74. Fleming Smith Warehouse

Location: 451-453 Washington Street
Built: 1891-92
Architect: Stephen Decatur Smith
National Register Number: 83001745
Listed: May 26, 1983
Visited: May 21, 2008



Warehouses. The 21st Century knows them as the giant zombie husks, sequestered in industrial parks out in the suburbs where nobody has to look at them much. Not even their employees, for many have none, populated by automated robots carrying goods of the long-tail back and forth in a 24/7 dreamless sleep. Their sole concession to organic life are long, bland lawns. To design a warehouse as if it was something other than a box to contain smaller boxes is a defiant waste of money and materials. Boxes and robots do not need pretty.



The old-timey fractables of the Fleming Smith reference the warehouses of Amsterdam (and New Amsterdam) that, in their heyday, took after their residential betters, and were a part of a city's fabric not some alienated outliers; like their cousins across the puddle, it transformed into a damn fine place to live, being one of the first residential conversions in Tribeca. Unless future society in structured in terms of enormous communes and not discrete families, it is hard to imagine that today's warehouses will ever get that kind of second life.

The National Register nomination form: "Nothing is known about Fleming Smith at this time." Well, fuck.

73. American Thread Building

A.K.A.: Wool Exchange Building
Location: 260 West Broadway
Built: 1894-96
Architect: William B. Tubby
National Register Number: 04001532
Listed: January 20, 2005
Visited: May 21 and 24, 2008



This building's NRHP registration form details the neat irony of how it's housed, in successive order, a commodities exchange for wool, a thread company, and in its current incarnation as a residential conversion, fashion models. That's three steps in the production chain of apparel: materials to manufacture to promotion. (Or, more pretentiously, three steps in the economic organization of the United States: pre-industrial to industrial to post-industrial.)

The building's history actually wasn't quite as tidy as my glib description makes it sound. The wool exchange lasted only two years while The American Thread Company stayed here from 1901 to 1964. What happened after the move but before the conversion is a little murky to me, but in 1979, it served as an exhibition space where a 20-year-old Keith Haring painted one of the ephemeral--and unremovable--works he first made his name with. Astonishingly, the mural was rediscovered last December by contractors developing the space into a triplex.

Now I like Haring just fine--even though his work's become as dully commonplace in gay homes as a rainbow flag, the stuff that's almost purely non-representational cartoon form is still eye-bustingly beautiful. But what's left of the mural seems so very shabby compared to the triplex itself (at least in its life as a 3D rendering), obscenely spacious and light-filled in a way few New York City residences ever are.

72. US Post Office--Canal Street Station

A.K.A.: Canal Street Station
Location: 350 Canal Street
Built: 1937
Architect: Alan Balch Mills
National Register Number: 88002358
Listed: May 11, 1989
Visited: May 21 and 24, 2008



When it was built back in the middle of the Great Depression, this Art Moderne block of dusty rose pink must've been a curious apparition, sited as it was in the middle of a neighborhood still largely defined by manual labor. And it was doubly curious as much federal architecture of the time was still so keyed to classicism, so much so that at the time Lewis Mumford could bemoan "...the Georgian post offices designed to make us believe that nothing has happened in the world since the Constitution was signed..." (It's hard to understand, though, how a Georgian post office could be intended--or succeed--as a denial of the present when the ugly fact of Depression filled every nook and cranny of experience.)



As the neighborhood's fortunes fell and rose, and as Art Moderne gave way to...whatever, little arrived to match it. It's still a streamlined counterpoint to the complications of Canal Street, what with its crowded sidewalks and its car stereo stores.

Honestly, I can only like it in a belittling way. It's like a flea market knick-knack that might've once graced a respectable middle class home but can now be gotten for a few bucks: dated, and looking cheaper than it did when it was new, but not lacking in charm. Maybe it's the pink.

71. Building at 361 Broadway

A.K.A.: 361 Broadway; James S. White Building
Location: 361 Broadway
Built: 1881-1882
Architect: W. Wheeler Smith
National Register Number: 83001718
Listed: September 14, 1983
Visited: May 21 and 24, 2008



I believe most of these landmarks will last forever. I do. I really, absolutely do. I must believe it. It will cripple me to think otherwise. There will be no suitcase nuke in Herald Square, the oceans will rise but not totally engulf New York City, gray goo will be containable, the Mayans were wrong or maybe mistranslated or something. The Manhattan of 3008 will have pockets of familiarity, SoHo and Greenwich Village looking more or less like SoHo and Greenwich Village, but with lasers and robots. WELL IT FUCKING BETTER, anyway. And when humans evolve into super-intelligent abstractions shed of all ties to time, space, and matter, we'll just loan out our old habitats to a bright young up-and-comer species that deserves a nice break.





After a long period of less-than-optimal treatment, New York's cast-irons have by and large made into the twenty-first century in fine style. 287 Broadway, called The Leaning Tower of Broadway when the demolition next door caused it to tilt eight inches, is an obvious exception. So is 361 Broadway seven blocks down the street, although its structural integrity isn't question. Yet the elements are still taking it back. Its surface is tinted with rust. Paint's flaked off, exposing dark metal underneath at corners and edges and making it look like it's being attacked by black fungus.

It's possible this decay is a relatively recent development. The National Register nomination form published in 1983 (and available at the New York State Historic Preservation Office website) describes it as "well cared for" and the attached photos bear this out. The images at Tom Fletcher's site show a little rust but nothing like the encrustations you see today. It's sad to see 361 crumble away, ever so slightly, dispersed to the world. It'd be better if it was sparkling white. Yet the decay is oddly flattering to the building. The swirls of orangey rust on the columns, contrasted with the teal window sills: an excavation from Pompeii on Franklin Street.



361 Broadway is now home to one of the branches of Nyack College. Traditionally, 361 was home to textile concerns, but Scientific American also had their offices here at the turn of the century. Ideally they should pitch in some loot towards the restoration of the building. Not just for old times sake--I mean, c'mon, do they fucking care about the future or not?

69. Building at 85 Leonard Street

A.K.A.: The Bogardus Building; Kitchen, Montross & Wilcox Store
Location: 85 Leonard Street
Built: 1860-61
Architect: James Bogardus
National Register Number: 80002675
Listed: April 23, 1980
Visited: May 18 and 21, 2008



James Bogardus' cast-iron façade for 75 Murray Street partitions floor from floor and window from window using thick and gooey detailing. His work for 85 Leonard, built only a few years later, is an altogether different expression. Designed in the "sperm-candle" style popular in its day, it has long above-ground columns that straddle two stories, and restrained spandrel panels separating unusually wide windows. These details emphasize continuity rather then segmentation--as well as verticality, in what was perhaps a reflection of an embryonic building-height arms race.

As you can see from the photo, 85's neighbors on Leonard also partake in the sperm-candle style. Even though they're done in brick and stone rather than iron, together they create a continuous stretch of architectural forms as pleasuable as any townhouse row in Greenwich Village.

68. St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church

A.K.A.: Old St. Peter's Church; Church of St. Peter
Location: 22 Barclay Street
Built: 1836-40
Architect: John R. Haggerty and Thomas Thomas
National Register Number: 80002721
Listed: April 23, 1980
Visited: April 13 and May 18, 2008
Additional Documentation: Library of Congress Built in America page



Paint peels off the walls, with pea-soup green giving way to grey. The church is in otherwise fine condition, or at least as fine as a 170-year-old church can be, yet the shabbiness unsettles. I always assume houses of worship to be bedrocks, well-supported by their congregations and the Church they belong to. I don't assume them to be mortal. I mean, I know they are mortal--churches are destroyed and demolished all the time--but mortality seems contrary to their purpose, both religious and social.

What is fragile and delicate inside is granite-stolid outside, and as austere as its Greek counterparts some 5,000 miles and several millenia away. Like St. Paul's Chapel, it was close to terrorist attacks of 2001, and still stands. But I still drop three bucks in one of the donation boxes marked for repairs.

66. Chambers Street Subway Station (Dual System IRT)

Location: Under West Broadway, between Warren, Chambers, and Reade Streets
Built: 1917-1918
Architect: Squire J. Vickers
National Register Number: 5000674
Listed: July 6, 2005
Visited: May 8 and 12, 2008



Did I say that I knew the Park Row Building more intimately than any other landmark? Yeah, I did. But as this station was part of my daily commute for nearly eight years, it comes close. Back when there was a World Trade Center, this place served as a transfer point for express and local trains going to and from Penn Station and the Cortlandt Street station that was a short walk to Tower Two. I used to take a combo of express and local trains, thinking that'd be quicker than the other two options: taking the local train exclusively, or taking the express and walking a third of a mile. It rarely worked that way. Evenings were usually OK, but in the mornings I'd be stuck here, waiting, waiting for the local train to come by, waiting and waiting and waiting as express train after express train kept dumping people off. I'm sorry, it must be boring to read that--it bores me to even type. The wait at this station was one of the quotidian parts of my life that, for a brief time every day, would be at the forefront of my thoughts (WHY is the TRAIN not HERE? WHAT the HELL is WRONG? I'm GOING to be LATE GRRRRR etc. etc.), then it'd slink away, happily forgotten and purged. Whoever you are, you likely go through similar.



Funny, for all the time spent in the station, I didn't actually explore it or anything. I'd just stand in a spot, maybe pace. Read a book. Wouldn't go upstairs, wouldn't notice the tile work. It took me years to realize the tile border plaques in here and other stations functioned as something beyond a mere generic decoration. According to nycsubway.oreg, the building depicted above was part of King's College--later known as Columbia University--and stood on Park Place before it was demolished in 1857. I think I'd prefer having the college building still standing to the subway station, all things considered.

65. No. 8 Thomas Street Building

A.K.A.: David S. Brown Store
Location: 8 Thomas Street
Built: 1875-6
Architect: Jarvis Morgan Slade
National Register Number: 80002705
Listed: April 30, 1980
Visited: May 8, 2008
Additional Documentation: NYC PLC report



My references describe it as Gothic Revival, Venetian division. Now I went to Venice as a teen but remember little of it save for crummy personal shit. Never read Ruskin, either. (I should though, right?) And apparently No. 8 is a relic of a style with few surviving examples in the city. So how am I going to contextualize this building? Well, it sometimes uses bold shapes and colors and quotes older styles...well, sounds kinda postmodern to me! Yes, obviously wrong--modernism arguably hadn't even started yet when this building was built, forget about its putative successor--and yet it's my understanding of postmodern architecture that comes rushing in to fill the vacuum of my knowledge.



I don't mean New York postmodern, though. Our examples of the style such the Sony Building, Worldwide Plaza, and 60 Wall Street are a turn-off; the details meant to distinguish them from the soulless glass boxes of the modernists are so blunt, so elephantine they end up making not much of a difference at all. No. 8 is so modest in size there's no room for elephants, just a rather fanciful composition of colonnettes, arches, mansard roof, and punctuating oculus, all scaled just right for the man in the street below to apprehend and enjoy.

64. Cary Building

Location: 105-107 Chambers Street
Built: 1856-57
Architect: King & Kellum
National Register Number: 83001719
Listed: September 15, 1983
Visited: April 13, 2008
Additional Documentation: NYC PLC report



The Cary, Howard & Sanger dry goods store offered an overwhelming consumer experience when it first opened. In 1872, some eleven years after Cary died, the store (then known as Howard, Sanger Co.) was so o'erstuffed the New York Times took it upon itself to describe the goods sold at the store in numbing detail, floor by floor: brushes, toiletries, hosiery, fabric, leather goods down to "memorandum books, pass-books, marking chalk for lumbermen, violin strings, toy paint-boxes, and agate buttons in thousands of packages." Today, it's unfathomable that such an little thing, lost in Tribeca, could ever have been a major retail hub. In terms of volume, the building is likely dwarfed by your average suburban supermarket.



If it still transmits an echo of commercial extravangance--of attentions being sought--it's thanks to the façades on its Chambers and Reade Street sides. Like other New York City cast-irons of the 1850s, it takes after the Italian palazzo, even going so far as to include rustication. Traditional, yes, but it's all in cast-iron, not stone or brick, and glowing unearthily clean and white. Sadly, a widening of Church Street in the '20s knocked down the building right next to it, leaving a brick wall barely enlivened by some windows added much later.

63. 75 Murray Street Building

A.K.A.: Hopkins Store
Location: 75 Murray Street
Built: 1857
Architect: James Bogardus
National Register Number: 73001213
Listed: April 3, 1973
Visited: April 13, 2008



As I snake my way towards Soho this spring and summer, this blog will be covering many examples of this neighborhood's signature architectural mode, the cast-iron building. James Bogardus is considered its daddy, but for all his importance, few of his buildings survive. Of those that do, only some can be definitively identified as being one of his babies. A building permit is a good source of this kind of information, but the systematic regulation and monitoring of building construction in the city really starts with the establishment of Manhattan's Department of Buildings in 1866, by which time cast-iron architecture as a fashion was already at its peak. The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission report on the building, authored in 1968, doesn't even mention Bogardus, and the third edition of AIA Guide to New York City doesn't identify 75 Murray as being his.



So how do we know it's a Bogardus? Christopher Gray relates the story in a 1994 Streetscapes column of how one day in 1980, the paint on the steps flaked off enough to reveal Bogardus' foundry mark. Prior to that, historian Margot Gayle had well-deduced suspicions in the early '70s based on its similarities to other works known to be by Bogardus.



One similarity is the Medusa-head keystones, also used in Bogardus' ill-fated Laing Stores. To protect homes from the entrance of evil, the Greeks sometimes used the figure of Medusa's terrible gaze to protect objects, including the "eyes" of buildings, its windows and doors. Like Oswald Wirz' Green Men and countless gargoyles everywhere, the Medusas are another pagan relic popping up in the middle of a New York steeped in the Abrahamic religions. Then again, so are the building's columns--much of what the West has borrowed from Greek Architecture comes from surviving temples like the Parthenon.

62. US Post Office--Church Street Station

A.K.A.: Federal Office Building
Location: 90 Church Street
Built: 1935
Architect: Cross & Cross; Pennington, Lewis & Mills, Inc.
National Register Number: 88002359
Listed: May 11, 1989
Visited: April 13, 2008



In all weather save the worst, I could see it from my office in Tower Two: a block wide, and wider than tall; a cruise ship sailing through downtown Manhattan. Or a patch of desert. I have memories, possibly false ones, of its life from the street, the sun bearing down on expanses of limestone unrelieved save for air vents. Its blankness sucked the life out of the immediate vicinity, maybe even more than the monoliths across the street. People would walk by and not stop and not look up at the thing, at least on the Vesey Street side, because there was so little for the eye to focus on. Church Street was where the life was, with a few vendors of books and fruit mucking up traffic past and inside the entrances; inside the entrances, more confusion, more life, a warren of corridors and windows and lines.



It is something Art Deco, something Classical, but also neither: no fluted columns, no formal razzle-dazzle. It feels incomplete to me. The monumentality of its scale suggests a much taller building than is actually there. What happened to that building, I wonder.

60. Old New York Evening Post Building

A.K.A.: The New York Evening Post Building
Location: 20 Vesey Street
Built: 1906
Architect: Robert D. Kohn; Gutzon Borglum (statuary)
National Register Number: 77000963
Listed: August 16, 1977
Visited: March 27, 2008



Journalism. New York journalism. Brash, brawny, manly journalism. Muckraking! Sensationalism! Totally making shit up! A take-no-prisoners attitude that lives with us today.

Modernism. Viennese modernism. Radical, intense, stylized modernism. Egon Schiele! Josef Hoffmann! Gustav Klimt! A rejection of things past that fed the future.

The Old New York Evening Post Building: New York Journalism + Viennese Modernism. Two tastes that should taste really weird together. But!

I can't find many definitive words on why the newspaper-eventually-to-be-known-as-the-New York Post would seek an Art Nouveau headquarters building, but the Post was owned by Oswald Garrison Villard, a man with lefty views on race, suffrage, labor, and pacificism (which eventually made him mad unpopular during World War II, as you can imagine). Even wrote a book on John Brown. As such, it's not hard to imagine him betraying some sympathy towards contemporary art movements--though I'm too ignorant to know if turn-of-the-century liberalism really was some kind of natural ally of early modernism. Actually, it's even easier to think of this building, ruled as it is by lithe and fluid lines, as a statement of oneupmanship over all those other newspapers and their elephantine buildings on Newspaper Row and uptown. Iconoclastic man, iconoclastic building: the building's so iconoclastic that it was described by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission as one of the few Art Nouveau buildings in the country, forget about the city.

Incidentally, this was building was listed on the National Register the day Elvis died. This is one way you can tell I'm still a rock critic.

57. New York County Lawyers Association Building

Location: 14 Vesey Street
Built: 1929-1930
Architect: Cass Gilbert
National Register Number: 82001201
Listed: October 29, 1982
Visited: March 27, 2008



Cass Gilbert's finest buildings in Manhattan--the US Customhouse, the West Street Building, and the Woolworth--give the eye so much to feed on that the flatness of this neo-Georgian is a disappointment. Even the AIA Guide to New York City is unusually mean, calling it "the wimp of the neighborhood" and a product of Gilbert's "late, fainthearted years." Not a bad little building, but there might be more to it if it was faced with brick instead of limestone, as most Georgian buildings in America were back in the day. It looks as if its interior references Georgian architecture--and the founding-father democratic ideals associated with it--much more profoundly, with a second-floor auditorium modeled after Independence Hall. But it's off-limits to me, as I'm not a lawyer.