This is the last in the relaunch series of posts where we lay out in broad strokes the blueprint for building New York City on the island of Manhattan. Future posts will put people in the picture, and refer back to these foundational posts when needed.
Every city has its unique set of original conditions, primary are geography and the mission statement of the first settlers…the why. Manhattan’s geography at every level of the map, coupled with the city’s start as a business enterprise and company town under the Dutch, continue to influence and permeate the attitudes, lives and mindsets of New Yorkers today. That said, no other city developed under remotely similar circumstances: at the tip of an island with water on three sides, in the center of a global trade network, and with a runway of land extending a dozen miles north; the island itself was a pier where men gathered to “fish” for boats and cargo at one end, using piers and ropes in lieu of rod and reel. Owning parts of the “runway of land” was the best century-long and longer real estate position in history. The first major zoning laws came after most all of Manhattan’s neighborhoods were developed into downtown districts of two “layer-cake blocks” (an early home, and then a tenement, warehouse or bank), and uptown three “layer-cake blocks” of built environment (a home; commercial culture; commercial business).
The progression of an American culture—how we lived, worked, shopped, dined out, and entertained each other and ourselves—was caught up in so many parts and pieces through acts of unintentional preservation by a procession of buildings for business, manufacturing, industry and trade running roughshod over fashionable venues, cultural institutions and the requisite parts of world class city centers.
Times Square and Herald Square, New York’s middle class theater and shopping districts (geo-spatially speaking), were later recreated with malls in the suburbs. From the blocks above Times Square (today’s Midtown Business District), New York sent out radio and television waves to the suburbs and the country, along with books, magazines, newspapers, music, advertising and automobiles, and of course the theater district itself (and national touring companies). Virtually all of American entertainment can be traced further down Broadway with vaudeville, and further still down the Bowery with earlier variety shows and the “American Songbook.”
At the vanguard were the finest shops, theaters, hotels and museums, select restaurants and clubs, a rarified nexus of exalted social scenes and elevated cliques; a world class city that was always being displaced by expanding centers of commercial cultures, followed by growing districts of factories and office towers coming up from below. A high commercial social order followed in the direct path of upper class, elite residential suburbs with which it often spatially merged. Around Madison Square during the Gilded Age, upper class society precipitated middle class department stores, popular theaters and novel forms of shared-living situations. West of Broadway above 23rd Street was the Tenderloin, a nightlife district of saloons, brothels, and gambling halls.
While New York seems like a chaotic and incoherent cityscape, especially between City Hall and Central Park, what unfolded was a determined, structured process, one that became more structured and fine-tuned upon entering the grid. Accounting for geography, and in a feedback loop with transit, patterns emerged that sustained from the time of outhouses, fireplaces, and water pumps, to subways, apartment buildings and skyscrapers. One theme permeated the ongoing construction and multi-modal expansion of living, working and playing that ran up Broadway and Fifth Avenue: continual class disposition. While not necessarily surprising, what is surprising is how natural and organic the process was across generations. It is the thing the built environment most faithfully and consistently reflects and represents. The wealthy not only moved away from the poor, they moved away from the middle class when they grew around them in Madison Square. It’s often said Patrician class families like the Astors and Schermerhorns were moving away from the “industrial evils” of the garment trade, but more proximate in time and space to their departures from Madison Square to Central Park were the experimental forms of apartment-style living sprouting up all around them (Madison Square contains a rich history and variety of the proto-apartment building).
It would be another generation before the wealthiest accepted apartment life, and so single family homes made it all the way to Central Park in New York history. Apartment buildings often replaced homes, which once filled virtually every block of Manhattan down to the Battery. Over a remarkably short 60 years, three generations of Astors went from City Hall (1830s) to Central Park (1890s), with stopovers in SoHo (less than 20 years) and Madison Square (about 40 years) in between. Now that we’re reaching a 400 year history, we can broadly say Manhattan’s low built environment came in the third quarter, while skyscrapers came in the fourth.
The upshot is a wide diversity of architectural forms and styles uptown, for the upper and middle classes, and a dearth of architectural variety and forms downtown in working class neighborhoods around the Bowery and the Lower East Side, where the form is the tenement and not much else, though they could be quite striking and beautiful in basic dimensions.
In the interim districts of SoHo and Madison Square the blockfronts of New York are characterized by a general profusion of the most beautiful buildings ever built for what we would consider today the most mundane, commercial, and industrial purposes.
Six principles undergird all of Manhattan’s development, both the uptown moving waves of development (live, work and play), and the downtown districts that did not uproot, but expanded in place (tenements, banks and warehouses).
Four of the six points were covered in earlier posts, and are linked accordingly, the other two are discussed below.
The Six Principles that Built Manhattan
Patterns of Growth Accelerated after Consolidation
See post: How Business Overran the City: A leapfrog of white collar work
Architecture: Use and Technology, Not Style
When bringing sense and order to New York’s built environment, whether a building was a home, shop or warehouse, and whether it was brick, cast iron or steel frame, are more important than whether it was Greek Revival, Gothic or Renaissance (despite architectural styles being the aspect of architecture people are most interested in). Although styles can confirm a building’s history in time-and-space, there are problems relying on a building’s architectural style as a first measure for making sense of history; simply, anyone can build a building that looks like anything, anywhere, anytime.
A Greek Revival building on 34th Street near Park Ave South was listed in a prominent guidebook as: “1840s?” The wiggle room of the punctuation aside, knowing the area was still farms in the 1840s, while not preposterous for New York, still seemed out of place for the time, and further research revealed it was built in 1912 as a bank in the retro style.
While there aren’t many architectural anachronisms in the streetscape, the fact they exist makes it at least problematic to use styles as anything more than informal guides.
No one should mistake the Beaux Art treatment of the Dutch form and stepped-gables of 13 and 15 So. William Street (CPH Gilbert, 1903/09) as survivors from New Amsterdam (left). The architect put the year on one of the building (as the Dutch actually did, too) perhaps to be sure of no confusion.
Fraunces Tavern at 54 Pearl Street is an extraordinary architectural recreation, built in 1908 in the 18th century Georgian style (below).
The fenestration and 2nd floor window lintels are consistent across all three images of what look like completely different buildings. The original Stephen Delancey home (1719), alterations (1890), and its eventual makeover as an architectural homage.
Fraunces Tavern was the site of George Washington’s farewell dinner with his officers at the end of the Revolutionary War. It was a turning point in Western Civilization; when absolute power was his to take, Washington stepped down to abide a process, returned home, and was later elected first president. So sublime a moment in world history to that point, it warranted the Sons of the Revolution to recreate the building in the early Georgian style.
But even with anachronisms in the streetscape, using architectural styles to make sense of a deeper history leads to near meaningless relationships and correlations. Trends permeated the zeitgeist in homes, shops, hotels, banks and warehouses. Tribeca has 450 historic buildings ranging from 25′-wide loft buildings to full-block warehouses, built over six decades, and dressed in at least seven styles: Italianate, French Second Empire (and the obligatory mix of the two), Neogrec, Queen Ann, Romanesque Revival, Renaissance Revival and Neo-Renaissance. Architectural styles bring a geo-spatial chronology and order to a neighborhood, and how different styles grew out of and evolved from one to another is a rich and fascinating subject. But how the styles of Tribeca relate to corresponding development in other parts of town is not a fruitful path of deep discovery (or it is too many paths of very deep discoveries). Any correlation between architectural style and how the city developed exists only because there’s an even greater correlation between architectural technology and class-based location-market use. Occam’s razor suggests we look at the aspect of architecture most directly tied to profit margins, building use and size, not style; if all of Manhattan were built in a single architectural style, there’s no reason to think the height profiles of the city’s buildings, blocks and neighborhoods would be any different than they are now.
Bigger Buildings Replaced Smaller Ones
The MO was simple and straight forward on its face and at its core: New York City real estate developers practiced the art of making money from densities: bigger, taller buildings replacing shorter, narrower ones on continually re-purposed land.
I’m aware of just a few exceptions. The St. Nicholas Hotel (1854) was the finest hotel in the city when it opened on Broadway between Spring and Prince. It was bigger than its predecessor “monster hotel,” the Metropolitan (1852), one block uptown and across the street, of which nothing remains. It was the first hotel to surpass Astor House (1836) in refinements and luxury services. It opened a second section within a year to take up the entire Broadway block with 1,000 rooms. Two sections from the addition continue in the streetwall on Broadway today.
The other exception is the oft-cited example that “proved the rule.” Considering his stature, to deliberately not develop New York’s most expensive piece of real estate, JP Morgan was making a seismic statement. His many neighbors overlooking his headquarters were quite the benefactors.
Drexel, Morgan & Co. (Gilman, 1873). Library of Congress.
23 Wall Street (Trow & Livingston, 1914)
One can almost decode the history of a block simply arranging buildings by height, shortest to tallest, and you’ve got their chronological order as well.
City Hall was the Epicenter of Growth
See post: City Hall: Epicenter
Development Followed transit
The city was pushed uptown by immigration, pulled uptown by high society, and pumped uptown by the daily act of commuting to work.
see post: Manhattan’s two-part skyline
Every Building Use Moved Uptown
Everything eventually moved uptown…from homes, shops, and factories, to tenements, banks and warehouses.
See post: City Hall: Epicenter
These are the six fundamental rules underlying the process of building New York City on the Island of Manhattan.
I look forward to future posts with pictures and insights about the city, and look forward to a Selected Bibliography page coming soon!