BUILDING FORTY-SECOND STREET
Carol Herselle Krinsky
Professor Emerita of Art History, New York University
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The text of this book and the necessary illustrations resulted in a book too long for various desirable presses to publish, and I wanted neither to shrink it at the expense of local color nor to alter the chronological format. After copyrighting the text, I’ve placed it on the internet, free for anyone to read. Boldface type provides references within the text.
I hope you will enjoy visiting Forty-second Street from its earliest days as farmland to December 31, 2024.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Format, Notes, Details, Manifold disclaimer
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter l: Forty-second Street to 1869
Chapter 2: Forty-second Street from 1870 to 1879
Chapter 3: Forty-second Street from 1880 to 1889
Chapter 4: Forty-second Street from 1890 to 1899
Chapter 5: Forty-second Street from 1900 to 1910
Chapter 6: Forty-second Street from 1910 to 1920
Chapter 7: Forty-second Street from 1920 to 1929
Chapter 8: Forty-second Street in the 1930s and 1940s
Chapter 9: Forty-second Street from 1950 to 1959
Chapter 10: Forty-second Street from 1960 to 1969
Chapter ll: Forty-second Street from 1970 to 1979
Chapter 12: Forty-second Street from 19680 to 1989
Chapter 13: Forty-second Street from 1990 to 1999
Chapter 14: Forty-second Street from 2000 to 2009
Chapter 15: Forty-second Street from 2010 to 2019
Chapter 16: Forty-second Street from 2020 to December 31, 2024
Bibliography
List of illustrations
FORMAT, NOTES, DETAILS, MANIFOLD DISCLAIMER
The format is unconventional, with many footnotes grouped and others inserted in the text but shown in boldface to make it easier for readers to skip over them. Had the notes been more conventionally presented, even more sentences might have been cut up with inserted references. Moreover, at age almost 88, I decided not to spend one of my last years putting notes into the standard Chicago Manual format. Anyone needing to find a source will be able to do so. When a source was often cited, I used abbreviations such as NYT for New York Times, LOC for Library of Congress, LPC for New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, NYC for New York City, or an often-cited author’s surname, such as King’s Handbook or Valentine’s Manual. The complete citation will be found in the Bibliography. If a source was seldom cited, I gave the entire reference in the note. Many sources were online real estate newsletters for which the whole url is given. 66 John Street in citations refers to the land maps of every block in Manhattan; they are located at that address on the fourth floor. They provide block and lot numbers. They show the size of each building, its material, its history of ownership, etc., and changes to the buildings over time.
Illustrations are included within the text. I cite all sources and note when the images are my own. The illustrations can be expanded and then contracted to their initial size. The leading sources of images were the Museum of the City of New York, the New-York Historical Society, the New York Public Library, and the Library of Congress. Where I could find the original owners of other images, I contacted them although it seems that using online images for an unpaid author’s educational purposes on non-profit educational sites is allowed as fair use under copyright law. To learn the rules, I consulted a lawyer and read websites of the Library of Congress and other legal and library sites, none of which cover precisely what I have done.
MANIFOLD DISCLAIMER
These pages do not in any way constitute official New York University content. The views and opinions expressed in the pages are strictly those of the page author. The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by NYU. NYU makes no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, as to the site’s operation or the information, content or materials included on this site. To the full extent permissible by applicable law, NYU hereby disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for any particular purpose. NYU will not be liable for any damages of any kind arising from the use of or inability to use this site. You expressly agree that you use this project solely at your own risk. Questions or concerns about project content should be directed to the page author.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Every author of non-fiction books owes much information to earlier scholars and journalists, and to helpful librarians. I have drawn heavily on reports in the New York Times, in the principal American architecture journals, on reports in Oculus (the monthly publication of the American Institute of Architects chapter in New York City), local weekly and monthly magazines of general interest, on major publications such as those of teams headed by Robert A. M. Stern FAIA (although I read them only after having written my own chapters, lest I just repeat their insights), or Moses King’s prose and collections of photographs with their captions that were published in the years around 1900.
Others, including The Encyclopedia of New York City, are listed in the bibliography. There have been two supremely influential critics of New York’s architecture in the past hundred years----Lewis Mumford, at The New Yorker magazine, and Ada Louise Huxtable, first at the New York Times and then at the Wall Street Journal. Mrs. Huxtable’s last column criticized proposed architectural changes at the New York Public Library, culminating decades of her concern for the city’s well-being.
My interest in this subject has been enhanced by presentations over the years at the Columbia University Seminar on the City, and at the Skyscraper Museum, the Society of Architectural Historians New York City Chapter and the national annual meetings, and material issued by DoCoMoMo, among many other sources of facts and inspiration. The internet was an essential asset for any researcher in the time of Covid.
It has been a delight to get to know my city better, and to benefit from the help of friends and acquaintances and former students who generously provided maps and memories, books and anecdotes and advice. supplied introductions, answered questions, tracked down periodical articles, lent articles, submitted to interviews, offered moral support and honest criticism, and cheered this project along. Every author finds it a pleasure to thank them for information, introductions, suggestions, and moral support. They include Naomi Antonakos, Frederick Bland, Gergely Baics, Jay Cantor, Kenneth Cobb, Meredith Cocco, Emily Conklin, Christine Dent, Christian Farrar, Akeem Flavors, Bruce Fowle, Sarah Fruehauf, Theodore Grunewald, Maxine Guilmain, Frances Halsband, Matthew Kennedy, Allyson McDavid, Priscilla McGeehon, Jon McMillan, Rosemary and Francis McLaughlin, Jayne Merkel, Benjamin Proske, Daniel Rose, Nancy Ruddy, Sharon Lee Ryder, Peter Samton, Dan Shannon, Robert Sink, the late Herbert Sturz, William and Catherine Sweeney Singer, Mark Tomasko, William Vazquez, Bart Voorsanger, Charles Warren, Konrad Wos, and Matthew Zadrozny. For the loan of publications, for arranging visits, and for useful conversation, I am grateful to Nicholas Adams, Diannae Ehler, Ernest Hutton, Theodore Liebman, the late Robert MacNeil, the late James D. Morgan, Paul Segal, Adrian Untermyer, and Carter Wiseman. For introductions and site information, I thank Laurent Joli-Coeur, Joanne Hvala, Ruth Nadelhaft, Suzanne O’Keefe, and Susan Rai. For photo permissions, I’m grateful to Katherine DeMercurio, Andrew Dolkart, Elliott Kaufmann, Jill Lerner, Gregory Melle, Megan Meulemans, Roxanne Shirazi, Kevin Simonson, Anne-Marie Walsh, Michael Watson, and Samuel White Other names may have succumbed to a hacking of a later list and to a memory damaged by damage to my computer. I am grateful to all these generous people and to Lisa Ferrari, Esq. for guidance on copyright, to Giana Ricci M.L.S. for further suggestions, and to the staff at NYU’s Manifold site, especially Elliot Galvis, for posting this book there.
I am fortunate to have a wise and supportive husband, Robert D. Krinsky. He let me vanish for long periods to type on the computer in our bedroom, when conversation would have been more welcome in the living room during his retirement after over sixty years of work. None of my books, and certainly not this one, could have been written without his encouragement, patience, and calm disposition. Of course, this book is dedicated to him.
INTRODUCTION
There are three great streets in Manhattan: Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and Forty-second Street. Wall Street might also stake a claim to greatness, but it’s shorter in length and devoted largely to finance. The three great streets have a mixture of uses---money-making, to be sure, but also residence, dining, retail shopping, mixed modes of transportation, entertainment, education, public health, culture, and more.
This book deals with Forty-second Street, formed by real estate operations, rail transportation, technology, and powers of government. It attempts to chronicle the passage of years and the process of development from colonial times to the present—from the 1680s onward. Architects, engineers, and developers figure prominently in my story because I’m a historian of architecture rather than finance or politics. Per square inch, Forty-second Street probably has a greater percentage of better and certainly more varied architecture than either Broadway or Fifth Avenue, although partisans of these rival streets aren’t likely to be persuaded. Think of the discreet low “international style” library for the United Nations across the street from Tudor City and the Ford Foundation building with its interior garden. Look up at the Daily News building, enter the soaring interior of Grand Central Terminal, feel dwarfed by the metal-clad Socony-Mobil and the relief-clad Chanin Buildings. Enter cavernous Bowery Savings Bank and the Chrysler Building, or look up at One Vanderbilt. Sunshine bathes the august New York Public Library and the adjacent Bryant Park and consequently also 500 Fifth Avenue and its decorated neighbor at 11 West, the sloping Grace Building, the dignified Aeolian Building, 1100 Avenue of the Americas, and both One and Three Bryant Park, the latter also known as 1095 Sixth Avenue. Farther west are the innovative Bush Tower, the lavish Knickerbocker Building, dazzling Four Times Square alias One Five One and its companions that stimulated the cleanup of the famous sleaze nearby that worried the city’s leaders and kept respectable folks away. There is the New Amsterdam Theater, New York’s masterwork of the art nouveau. Think of other theaters now rehabilitated, especially the New Victory. Farther west are the moderne McGraw-Hill Building, several glamorous new condominiums and high-rise rental apartment towers. At the far west end, a motor hotel by Morris Lapidus now houses the Consulate of the People’s Republic of China, opposite the cheerful low building at the river’s edge where one buys sightseeing-boat tickets. Along the way are a few leftover tenements of the late nineteenth century including the model tenements designed by Ernest Flagg, the Port Authority Bus Terminal, some garishly decorated cinemas, and tourist attractions that intend to evoke the gaiety of the theater district in the 1920s. There are several hotels including the Grand Hyatt that launched Donald Trump’s entry into Manhattan’s real estate industry and some run by the Hilton and Westin companies. Prominent architects have designed a gigantic tower to replace the Hyatt. There are also modest office buildings that few people remember, at least one of which may soon disappear. A high-rise built for the Philip Morris corporation had a branch of the Whitney Museum in its lobby; and near Fifth Avenue, James Turrell designed a light-enhanced lobby. The Chanin Building lobby is just one of several memorable entranceways of the inter-war-years. Philip Johnson’s angular Chrysler “trylons”--business magnates’ lunchtime rendezvous—surprise us with their shapes. Art meets money on Forty-second Street.
WHAT YOU WILL READ ABOUT IN THIS BOOK
Owing to the scant remains of the Lenape people who spoke the Munsee dialect and inhabited the southern two fifths of Manhattan Island, it is not possible to tell the story of building Forty-second Street from its indigenous origins. No remains of settlement have been found along the present street. A legacy remains, however, in the name Manhattan, derived from one of several indigenous words. Many other place names in the region reflect the first known inhabitants of the area who were sometimes gradually and sometimes forcibly displaced, though not from the present Forty-second Street as far as we know now. How the remote area turned into one of the principal office building streets of the city, and how it was shaped by the theater industry and railroads, by heavy industry and shipping, later by culture and commerce, are the stories being told in this book.
A long time elapsed between seventeenth century exploration by Europeans and the actual laying-out of the street. Giovanni da Verrazzano is said to have “stopped briefly opposite Forty-second Street in the North River in 1524” (NYT 6 13 1961, p 34) but no matter whether his stop was in New Jersey or Manhattan, this event had no consequence for later development The Dutch declined to develop an area as far as this one was from the principal settlement at the south end of the island, but they left their mark upon the city as one devoted to commerce more than religion or experiments in political organization. The Lenape and then the Dutch settlers of Nieuw Amsterdam were overwhelmed by the British, whose tenure ended a century later with the American Revolution. Even then, there was no Forty-second Street. The platting of land in what is now midtown had to wait for 1811 when the street we know was for some years the anticipated terminus of northward development.
Investors in and workers on the Erie Canal helped to make New York the premier seaport on the east coast. Transportation connection to the mainland by ferries and railroads to New Jersey and the Bronx began in the 1830s. Steam train routes from Forty-second Street on the east side reached Harlem by 1836 and the mainland by 1841. The southern terminus kept smoke and stench from residential areas farther south. The eventual station building became a hub for the eastern half of the street and a catalyst to the later residential enclave of Tudor City. The provision of clean water after 1842 came just when steamships from Europe began gradually to transport immigrants. Then the city could and would accommodate more people—so many that occupied Manhattan reached Forty-second Street by the mid-1850s.
Mass transportation brought people on elevated railways away from overcrowded lower Manhattan to the row houses and tenements of nineteenth century Forty-second Street and farther north. When the “Els” poured people into the theater district, which had skipped over a rapidly growing area in the West 30s and when trains disgorged commuters at Grand Central, the scene was set for the street that we know. Theaters rose after 1899 on Forty-second Street and points north, attracting both respectable and shady visitors to west midtown. Prohibition changed the character of the entertainment blocks, eliminating the roof gardens and restaurants that had made theater buildings profitable from sales of alcohol, and further changes followed when motion pictures, especially talkies, offered cheaper entertainment than live theater did.
Until Bryant Park---erstwhile burial site and parade ground---was well-landscaped and the bulky reservoir beside it was demolished at the end of the nineteenth century, the “Els” and the trolley cars on Forty-second Street itself were so noisy, polluting, and crowded that they deterred rich city residents from settling even opposite a park. The block from Fifth to Sixth Avenues was protected from thoroughgoing decay by business buildings, a church, and clubs on the north side, and by the New York Public Library and the adjacent Bryant Park on its south side.
The edges of the island, though, long remained industrial with docks and gasworks after the mid-nineteenth century on the west side of midtown, utility installations and butchering on the east. Modest single-family row houses west of Eighth Avenue and east of Third gradually became tenements, while purpose-built tenements housed dockworkers and laborers. The industrial nature of these areas was confirmed by the 1916 Zoning Resolution that created zones of industry or unrestricted activity, residence, and commercial work.
Zoning rules after 1916 secured the area between Third and Eighth Avenues for the most profitable commercial uses. The completion of Grand Central Terminal in 1913 stimulated the move of office work from Wall Street to midtown’s newer office towers that arose near the terminal, especially after 1922 when commerce revived after the First World War. Business owners who lived in suburbs served by commuter trains were glad to avoid the subway to the Wall Street area when a train ride ended.
After the Second World War, suburbanization of some companies reduced train use in favor of automobiles and buses, lowering the value of important buildings near Grand Central. A plague of drugs, and the city’s fiscal crisis did serious damage to business interests especially west of Sixth Avenue. The west side experienced economic depression and human depravity, as well as the abandonment of the docks after 1965 when containerization changed the nature of shipping and moved much of it to deepwater areas in New Jersey.
Gradually, however, lower property prices and government intervention attracted new investment and the rehabilitation of theaters. The conversion of a failed apartment house investment into housing for people in the arts presaged better days. Private-and-public partnerships cleaned and redesigned Bryant Park. Renewed efforts made the area safe and appealing for tourists and for residents of the city and its suburbs who patronize theaters. The city offered various incentives to encourage development on the West Side, and the blocks from Eighth Avenue to the Hudson River along Forty-second Street are now occupied by off-Broadway theaters, lofty apartment houses, and several hotels. The varied buildings appeal to hip millennials, to foreigners looking for pieds-à-terre and to small families able to pay the high cost of the apartments. During the past decade, rezoning has led to the design of supertall commercial buildings---taller than the Empire State Building. The street will continue to evolve, of course, and there may be downturns again, but I write at a moment of high but threatened real estate values and high rents despite a pandemic that kept people at home, working remotely. Building owners worried about office occupancy in the future, although by 2023, some companies began to require staff members to work at the office at various times during the week.
Parts of the street were owned at various times by families of European origin who engendered prominent architects of three generations: James Renwick, Ernest Flagg, and Morris Ketchum. The street is also associated with even more famous names-- of theatrical entrepreneurs including Oscar Hammerstein I and later the Minsky brothers who were maestros of burlesque; of financiers including August Belmont, rapacious “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt. and a real estate entrepreneur who twice became President of the United States. Wise investors such as John Jacob Astor and the Goelet family held on to their properties as they skyrocketed in value. Forty-second Street is also the site of past and present churches, a hospital, a social work center, an old age home, social clubs, and the Ford Foundation. It is more famous as the street of theaters, banks, and office buildings, diners and elegant restaurants, the great library, hotels, and recent apartment houses. All this replaced the farmhouses and country villas followed by shanties and breweries and gas works, which we now find hard to imagine there.
In the buildings of this street, the amount of artistry and of money is greater than that of most thoroughfares in the western hemisphere. They show us what was important to investors, architects, and city officials at various periods, and how those interests were expressed in visual terms. From modest row houses to colorful Victorian-era churches to the Beaux-Arts dignity of civic structures such as the New York Public Library and Grand Central Terminal, we see the change from a provincial town to a city and to an imposing metropolis in a new American empire. In the art deco skyscrapers and the widespread acceptance of apartment living to buildings celebrating railway and airline transportation, we see modernist trends in society and architecture, regulated against blatant excess by sometimes reluctant officials. Eventually, we see the results of suburbanization and the lack of confidence in the traditional city, and then the results of urban renewal, sparked by crisis and by governmental contributions, direct or indirect. Then, too, we see what happens when private and public partnerships undertake to repair our cities, sometimes succeeding and sometimes reducing urban amenity to benefit the property investors who contribute significantly to the city’s finances.
A strolling observer passes brick and glass and reinforced concrete and limestone and granite and steel and travertine. One can dine in a small Greek restaurant that has survived dramatic changes in the neighborhood, or in those trylons at a price that would feed a whole family at the mega-McDonald’s. There used to be three Automats on the street, and genteel Schrafft’s and Stouffer’s and Longchamps. The Public Library now has a small café where drowsy readers can ingest caffeine, and at Grand Central Terminal’s basement, one can dine quickly on international cuisines. Forty-second Street even boasts a well-kept public toilet, a rarity in our prudish or rather, thoughtless urban scene.
A chronological account of Forty-second Street’s development from farms to its present state can fill out this summary of commercial urban development in this commercial metropolis. It is leavened with accounts of serious culture---music, the library, theaters, religion, charity---but commerce was and is its mainstay. Regulation of building construction, but also of morality and safety, forms part of the story. Fiscal matters such as tax abatements, and more recently, standards for environmentally responsible building have made their impact. The supertall towers in midtown reveal the City’s dependence on revenue from the real estate industry.
A few small businesses continue to operate in the oldest buildings, and a few parking lots recall the days when the west side of Forty-second Street looked like a wasteland with cars. These survivors give a sense of history, allow established businesses to continue serving customers below the plutocrat level, and suggest the scale of older New York, when Forty-second Street was home to families occupying row houses, to pharmacies and small restaurants, and to start-up businesses. There are remnants of music venues. There are the great Library and Holy Cross Church. There are old tales of trolley cars and celebrations at New Year’s Eve, of theatrical glamour and even naughtiness and vice that make New Yorkers sentimental about a past that they never experienced.
The overall growth of the city has been recorded in books that often emphasize the commercial success of merchants whose predecessors founded New York as a trading colony. Others describe the introduction of clean water in 1842 and public health measures later that made the city habitable. There are publications that emphasize the role of the Erie Canal in making New York the premier seaport in the northeast. Revolutions both industrial and political pushed Europeans westward across the Atlantic, and so did poverty and famine. When transportation became mechanical rather than animal-drawn, people of modest means who worked downtown or on the docks could buy or rent flats in the tenements created afresh or converted from houses near the elevated railways and midtown docks. The well-to-do clung to the center of Manhattan Island, but even for them, Forty-second Street’s row houses prevailed over individual mansions. The most conspicuous independent house was the home of erstwhile Vice-President Levi Morton at Fifth Avenue but even that mansion was radically altered for commercial purposes.
This book deals only with buildings that front upon the street; adding more about the area would have made the book interminable. Much has been written already, especially about the Grand Central zone and the Times Square area by eminent historians whose work has been a pleasure to read. I summarize their work and also hope to add to their achievements by presenting some lesser-known information about the spaces in between and the spaces east and west.