animals on the building's roof next to his personal apartment. The building has the unusual feature of possessing a cattle elevator which enabled milk cows to be stabled on the roof. The Ansonia has had many celebrated residents, including: The baseball champion Babe Ruth; the writer Theodore Dreiser; the conductor Arturo Toscanini; the composer Igor Stravinksy; and the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, who chose the hotel to live in because of its thick walls. By mid-century, the grand apartments had mostly been divided into studios and one-bedroom units almost all of which retained their original architectural detail. After a short debate in the 1960s, a proposal to demolish the building was fought off by its many musical and artistic residents. In 1992 the Ansonia was converted to a condominium apartment building with 430 apartments. By 2007 most of the rent-controlled tenants had moved out, and the small apartments were sold to buyers who purchased clusters of small apartments and threw them together to recreate the grand apartments of the building's glory days, with carefully restored Beaux Arts detail. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Commerce Bank branch on the
ground level plays a documentary covering the history of the Ansonia. The short
video is played in the front of the entrance in the bank. The New York Public Library has branches in the boroughs of Manhattan, The Bronx and Staten Island. New York City's other two boroughs, Brooklyn and Queens, are served by the Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens Borough Public Library respectively. These libraries predate the consolidation of New York City. Currently, the New York Public Library consists of 89 libraries: four non-lending research libraries, four main lending libraries, a library for the blind and physically handicapped, and 77 neighborhood branch libraries in the three boroughs served. All libraries in the NYPL system may be used free of charge by all visitors. As of 2007, the research collections contain 43,975,362 items (books, videotapes, maps, etc.) of which 15,985,192 are books. The Branch Libraries contain 7,299,286 items of which 4,416,812 are books.[1] Together the collections total more than 50 million items, and the books number more than 20 million, a number surpassed by only the Library of Congress and the British Library. If the three public
library systems of New York City were considered as a single entity this unified
library would have 208 branches and a collection of more than 30 million book
volumes, making it the largest public library in the world. The Astor Library was created by John Jacob Astor, an immigrant who became the wealthiest man in America. When he died in 1848, he left $400,000 in his will for the establishment of a library in New York City. The Astor Library opened the following year, 1849. Although it was not a circulating library, it was a major reference library for research.[3] New York's other main library was established by James Lenox and consisted mainly of his extensive collection of rare books (which included the first Gutenberg Bible to come to the New World), manuscripts, and Americana. The Lenox Library was intended primarily for bibliophiles and scholars. While it was free of charge, tickets of admission (such as those that are still required to gain access to the British Library) were still needed by potential users.[3] So although there were already two fine libraries in New York City in 1886 and both were open to the public, neither could be termed a truly public institution in the sense that Tilden seems to have envisioned. But Tilden's vision was soon to come into fruition not only because of the generous bequest he left in his will but because of a man who was a trustee of his estate.[3] By 1892, both the Astor and Lenox libraries were experiencing financial difficulties. Almost as if fate would have it, John Bigelow, a New York attorney, and Tilden trustee, formulated a plan to combine the resources of the financially-strapped Astor and Lenox libraries with the Tilden bequest to form "The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations". Bigelow's plan, signed and agreed upon on May 23, 1895, was hailed as an example of private philanthropy for the public good.[3] The newly established library consolidated with The New York Free Circulating Library in February, 1901, and the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie donated $5.2 million to construct branch libraries, with the requirement that they be maintained by the City of New York. Later in 1901 the New York Public Library signed a contract with the City of New York to operate 39 branch libraries in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island.[3] Unlike most other
great libraries, such as the
Library of Congress, the New York Public
Library was not created by government statute. From the earliest days of the New
York Public Library, a tradition of partnership of city government with private
philanthropy began. A tradition which continues to this day.
The architectural firm of Henry Janeway Hardenbergh was commissioned to do the design for Edward Clark, head of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. The firm also designed the Plaza Hotel. The building's high gables and deep roofs with a profusion of dormers, terracotta spandrels and panels, niches, balconies and balustrades give it a North German Renaissance character, an echo of a Hanseatic town hall. Nevertheless, its layout and floor plan betray a strong influence of French architectural trends in housing design that had become known in New York in the 1870s. According to popular legend, the
Dakota was so named because at the time it was built, the Upper
West Side of Manhattan was
sparsely inhabited and considered as remote as the Dakota
Territory. However, the earliest recorded appearance of this account
is in a 1933 newspaper story. It is more likely that the building was named "The
Dakota" because of Clark's fondness for the names of the new western states and
territories.[5] High
above the 72nd Street entrance, the figure of a Dakota Indian
keeps watch. The Dakota was added to the National
Register of Historic Places in
1972, and was declared a National
Historic Landmark in 1976 The general layout of the
apartments is also in the French style of the period, with all major rooms not
only connected to each other en
filade in the
traditional way, but also accessible from a hall or corridor, an arrangement
that allowed a natural migration for guests from one room to another, especially
on festive occasions, yet gave service staff discreet separate circulation
patterns that offered service access to the main rooms. The principal rooms,
such as parlors or the master bedroom, face the street, while the dining
room, kitchen, and other auxiliary rooms are oriented towards the
courtyard. Apartments are thus aired from two sides, which was a relative
novelty in New York at the time. (In the Stuyvesant building, which was built in
1869, a mere ten years earlier, and which is considered New York's first apartment
building in the French
style, many apartments have windows to one side only.) Some of the drawing rooms
were 49 ft. (about 15 m) long, and many of the ceilings are 14 ft (4.3 m) high;
the floors are inlaid with mahogany,oak,
and cherry (although
in the apartment of Clark, the building's founder, some floors were famously
inlaid with sterling
silver). Originally, the Dakota had 65 apartments with four to twenty rooms, no two alike. These apartments are accessed by staircases and elevators placed in the four corners of the courtyard. Separate service stairs and elevators serving the kitchens are located in mid-block. Built to cater for the well-to-do, the Dakota featured many amenities and a modern infrastructure that was exceptional for the time. The building has a large dining hall; meals could also be sent up to the apartments by dumbwaiters. Electricity was generated by an in-house power plant, and the building has central heating. Besides servants' quarters, there was a playroom and a gymnasium under the roof. (In later years, these spaces on the tenth floor were—for economic reasons—converted into apartments, too.) The lot of the Dakota also comprised a garden and private croquet lawns and a tennis court behind the building between 72nd and 73rd Streets. The Dakota was a huge social success from the very start (all apartments were rented before the building opened), but a long-term drain on the fortune of Clark (who died before it was completed) and his heirs. For the high society of New York, it became fashionable to live in such a building, or to rent at least an apartment as a secondary city residence, and the Dakota's success prompted the construction of many other luxury apartment buildings in New York City.
Famous names associated with the museum include the paleontologist and geologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, president for many years; the dinosaur-hunter of the Gobi Desert, Roy Chapman Andrews (one of the inspirations for Indiana Jones); George Gaylord Simpson; biologist Ernst Mayr; pioneer cultural anthropologists Franz Boas and Margaret Mead; andornithologist Robert Cushman Murphy. J. P. Morgan was also among the famous benefactors of the Museum. The philanthropist Harry Payne Whitney financed the Whitney South Seas Expedition (1920-1932) for the Museum, greatly expanding its collection of biological and anthropological specimens from the south-west Pacific region.
One week after the opening, on 30 May 1883, a rumor that the Bridge was going to collapse caused a stampede, which crushed and killed twelve people. On 17 May 1884, P. T. Barnum helped to squelch doubts about the bridge's stability—while publicizing his famous circus—when one of his most famous attractions, Jumbo, led a parade of 21 elephants over the Brooklyn Bridge. At the time it opened, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world — 50% longer than any previously built — and it has become a treasured landmark. For several years the towers were the tallest structures in the Western Hemisphere. Since the 1980s, it has been floodlit at night to highlight its architectural features. The towers are built of limestone, granite, and Rosendale cement. Their architectural style is Gothic, with characteristic pointed arches above the passageways through the stone towers. The bridge was designed by German-born John Augustus Roebling in Trenton, New Jersey. Roebling had earlier designed and constructed other suspension bridges, such as Roebling's Delaware Aqueduct in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge in Cincinnati, Ohio and the Waco Suspension Bridge in Waco, Texas, that served as the engineering prototypes for the final design. During surveying for the East River Bridge project, Roebling's foot was badly injured by a ferry, pinning it against a pylon; within a few weeks, he died of tetanus. His son, Washington, succeeded him, but in 1872 was stricken with caisson disease (decompression sickness, commonly known as "the bends"), due to working in compressed air in caissons.[12] The occurrence of the disease in the caisson workers caused him to halt construction of the Manhattan side of the tower 30 feet (10 m) short of bedrock when soil tests underneath the caisson found bedrock to be even deeper than expected. Today, the Manhattan tower rests only on sand. [13] Washington's wife, Emily Warren Roebling, became his aide, learning engineering and communicating his wishes to the on-site assistants. When the bridge opened, she was the first person to cross it. Washington Roebling rarely visited the site again. At the time the bridge was built, the aerodynamics of bridge building had not been worked out. Bridges were not tested in wind tunnels until the 1950s — well after the collapse of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge (Galloping Gertie) in 1940. It is therefore fortunate that the open truss structure supporting the deck is by its nature less subject to aerodynamic problems. Roebling designed a bridge and truss system that was six times as strong as he thought it needed to be. Because of this, the Brooklyn Bridge is still standing when many of the bridges built around the same time have vanished into history and been replaced. This is also in spite of the substitution of inferior quality wire in the cabling supplied by the contractor J. Lloyd Haigh — by the time it was discovered, it was too late to replace the cabling that had already been constructed. Roebling determined that the poorer wire would leave the bridge four rather than six times as strong as necessary, so it was eventually allowed to stand, with the addition of 250 cables. Diagonal cables were installed from the towers to the deck, intended to stiffen the bridge. They turned out to be unnecessary, but were kept for their distinctive beauty. After the collapse of the I-35W highway bridge in the city of Minneapolis, increased public attention has been brought to bear on the condition of bridges across the US, and it has been reported that the Brooklyn Bridge approach ramps received a rating of "poor" at its last inspection . According to a NYC Department of Transportation spokesman, "The poor rating it received does not mean it is unsafe. Poor means there are some components that have to be rehabilitated.” A $725 million project to replace the approaches and repaint the bridge is scheduled to begin in 2009. The construction of the Brooklyn
Bridge is detailed in the 1972 book The
Great Bridge by David
McCullough and Brooklyn
Bridge (1980), the first PBS documentary
film ever made byKen
Burns. Burns drew heavily
on McCullough's book for the film and used him as narrator.
The terminal serves commuters traveling on the Metro-North Railroad to Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess counties in New York State, and Fairfield and New Haven counties in Connecticut. Although the terminal has been
properly called "Grand Central Terminal" since 1913, many people continue to
refer to it as "Grand Central Station". Technically, "Grand Central Station" is
the name of the nearby post office, as well as the name of a previous rail
station on the site, and is also used to refer to a New
York City subway station
at the same location.
Macy's was founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy, a Quaker businessman. On the company's first day of business which was October 28, 1858the sales totaled $11.06. Macy had established a dry goods store in downtown Haverhill, Massachusetts in 1851 that initially served the whaling community there. Macy moved to New York City and established a new store named "R. H. Macy & Company" on the corner of 14th Street and 6th Avenue, later expanding to 18th Street and Broadway, on the "Ladies' Mile", the 19th century elite shopping district, where it remained for nearly forty years. In 1875, Macy took on two partners: Robert M. Valentine; and Abiel T. La Forge, and Macy died just two years later in 1877.[2] In 1893, R. H. Macy & Co. was acquired by Isidor Straus and his brother, Nathan Straus, who had previously held a license to sell china and other goods in the Macy's store. In 1902, the flagship store moved uptown to Herald Square at 34th Street and Broadway. Although the Herald Square store initially consisted of just one building, it expanded through new construction, eventually occupying almost the entire block bounded by 7th Avenue on the west, Broadway on the east, 34th Street on the south and 35th Street on the north. Exceptions are the small, pre-existing building on the corner of 34th and Broadway, which carries Macy's famous shopping bag sign under an agreement allowing the Macy's sign, and small pre-existing building on the corner of 35th and 7th. The original Broadway R. H. Macy and Company Store (building), was built in 1901–02 by architects De Lemos & Cordes. It is sheathed in a Palladianfaçade, but has been updated in many details. Other additions to the west were added in 1924, 1928, and 1931, all designed by architect Robert D. Kohn. They are all in the Art Deco style.[3] The building has been designated a National Historic Landmark. It boasts one of the few wooden escalators still in operation. The problem of a pre-existing building also presented itself when Macys built a store on Queens Boulevard in Elmhurst, Queens, New York. This resulted in an architecturally unique round department store on 90 percent of the lot, with a small privately owned house on the corner.
More information on Steinway Hall New York
651 Fifth Avenue at East 52nd Street. Architect Robert W. Gibson The Vanderbilts once ruled these Fifth Avenue blocks with three elaborate mansions on its west side. To insure that commerce wouldn’t intrude, William K. Vanderbilt sold the land at the corner of 52nd Street to fellow millionaire Morton F. Plant, with the stipulation that it be used for a residence for twenty-five years. After the Vanderbilts themselves moved on, Plant asked to have the covenant lifted. Instead, Vanderbilt bought the house for $1 million, much more than it was worth at the time, and rented it to Cartier’s for $50,000 a year, far and away the highest rent anywhere on Fifth Avenue. More information: New York Architecture - Paramount Building 220 e 42nd
Street Architects: Raymond Hood
HSBC BANK
NEW YORK
|
|
All images on this website are Copyright to © Simon Fieldhouse 2009 |
