Manhattan Architecture Tour with my Gilded Age Tour as side notes.

 

1. Rockefeller Center, in 1801 the location was open land and David Hosack bought it from the city wanting to establish the Elgin Botanic Garden, which lasted a total of 10 years due to lack of funds.  The 22 acres were taken over by Columbia University in 1823. Then, in 1926 the Metropolitan Opera leased the land to the theater's benefactor, which was no other than John D. Rockefeller, Jr. In 1929 the stock market crashed, the move was canceled and Rockefeller built what we have today. In order to complete the project, 228 buildings were demolished and 4,000 tenants were relocated. 

2. St. Patrick's Cathedral, is the seat of the New York Archbishop and directly across from Rockefeller Center. Built in Gothic Revival style it replaced the old St. Patrick Cathedral. It is the largest Roman Gothic Catholic Cathedral in the US, with 19 bells, 21 altars, and more than 2,800 stained glass panels. 

Gilded Age Part

Walking up 5th Avenue, you will find Cartier in the next blog. This article will explain how the building fits into the Gilded Age. Diagonally across was Petit Chateau, built by Wiliam K. Vanderbilt. The Vanderbilt's had many homes, here is a list of their homes, and here is the list of the ones you can visit. Here we have the list of all the mansions on Fifth Avenue. Here is another article about the mansions and a link to a private walking tour. The tour covers the following most of these. 

3. Grand Central Station, as it is today is the third version. Built by the Vanderbilt family the station comes with a number of flaws, one of which, is the celestial ceiling was intentional according to the Vanderbilt family. There is also a secret train track used by Franklin D. Roosevelt and a whispering gallery. Then there is the $20 Million dollar thing nobody has tried to steal. 

4. The Chrysler Building has the spire because Van Alen wanted to win the contest for the tallest building in New York. He won the race due to the spire and held the title for a few months until the Empire State Building surpassed it. The Chrysler Building is made out of nearly four million bricks and has about 3,862 windows. In 1934, LIFE photographer Margaret Bourke-White lived in the building, but the leave was cosigned by Time, Inc. because they didn't rent to women at that time. The first floor used to be an automobile showroom and a water bottling company in the basement. 

5. The New York Public Library opened on May 24, 1911, and the first volume borrowed from the library was Ethical Ideas of Our Time: A Study of Nietzsche. The lions in front of the library are named Patience and Fortitude. the Maory of New York thought New Yorkers needed to possess these qualities to survive the Great Depression. The Library has some cool artifacts, a lock of hair from Charlotte Bronte, fragments of Percy Bysshe Shelly's skull (the Skylark dude), and the original Winnie-the Pooh lives there. 

6. Empire State Building, the king of Art Deco skyscrapers and once the tallest building in the world. It was designed by Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon and they were not too creative so they based the Art Deco design on the thing they had in their hand, a pencil. The interior, outfitted with ribbed marble walls, gold leaf paintings, and decorative panels etc, it is a historic landmark. There are two more things about the Empire State Building, that are difficult to believe, number one and number two. 

7. Macy's covers an entire city block. It is one of the largest department stores in the US and a National Historic Landmark since 1978. Macy's was the first who introduce colored bath towels in 1932. It was also among the first retail stores with escalators. Open till midnight on Christmas Eve, with 300,000 pairs of shoes on sale every day and floor-to-ceiling clearance closets there is something for everyone. 

8. Flatiron Building, opened its doors for the first time in 1901 as the office building of Fuller Construction Company, and now it is a mix-use building. In 1911 a nightclub opened in the basement of the building and this club was the first with a black jazz band. Male bathrooms are on even floors, and women are on odd floors.