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Herald Square Hotel

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Herald Square Hotel, though grossly altered, remains a bright spot on West 31st Street – just across the street and down the block from the larger Hotel Wolcott. It’s also where some fascinating histories intersect.

The building, designed by Carrère & Hastings, was erected as the home of Life magazine in 1900. At the time, Life was the upscale humor magazine that discovered Charles Dana Gibson, the artist behind the famous “Gibson Girls.” Other contributors included Robert “Believe It Or Not!” Ripley and Norman Rockwell. Gibson had a studio in the building, and took over Life magazine after John Mitchell, one of the founders, died in 1918. The magazine went into decline, and was forced to sell the building. Ultimately Henry Luce bought Life for its name.

The building was converted to an apartment hotel in 1937 and has changed hands several times. It was purchased by the Puchall family in 1970, and restored over the years. However, the family made drastic alterations to the top floors in 1995, eliminating the mansard roof.

Herald Square Hotel Vital Statistics
  • Location: 19 W 31st Street, between Fifth Avenue and Broadway
  • Year completed: 1900
  • Architect: Carrère & Hastings
  • Floors: 8
  • Style: Beaux Arts
Herald Square Hotel Suggested Reading

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Tenderloin Precinct

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New York’s “Tenderloin” district, aka “Satan’s Circus,” demanded a police station that “look[s] like a police station” according to then-Police Commissioner William McAdoo. The result was the fortress-like Tenderloin Precinct (officially the 23rd Precinct) Station House. The precinct has been renamed (7th, 14th, Midtown South) and the building’s occupant is now the NYPD Traffic Control Division, but the building is as imposing as ever.

When the 23rd Precinct Station House was built, the neighborhood was known as the city’s most corrupt red light district. The “Tenderloin” name was coined by police Captain Alexander “Clubber” Williams, who bragged after being transferred to the precinct in 1876 that after living off of chuck steak, he would now get some of the tenderloin [graft]. Williams was forced out of the department in 1895 – reputedly a millionaire.

The original building plans, wrote Commissioner McAdoo, “…looked like a second-class apartment-house. It gave no suggestion of its official character, and the internal arrangements were more fanciful than practical.” The architect, R. Thomas Short, was in fact better known as a designer of apartment buildings. But Short redesigned the station house with guidance from McAdoo and a committee of veteran police officers.

The building got mixed reviews – some critics considered it a model station, others thought it overly dramatic. The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission gave the building landmark status Dec. 15, 1998.

R. Thomas Short was prolific, with many notable buildings to his credit, including Red House, Alwyn Court Apartments, and the Studio Building.

Tenderloin Precinct Vital Statistics
  • Location: 134 W 30th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues
  • Year completed: 1908
  • Architect: R. Thomas Short
  • Floors: 5
  • Style: Medieval Revival
  • New York City Landmark: 1998
Tenderloin Precinct Suggested Reading

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Church of St. Francis of Assisi

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The Church of St. Francis of Assisi is a colorfully ornate example of Gothic Revival – more colorful than what we’re accustomed to in sacred architecture. The mosaics on the outside are just a hint of what you’ll find inside – the upper church contains what was once said to be the largest mosaic in the United States, “The Glorification of the Mother of Jesus” (1925).

The church has a colorful history, too. It was created as the result of a dispute between the Bishop of New York and trustees of the nearby church St. John the Baptist. The pastor, Father Zachary Kunz, petitioned the Bishop to open a new church, and St. Francis of Assisi was the result.

Alas, the church became a “parish without parishioners” as working class residents moved out of the neighborhood in the late 1800s-early 1900s. That’s the period of time when the district became known as “The Tenderloin.” The Franciscan Friars who ran the church began ministering to people who worked, rather than lived, in the neighborhood. This meant celebrating Mass throughout the day and night, among other things. Of more recent historical note, Fr. Mychal Judge, O.F.M., a chaplain of the New York Fire Department, died at the World Trade Center South Tower on Sept. 11, 2001. Father Mychal became the first officially recorded fatality following the terrorist attack.

Church of St. Francis of Assisi Vital Statistics
  • Location: 135 W 31st Street
  • Year completed: 1892
  • Architect: Henry Erhardt
  • Style: Gothic Revival
Church of St. Francis of Assisi Suggested Reading

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The Epic

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The Epic is controversial for its height and glass curtain wall construction amid a neighborhood of predominantly 1900s low-rise masonry. But its innovative design is the answer to many prayers: The 59-floor tower contains a friary, a lodge for cancer patients, a garage, and 459 apartments – including 92 reserved for low-income tenants. The friars and the American Cancer Society own their portions of the building, and the friars also have part-ownership of the apartments, which provides the church with regular income. To top it all, the building is certified “green.”

The Epic dwarfs its next-door-neighbor, the Church of St. Francis of Assisi. But that’s OK with the church – in fact, the tower was their idea.

The existing friary needed expensive repairs; the church opted to replace rather than repair the building. The friars bought adjoining land and invited developers to come up with plans. The winning proposal seemed to have something for everyone. NewYork.Construction.com has an excellent feature describing the project’s challenges and solutions.

In its website, architects FXFOWLE explains: “As the design architects, FXFOWLE have elegantly resolved varying programs and identities for The Epic, a residential tower. The project uses the air rights of the St. Francis of Assisi Friary to create a mixed-use tower, with an extension of offices, a chapel, a library, and housing for the Friars at the base. The building also includes a new headquarters for the American Cancer Society and the Hope Lodge treatment center and hospice. The four story façade on 32nd Street incorporates an expansive glass and shadow box curtain wall to give the Society its own strong identity. Above the base, the tower consists of 460 units of luxury housing. The varying façade layers respond to the program elements on the interior, rationalizing the irregular footprint with a gradation from a solid inner armature to a perforated colonnade and a transparent, flared outer layer. A terrace, with an open brick colonnade that frames the iconic Manhattan views, creates a unique amenity for the building’s residents.”

The Epic Vital Statistics
  • Location: 125 W 31st Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues
  • Year completed: 2007
  • Architects: Schuman, Lichtenstein, Clamon & Efron; FXFOWLE Architects
  • Floors: 59
  • Style: Postmodern
The Epic Suggested Reading

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Greeley Square Building

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Greeley Square Building was designed by Gronenberg & Leuchtag, prolific architects who specialized in residential projects in New York City. The Renaissance Revival-style office building is attractive and prominent, one block south of Greeley Square, but by no means famous. But it does point to a minor mystery.

The firm of Gronenberg & Leuchtag filed 309 new building applications in New York City between 1910 and 1931, according to the Office of Metropolitan History new buildings database (based on NYC Department of Buildings records). As mentioned, the company specialized in residential buildings, but also designed hotels, commercial office buildings, lofts, houses of worship, theaters, even Turkish baths.

Yet there doesn’t seem to be a real record of the architects. No books, no Wikipedia entry, no website pages about Gronenberg & Leuchtag. Lots of complimentary references to the firm in listings and articles about G & L buildings – references to “the famed Gronenberg & Leuchtag,” and “the prolific Gronenberg & Leuchtag,” but no articles (that I could find with Google) about the Gronenberg & Leuchtag firm or its principals. The most that I could find, in several hours of online research, was this paragraph from the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission’s Grand Concourse Historic District Designation Report:

Herman Gronenberg and Albert J. H. Leuchtag formed a successful architectural partnership and were active in the first decades of the 20th century. The firm specialized in the design of apartment buildings and examples of their work can be seen in the Upper East Side and Extension, Expanded Carnegie Hill, NoHo, and Greenwich Village Historic Districts. Gronenberg died in 1931 and five years later the New York Times announced that A. J. H. Leuchtag had resumed the practice of architecture. In the Grand Concourse Historic District the firm designed five apartment buildings.

So today’s puzzle: How can architects who averaged a new building application every 25 days for 21 years remain so invisible? If you know the answer, please let me know. Thank you!

Greeley Square Building Vital Statistics
  • Location: 875 Sixth Avenue / 101 W31st Street
  • Year completed: 1927
  • Architect: Gronenberg & Leuchtag
  • Floors: 25
  • Style: Renaissance Revival
Greeley Square Building Suggested Reading

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Radio Wave Building

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Radio Wave Building is the westernmost structure in the Madison Square North Historic District, designed by August Hatfield in Queen Anne style and erected in 1883. Although well executed and well preserved (save for the loss of the Mansard roof), the building’s main claim to fame is that during its tenure as the Gerlach Hotel it was the home and laboratory of Nikola Tesla, who gave us radio, alternating current, neon and florescent lights, spark plugs and remote control. (Not to mention artificial lightning from Tesla Coils!)

The Yugoslav-American Bicentennial Committee placed a plaque on the building to commemorate Tesla on Jan. 7, 1977 – the anniversary of Tesla’s death. But the building has a more fitting memorial that would make Nikola smile: A ground-floor tenant is Broadway Wireless Center, whose window is lit in neon and florescent tubes.

Nikola Tesla has several other memorials in midtown. A bust of Nikola Tesla was erected at the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sava, two blocks south of the Radio Wave Building. There’s another memorial plaque on the Hotel New Yorker (W34th Street at Eighth Avenue), where Tesla lived for 10 years – and died. And there’s a “Tesla Corner” at Sixth Avenue and W40th Street, where Nikola liked to feed the pigeons.

Nikola Tesla had a fascinating – though often tragic – life. Follow the Tesla links below to learn more.

Radio Wave Building Vital Statistics
  • Location: 49 W 27th Street between Broadway and Sixth Avenue
  • Year completed: 1883
  • Architect: August Hatfield
  • Floors: 11
  • Style: Queen Anne
  • New York City Landmark: 2001
Radio Wave Building Suggested Reading

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Mercantile Building

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The Mercantile Building, once considered the world’s fourth-tallest building, was owned by Frederick William Vanderbilt. Frederick was grandson of Cornelius “The Commodore” Vanderbilt, whose New York Central Railroad was headquartered a few blocks away in what is now the Helmsley Building.

The building was also known as Chase Tower – named for Chase Brass and Copper, not the bank.

The Mercantile Building was the last building in New York City to leave Thomas Edison’s original DC (direct current) power grid. It switched to AC on Nov. 14, 2007.

Mercantile Building Vital Statistics
  • Location: 10 E 40th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues
  • Year completed: 1929
  • Architect: Ludlow & Peabody
  • Floors: 48
  • Style: Art Deco
Mercantile Building Suggested Reading

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Gouverneur Court

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Gouverneur Court is the old Gouverneur Hospital, erected in 1897 to serve immigrants on the Lower East Side. It has been modified several times, including the addition of a fifth floor in 1930. In the 1960s the hospital was converted to a school for special needs children. A botched restoration in the 1980s was repaired in 1992-93. Gouverneur Court is now assisted living housing for low income and special needs residents.

(Gouverneur Court was flooded during Hurricane Sandy, with an estimated $150,000 in damage.)

The building has been wrapped in a cocoon of regulations and financing agreements to prevent conversion to condos.

The property seems well maintained – even the ubiquitous cell phone transmitters have been painted brick red, to blend in better. But the south wing seems to have been restored (or originally built?) with less terra cotta detailing than the north wing. Compare the way that the windows are arched and trimmed.

The building’s South Street facade is the most picturesque, with two wings of tiered, curved, iron rail-enclosed verandahs.

Gouverneur Court Vital Statistics
  • Location: 621 Water Street at Gouverneur Street
  • Year completed: 1897
  • Architect: John Rochester Thomas
  • Floors: 6
  • Style: Renaissance
  • National Register of Historic Places: Oct. 29, 1982
Gouverneur Court Suggested Reading

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Municipal Building

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When the well-respected McKim, Mead and White entered the design competition for the Municipal Building as a favor to then-Mayor George B. McClellan, the firm had never designed a skyscraper. Yet their William Mitchell Kendall came up with a plan that not only won the competition, it served as a model for at least ten other buildings in the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

The design inspired Cleveland’s Terminal Tower (1930), Chicago’s Wrigley Building (1920) and Moscow’s “Seven Sisters” – seven Stalin-era structures designed at the end of World War II (an eighth was designed but never built).

The Municipal Building, in turn, was inspired by the 1196 Giralda Tower in Seville – originally a mosque’s minaret, then annexed by the cathedral that replaced the mosque. An earlier minaret – Koutoubia, in Morocco – may have inspired Giralda tower. (See the New York Architecture – Giralda Towers article.)

The Municipal Building also borrowed its central arch from Rome’s Arch of Constantine, and the colonnade from Bernini’s at St. Peter’s. (Chambers Street used to pass under the Municipal Building, through the arch.)

The building is the first building in New York to incorporate a subway station in its base. (The 4, 5 and 6 Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall and J, M and Z Chambers Street stops have a common entry via the building’s southern arcade.)

“Civic Fame,” the 25-foot-tall gilded statue atop the Municipal Building, is New York’s third-tallest statue, after the Statue of Liberty and “Bellerophon Taming Pegasus” at the Columbia Law School. Like the Statue of Liberty, “Civic Fame” is a hollow copper shell on an iron frame. The statue’s left arm fell off in 1936, crashing through a 26th-floor skylight into what was then a cafeteria.

Municipal Building is among the world’s largest governmental buildings, built to accommodate the agencies governing the five boroughs, consolidated in 1898. The 40-story monument houses more than 2,000 employees in nearly 1 million square feet of space.

The Municipal Building has appeared in several films (including 1984’s Ghostbusters), television shows and video games. The building was designated a NYC landmark in 1966 – only 52 years after completion. (And the Landmarks Preservation Commission itself moved into the building in 2001.)

Municipal Building Vital Statistics
  • Location: 1 Centre Street at Chambers Street
  • Year completed: 1914
  • Architect: William M. Kendall (McKim, Mead and White)
  • Floors: 40
  • Style: Renaissance
  • New York City Landmark: 1966
  • National Register of Historic Places: 1972
Municipal Building Suggested Reading

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Park Row Building

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Park Row Building was a beginning and an ending: A beginning of really tall buildings, on new iron and steel frames; an ending of horizontal divisions in skyscraper design.

When it was completed in 1899, the 30-story Park Row Building was the tallest building in New York City and the tallest office building in the world. Architects of the day were still undecided on what style to use for skyscrapers. Commercial structures until then had been given a layered look, with cornices and other horizontal bands of decoration. But in the 1890s a consensus was growing that skyscrapers should be designed like a classical column, with a substantial base, a relatively plain shaft and an ornate capital.

Robert H. Robertson, the Park Row Building’s architect, seems to have a foot on both sides of the design chasm.

On one hand, the Park Row facade has three distinct vertical sections, which emphasize the building’s height, and a substantial limestone base and ornate crown. On the other hand, it also has six horizontal divisions, which diminish the building’s height. Robertson himself wrote that he had tried to make the building “look less than its real height,” according to The New York Times.

The real height was impossible to hide: it was two or three times taller than its neighbors. The twin copper-domed cupolas made the building more distinctive. Park Row Building held 950 offices, in which 4,000 employees worked daily. Ten elevators, arranged in a semicircle, each week carried 100,000 people and traveled about 1,000 miles according to one real estate journal. Among the building’s prominent first tenants were the Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) and the new Associated Press.

The developers picked a heck of a place to be conspicuous: The site was in “Newspaper Row,” the center of the newspaper industry from the 1840s to the 1920s and rich in professional critics. And the critics found faults. They complained that the Park Row Building had completely plain side and rear facades – no applied styling at all. The light courts facing Ann Street and Theatre Alley were braced with exposed steel beams. The shape of the building itself – dictated by the odd conglomeration of seven adjoining lots – made the tower ungainly.

In May of 1920 the Park Row Building found more notoriety: Andrea Salsedo, being held by the Justice Department in connection with a seven-city anarchist bombing spree, fell from the 14th floor. The anarchist version: He was pushed. The police version: He jumped.

Fast Forward

In 2002 the Park Row Building was converted to mixed use. The bottom 10 floors remain commercial – most being used by electronics retailer J & R; the top floors have been converted to 210 apartments. Conversion plans included turning the three-story cupolas into triplex apartments.

(Robert H. Robertson earlier designed the 20-story American Tract Society Building, two blocks away, and the seven-story Lincoln Building on Union Square West and a dozen other notable structures of all types.)

Park Row Building Vital Statistics
  • Location: 15 Park Row, between Ann and Beekman Streets
  • Year completed: 1899
  • Architect: Robert H. Robertson
  • Floors: 30
  • Style: Classical Revival
  • New York City Landmark: 1999
  • National Register of Historic Places: 2005
Park Row Building Suggested Reading

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