This imposing bronze statue of statesman William Seward (1801–1872) in Madison Square Park was created by the artist Randolph Rogers. The sculpture was dedicated in 1876, and Seward is said to be the first New Yorker to be honored with a monument in the city.
Seward served as a state senator of New York from 1831 to 1834, and as Governor of New York from 1839 to 1843. He was elected United States Senator from New York from 1849 through 1861. In 1849 he won as a Whig and emerged as the leader of its anti-slavery wing.
With the decline in the fortunes of the Whig Party, Seward joined the Republican Party in 1855 and lost the presidential nomination to John C. Frémont in 1856. Expected to get the nomination in 1860, many of the delegates feared that his radical past would prevent him from winning the election. When Abraham Lincoln won the nomination Seward loyally supported him.
Lincoln appointed him Secretary of State in 1861 and he served until 1869. During the War, Seward established a secret police force, which arrested thousands of citizens for disloyalty. He fought for the U.S. purchase of Alaska which he finally negotiated to acquire from Russia for $7.2 million (2 cents per acre) on March 30, 1867. The purchase of this frontier land ("Seward's Icebox") was mocked as "Seward's Folly" and Andrew Johnson's "polar bear garden".
An oft told tale which Rogers did little to dispel, was that his statue of Seward was nothing more than a new head added to a copy of a sculpture of Lincoln he had made, installed a few years earlier at Fairmont Park in Philadelphia. While the two works do bear striking similarities, the size of Seward’s body appears too large, and though the proportion of the head to body seem at odds, the works are by no means identical. Seward is depicted seated, cross-legged in a large armchair, books stacked beneath, with pen and parchment at hand. The statue is situated on a large pedestal of variegated Italian marble. More than 250 subscribers, among them General Ulysses S. Grant and Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, contributed to the monument’s $25,000 cost.
The sculpture, placed on a diagonal facing the intersection of Broadway and 23rd St at the southwest corner of the park, was dedicated on September 27, 1876. Numerous dignitaries, including future president Chester A. Arthur and General Winfield S. Hancock attended the proceedings, which were reported to be “fittingly done” without extravagant pageantry, but told “the story of [Seward’s] life, of the perils he encountered and the triumphs he achieved.” In 1995, the sculpture was conserved.
Tags: NYC New York City Madison Square Park Madison Square William Seward William H Seward statue park Manhattan sculpture Secretary of State seward ny New York Randolph Rogers
This impressive bronze equestrian portrait of George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States, is the oldest sculpture in the New York City Parks collection. It was modeled by Henry Kirke Brown (1814–1886) and dedicated in 1865.
In 1851, a committee of concerned citizens interested in erecting a monument to Washington in New York approached sculptor Horatio Greenough, known for his huge classical marble portrait of Washington. Simultaneously, the committee also invited Henry Kirke Brown to submit a design, though it was unclear whether he was to assist Greenough or compete with him for artistic selection. Any prospect of collaboration evaporated with Greenough’s premature death in December 1852.
Though Brown, like many of his generation, made an obligatory visit to Italy to study, he was part of a group of sculptors attempting to establish a truly American sculptural idiom. His first major public commission was a statue of De Witt Clinton which he completed for Greenwood Cemetery in 1852. Working at a specially equipped studio in Brooklyn, and assisted extensively by John Quincy Adams Ward, who himself would attain renown as a sculptor, Brown spent 18 months modeling the horse and rider.
The moment Brown depicts is that of Evacuation Day, November 25, 1783, when Washington reclaimed the city from the British. With outstretched hand, he signals to the troops in a gesture of benediction, a sculptural motif indebted to precedents from antiquity, most notably the Marcus Aurelius statue on Rome’s Capitaline Hill. The resulting statue depicts a uniting of classical gesture and pose with a simple and direct naturalism. The piece was cast at the Ames foundry in Chicopee, Massachusetts, one of the first foundries in the United States capable of such large-scale quality work. The names of the donors are inscribed on the skyward face of the bronze sub-base.
On June 5, 1856, the Washington statue was installed on a simple granite base designed by Richard Upjohn. The event drew thousands of spectators. One month later, on July 4, the statue was formally conveyed to the custody of the City of New York. At that time the sculpture stood in a fenced enclosure in the middle of the street, at the southeast corner of the square. In 1930, following overall improvements to the park, and to better protect it from vehicular traffic and pollution, the statue was moved its position of centrality on the south side of the park--closer to where many feel Washington actually greeted the citizens of New York when he liberated the city from British rule.
In 1989, the sculpture was conserved, and the missing sword and bridle strap recreated through the Adopt-A-Monument Program, a joint venture of Parks, the Municipal Art Society, and the New York City Art Commission. In the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the George Washington sculpture served as a touchstone for collective grieving and public expression, and became the central focus of a massive around-the-clock community vigil and a provisional shrine.
Union Square National Register #97001678
Tags: New York City NYC Union Square Washington General Washington statue Henry Kirke Brown Manhattan sculpture landmark Union Square Park park ny Revolutionary War hero patriot americanrevolution foundingfathers foundingfather New York George Washington president 1776 revolutionary war National Register of Historic Places equestrian equestrian statue NRHP U.S. National Register of Historic Places National Historic Landmark NHL U.S. National Historic Landmark
The Fuller Building or as it is better known, the Flatiron Building, was one of the tallest buildings in New York City upon its completion in 1902. Designed by Chicago's Daniel Burnham with John Wellborn Root in the Beaux-Arts style, it also bears the influence of architectural trends introduced at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, combining elements of French and Italian Renaissance. Its triangular plan was a clever response to the awkward site produced by the intersection of Broadway and Fifth Avenue at at 23rd Street, Fifth Avenue, and Broadway, facing Madison Square.
Like a classical Greek column, its limestone and glazed terra-cotta façade, whose forms simulate the effects of rustication, is separated into three parts horizontally. Since it was one of the first buildings to use a steel skeleton, the building could be constructed to 285 feet, which would have been very difficult with other construction methods of that time. At the rounded tip, the triangular tower is only 6.5 feet (2 meters) wide. The 22-story Flatiron Building, with a height of 285 ft (87 meters), is often considered the oldest surviving skyscraper in Manhattan, though in fact the Park Row Building (1899) is both older and taller.
When completed, it was officially named the Fuller Building after the building's promoter George Fuller. Locals took an immediate interest in the building, placing bets on how far the debris would spread when the wind knocked it down and nicknaming it "the Flatiron" because of the building's resemblance to the irons of the day. The building is also said to have helped coin the phrase "23 skidoo" or scram, from what cops would shout at men who tried to get glimpses of women's dresses being blown up by the winds created by the triangular building.
Today the Flatiron is a home to several book publishers, most of them under the umbrella of Holtzbrinck Publishers. It was featured in the Spiderman movies as the office of the newspaper, the Daily Bugle.
The Ladies Mile Historic District, an irregular district defined roughly from 18th Street to 24th Street and Park Avenue South to Avenue of the Americas, preserves 440 buildings on 28 blocks. Between the Civil War and World War I, the district was the location of some of New York's most famous department stores, including Lord & Taylor, B. Altman, W. & J. Sloane, Arnold Constable, Best & Co., and Bergdorf Goodman. Also included is Daniel H. Burnham's Flatiron Building, at Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street; most of the Ladies' Mile Historic District lies within the Manhattan neighborhood named after that building, the Flatiron District.
In 2007, the Flatiron Building was ranked #72 on the AIA 150 America's Favorite Architecture list.
The Flatiron Building was designated a landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1966. The Ladies Mile Historic District was designated a historic district by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1989.
National Register #79001603 (1979)
Tags: Chicago School NYC New York City Flatiron skyscraper Manhattan Fuller Building flatiron building madison square Beaux-Arts Daniel Burnham John Wellborn Root French Renaissance Italian Renaissance triangular limestone terra-cotta the flatiron landmark AIA150 ny New York National Register of Historic Places NRHP U.S. National Register of Historic Places National Historic Landmark NHL U.S. National Historic Landmark ladies mile ladies mile historic district historic district nyclpc new york city landmarks preservation commission
After the establishment of Gramercy Park in 1845, brick and brownstone houses went up on this 19th Street block in the 1840's and 1850's. Half a century later, what were originally conceived as upper class housing became aging accomodations.
It took Frederick Sterener to reverse this trend. Born in London in the 1860's, Sterner emigrated to the United States in 1882 and practiced architecture in Colorado before coming to New York in 1906. He took an office on Fifth Avenue near 19th Street and rented space in an old house at 23 West 20th Street. Looking for a place to call his own, he bought an old brick house at 139 East 19th street and gave it a makeover--a coat of tinted stucco, shutters, decorative ironwork and a projecting tile roof.
Sterner's lead attracted others, among them Joseph B. Thomas, a banker and polo player, who hired an architect to revamp 135 East 19th Street into a Gothic house. Sterner bought up more houses on the and spread his signature style across the block.
The block earned the moniker "Block Beautiful" at the pen of Harriet Gillespse, in American Homes and Gardens in 1914, and it has stuck ever since.
Working for Thomas, Sterner designed the dramatic half-timbered apartment house at No. 132. Completed in 1911, it was soon home to the muckraking author Ida Tarbell, the society painter Cecilia Beaux and the stockbroker Chester Dale. The architect's brother, the painter Albert Sterner, also lived at No. 132. Arist George Bellows took over an old house at No. 146, adding an attic studio, and the painter-muralist Robert Winthrop Chanler had a studio at No. 147.
Many minor changes have been made to the houses, both before and after landmark designation. The Thomas residence, now owned by Oleg Cassini, is unchanged, but the stucco-front Sterner houses have lost many of their distinctive elements -- in some cases shutters have been removed, in others the pastel colors have been toned down. Some previous owner destroyed Sterner's distinctive tile and brick entryway at No. 145, and in 1992 Lee Ann Jaffee, working with the architect Richard Ayotte, decided to substitute a nominally Greek revival doorway. At No. 147, someone has chopped away at the two giraffes to put in an electrical conduit. At No. 143, Lynn Wagenknecht has one of the few intact midcentury houses, and her architect, Thomas Tsue, has been restoring that building to its original character. In 1924 the architect Frank Forster stripped the mid-19th-century brownstone at No. 142 and gave it a Dutch door and intelligent ironwork. No. 128 added trim Art Moderne ironwork. And No. 132, now a co-op, replacing the four stone spheres on the pillars in front in the midst of a restoration of Sterner's original designs.
Gramercy Park Historic District National Register #80002691
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Irving Plaza, was a 1,000-capacity club/ballroom at 17 Irving Place, was built in 1914 and converted in the late 70's from an old Polish dance hall to a rock venue. It is one of the prime midsize venues in the northeast, and has hosted everyone from Bob Dylan to Debbie Harry to Johnny Cash.
The building's history is as diverse as its booking schedule: Over the years, the 3-level auditorium has served as Polish Army Veterans headquarters, a Yiddish theater, a burlesque house (Gypsy Rose Lee stripped here), and a boxing arena.
In 2007, the club went through a rebranding as the Filmore New York.
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