16. International Mercantile Marine Company Building

AKA: United States Lines Building; Washington Building
Location: 1 Broadway
Built: 1883-1884; reclad 1919-1921
Architects: Edward H. Kendall (1883-1884); Walter B. Chambers (1919-1921)
National Register Number: 91000108
Listed: March 2, 1991
Visited: August 18, 2007



The big plaque on the corner of this building says:

Adjoining this site was the first Dutch fort on Manhattan Island, known as Fort New Amsterdam.

OK, let's stop here for a second. Fort Amsterdam was the giant four-pointed star on the earliest maps of New York. It was there at the founding of New Amsterdam, a settlement of a couple hundred, and it changed hands several times in the dizzying back-and-forth between the Dutch and the English and the Americans (not to mention Jacob Leisler) before demolition in 1790. More about the this site when I do the entry for the U.S. Customs House. Onward...

The first house was erected here before 1664.

Sort of a vague fact, this. The Castello Plan shows the site with a house and farm four years earlier, in 1660. 1664 might've been used because that was the year the British seized New Amsterdam from the Dutch and renamed it New York, and originally the date enshrined on the city flag and seal.

In 1771 Captain Archibald Kennedy built here his residence which was used in 1776 by General Washington as his headquarters...

Well, this place and like a thousand others during the Revolutionary War: Washington moved around a lot.

and later by General Howe during the British occupation. It was later used as a hotel.

OK, adaptive re-use, can't front on that.

It was replaced by the Washington Building...
Now this blows my mind. Did anybody in 1881 complain about this? Didn't it irk people that somebody razed a site with a clear historical connection to The Father of Our Country and replaced it with an an office building? And that in some kind of sick joke, the new building was named after Washington? Well, OK, the idea of historic preservation is still a bit avant-garde at this point. And I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by the freakish naming -- I come from the suburbs, and there's a long-running joke that suburban housing developments are always named after the things they destroy: Shady Grove, Cedar Creek, Whispering Pines, Tasty Meadows, and so on.

Jokes aside, the replacement was actually rather fine. A picture in King's Handbook of New York City 1892 shows a brick feast of mansards, cupolas, and corner bay windows gaping southward. The views must've been a key selling point; King's book also includes thrilling panoramas taken from the building of Battery Park and the Harbor, as well as a somewhat less edifying view of industrial buildings and tenements facing north.

which was transformed in 1920-1921 into this building for occupancy by its owners the International Mercantile Marine Company and known as NO.1 BROADWAY.

"Transformed." Sounds absolutely magical, doesn't it? It was reclad in limestone and largely de-ornamented, that's all, and as such, it's largely not much to look at, though they did think to include seals of the cities the IMMC serviced at the time. I like that. (The U.S. Customhouse across the street has something like that, too, though it features scultpural personifications of great port cities and the continents.)

Oh, and the IMMC owned the Titanic.

15. Battery Park Control House

AKA: Bowling Green IRT Control House
Location: State Street and Battery Place
Built: 1904-1905
Architect: Heins & LaFarge
National Register Number: 80002669
Listed: May 6, 1980
Visited: August 19, 2007



Today in the annals of New York City lostness: the subway entrance. For the IRT, New York City's first subway line, the architects Heins & LaFarge designed handsome iron and glass kiosks and masonry control houses. None of the original kiosks remain. Not one. (The one at Astor Place? A replica from 1985.) Somewhat more substantial structures, three control houses still exist, two still functional. This is one of them. (The other is at West 72nd Street).

Much like our friends at 13 and 15 South William Street, its rounded gables were inspired by the local buildings of 250 years earlier. After all, what better way to dress up the most technologically-advanced municipal facilities of 1908 than with the architectural styles of the Flemish Renaissance?

Thing is tiny, uncomfortably so. Sure, it looks quaint on the outside, but with only two turnstiles, it takes any sizable crowd of people far too long to exit from it. And given that it's the subway exit closest to the Statue of Liberty ferries, there's always a crowd. Sometimes the crazy Statue of Liberty people park in front and the tourists stop and gawk, further blocking the flow of people. Luckily there's a larger entrance between Bowling Green Park and the U.S. Customhouse; otherwise, I'd worry more about people getting crushed should fires (or worse) break out on the platforms below.

14. Bowling Green Fence and Park

Location: Broadway and Beaver Streets
Built: 1733 (Park) and 1771 (Fence)
Architect: Unknown
National Register Number: 80002673
Listed: March 9, 1980
Visited: August 19, 2007



It's New York City's oldest park but the fence gets top billing. It's an actual honest-to-goodness relic from colonial New York City, erected a few years before the Revolutionary War to protect a statue of King George III against vandalism. Once news of the Declaration of Independence hit the city, New Yorkers ripped that fucker right down, hacked off the fence's crown-shaped tips, and in a fine bit of Patriot irony, fashioned the lead into ammunition for use against British soldiers. (Parts of the statue were somehow spirited away by local Tories, eventually making their way to the Museum of the City of New York and the New-York Historical Society.)

In another fine, fine irony: according to legend, the park is the site of Peter Minuit's purchase of Manhattan for $24; today, it faces the New York City branch of the National Museum of the American Indian. Oh and yeah people used to bowl here, just like the ghosts of Irving's "Rip Van Winkle."

Save for a homeless man sleeping on a bunch, the park is empty on the Sunday I visit. It's well-kept, full of geraniums in bloom and liatris (I think) leaning over the fence, and has a kind of wildness that it lacked only a few years ago, but still, such a tiny spot of green especially compared to the nearby Battery Park. And yet there's enough of a habitat to warrant a Parks Department sign on the fence noting the presence of peregrine falcons in the area. The tourists avoid it, preferring instead to take pictures of Arturo Di Modica's Charging Bull: they want to see what they've already seen on the tee-vee.

13. City Pier A

AKA: Pier A, Liberty Gateway
Location: South end of Battery Place at Hudson River
Built: 1884-1886
Architect: George Sears Greene, Jr.
National Register Number: 75001203
Listed: June 27, 1975
Visited: August 19, 2007



While I don't intend to pay for the New York Times article this realdeal.net story is based on, it seems as if something is FINALLY going to happen to this pier, which has been under scaffolding as long as I can remember. And as long as I can remember, its immediate surroundings have been growing in beauty and utility. Robert F. Wagner Jr. park, where I took most of the pier photos, was always pleasant to begin with, but today, the rows of trees that once seemed like a token effort towards greenery when I first knew them now form a canopy -- it's dark underneath! -- and the gardens were filled with buzzy insects, a sure sign of an intelligently designed habitat. (Take care of the insects and the rest will follow, I say.) Compared to all this, the unrefinished pier is an oasis of visual confusion.



The NYC Economic Development Corporation's plans for the pier using it for ferry service to and from the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island; after spending nearly a whole hour in the heat on a line for these ferries a few weeks ago, all I can say is godspeed.

10. Castle Clinton National Monument

Location: South Ferry
Built: 1808-1811
Architects: Lt. Col. Jonathan Williams and John McComb, Jr.
National Register Number: 66000537
Listed: October 15, 1966
Visited: August 4, 2007



Castle Clinton is about as wide (200 feet) as its sister, Castle Williams, but for some reason not quite as tall and as imposing. Time has tamed it, anyway. If it ever looked fearsome, it looks largely harmless now; maybe not ready to crumble (though the open roof, a modern addition, sags a bit) but cracks show it to be mortal. Little bits of stucco still left on the pimple-cratered sandstone attesting to better uses, better times.



Better times? OK, OK, I know this stuff by heart now. Bear with me here. Like Castle Williams, Castle Clinton (originally called "West Battery") was built between 1808 and 1811 to defend New York against the hostile British, even though neither fort ever saw war. Then when the military was done with it, it became a fancy restaurant and entertainment center called "The Castle Garden." Then it became an opera house. Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale, sang there. (Oh, you don't know about Jenny Lind? Whatever.) Morse demonstrated the telegraph there, too. They added a roof. It looked fucking amazing. Then it became the "Emigrant Landing Depot," processing about eight million immigrants between 1855 to 1890, all in space about less volume than a Staples. Then the infinitely more commodious Ellis Island took over its immigration duties. Then it became an aquarium. (McKim, Mead, and White designed it.) It looked like this:



Then after it closed, Robert Moses demolished all the pretty additions and nearly the whole thing, too, because he wanted to build a bridge on top of it, and also because he was a gigantic crybaby douchebag who always had to have his way. Then it was declared a National Monument by Congress. Then, for almost 35 years, nothing. Then in 1975, hooray, it opened back up, right in time for the Bicenntenial, hooray! Hooray!



Today it's uh um well IT EXISTS, which is nice. People come here to buy tickets for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. It's also a very nice venue for free concerts during the summertime: I saw the Magnetic Fields there in August 2000 before a tremendous thunderstorm ended all the fun.



I suppose this is not nothing. I suppose this is nice. After all, hundreds of thousands of people pass through its walls every year. But undeniably it's playing a second banana role to it younger, sexier, leggier National Monument cousins. I was the only tourist on one of the NPS' guided tours two Sundays ago. No surprise there -- who wants to tour of what amounts to a really historical ticket booth? The aquarium was a more noble use. A mini-Ellis Island would be keen. (Eight Daddinos and four D'Addinos passed through this place!) Hell, I'd settle for a skatepark at this point.