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Contemporary Descriptions of New York City and Its Public Architecture ca. 1850 Author(s): Ellen W. Kramer Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Dec., 1968), pp. 264-280 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/988488 Accessed: 27-01-2017 01:09 UTC

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Contemporary Descriptions of New York City

and Its Public Architecture ca. 185o

ELLEN W. KRAMER

Landmarks Preservation Committee, City of New York

THE decade of the 1840s brought enormous changes to the city of New York. To most visitors from abroad, the town of the mid-nineteenth century seemed somewhat provin-

cial, a sprawling city with few public parks, whose monot-

onous grid plan and architecture were in no way comparable

to any of the great European capitals.' True, it was grow-

ing rapidly: the great exodus from Northern Europe had begun, following the potato famine of 1845 in Ireland and the revolutions of 1848. Incredible as it seemed to oldtimers

such as Philip Hone and James Fenimore Cooper,2 the little

town of 6o,ooo souls of 18OO, was by 185o a city of over a half million inhabitants. To Walt Whitman Broadway rep-

resented the living symbol of America, the "open road" along which streamed the vast procession of humanity.3 Already over two miles long, it extended from Bowling

Green to Union Square (Fig. I). When Grace Church was begun in 1843, it stood at the "head" of the street (Fig. 2), for it was assumed at that time that Broadway would not extend much above Tenth Street. Now it looked down up-

on a city rushing far beyond it, reaching out into places

where, in Philip Hone's words, only "a few years since cat-

tle grazed, and orchards dropped their ripened fruits."4 A

physician from upstate New York picturesquely compared New York to a boy "who grows so fast that he can't stop to

tie up his shoes."5 In general, European visitors, like those

of today, found the city crowded, noisy, dirty, and ugly, with few redeeming features, while New Yorkers were frequently characterized as having little interest in anything

other than the making of money.

Nonetheless, New York was rapidly becoming a cosmo-

politan city, with an ever-increasing number of foreign language newspapers, houses of worship, clubs, and socie- ties which took a benevolent interest in new arrivals to this

country.6 Delmonico's, founded in 1828, catered to an in- creasingly discriminating clientele and was the favorite meeting place of French and German merchants. The Astor Place Riot of 1849, the result of a bitter feud between the

American Shakespearean actor, Edwin Forrest, and his Brit-

ish rival, W. C. Macready, is an indication of the passionate

interest of New Yorkers in the theater (Fig. 3). The popu- larity of musicales, the establishment of the Philharmonic

Society in 1842, and the furor caused by Jenny Lind's ar- This paper is an adaptation of a section of the author's unpublished doctoral dissertation, "The Domestic Architecture of DetlefLienau, a Conservative Victorian" (Institute of Fine Arts, New York Uni- versity, 1957), carried out under the supervision of the late Talbot F. Hamlin and Henry-Russell Hitchcock, to whom this article is dedi- cated as a token gesture of profound gratitude.

i. E. g., Heinrich Schliemann, Schliemann's First Visit to America, 185o-1851, ed. Shirley H. Weber (Cambridge, Mass., 1942), P. 23; F. and T. Pulszky, White, Red, Black; Sketches of American Society (New York, 1853), I, 59; "B.", "Erste Eindriicke von New-York," [1852], Atlantische Studien. Von Deutschen in Amerika (GO6ttingen, 1853-1857), I, 122-123. 2. Correspondence of ames Fenimore Cooper (New Haven, 1922),

in, 693, 22 Nov. 185o; The Diary qf Philip Hone, 1828-1851, ed. Allan Nevins, new and enl. ed. (New York, 1936), p. 784, 28 Jan. 1847. 3. See "Sights and Sounds of Broadway," Brooklyn Evening Star,

20 Feb. 1846, in New York Dissected, eds. Emory Holloway and Ralph Adimari (New York, 1936), p. 124.

4. Diary, p. 784, 28 Jan. 1847. 5. Joel H. Ross, M.D., What I Saw in New-York (Auburn, N. Y.,

1851), p. 178. 6. Perhaps the best of many German guide books of the period is

George Treu's Das Buch der Auswanderung ... (Bamberg, 1848), which contains reprints of the informative pamphlets issued by the Deutsche Gesellschaft und Volksverein, Bekanntmachung der deutschen Gesellschaft zum Schutze deutscher Auswanderer nach Amerika, pp. 83-

I 18, whose work is described in Christoph Vetter, ZweiJahre in New- York ... (Hof, 1849), pp. 41-45. See also N. Reiss, Excursion a New- York en 185o (Brussels, 1851); Robert Ernst, Immigrant Life in New York City, 1825-1863 (New York, 1949), passim; and Manuals of the Common Council (Valentine's Manuals), issued annually by the City of New York, an excellent source of statistics on foreign societies, news- papers, etc.

264

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265

. 41"

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Fig. I. Bird's-eye view of New York from Union Square, looking south, 1849 (from Stokes, Iconography, Vol. im, Pl. 135).

rival and her first concert at Castle Garden on i i Septem-

ber I850 (Fig. 4)7 are proof that, while New York could not compare with London, Paris, or Munich, it was hardly a cultural wasteland. The way had been prepared for the in-

flux of British and European architects who, with their American colleagues, were to change the face of the city in the next decades.8

If we turn to the prints of the period for a picture of the

city, we find them charming, but misleading. Almost with-

out exception, they give to the city a mistaken appearance of genteel dignity and quiet repose, as though they had been

sketched on a Sunday, with both the houses and the people freshly scrubbed and on their best behavior. To get the real

r i, :, ~ ~-

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Fig. 2. Grace Church, James Renwick, 1843-1848 (from Owen, Hints on Public Architecture [1849], between pp. 92-93).

7. Note the cast iron supporting columns. 8. After the wave of arrivals from Britain in the late I820s and thirties (Richard Upjohn, Frederick Diaper, Joseph C. Wells), the late forties saw others establish themselves here (Frank Wills, ca. 1847, Calvert Vaux, 185o, Henry Dudley, 1851I,Jacob Wrey Mould, 1853). From Germany came Alexander Saeltzer, 1.842, Henry Fern- bach, ca. 1848, and Frederick A. Peterson, 1851; Leopold Eidlitz from Bohemia, ca. 1843, and Detlef Lienau from Schleswig- Holstein, 1848. These were some of the men who were important for the de- velopment of architecture in New York. It has often been pointed out that many Germans who immigrated to this country were of middle class origin who, with their descendants, formed an "intel- lectual aristocracy" in American cities in contrast to their Irish coun- terparts of 1846-185o (e.g., John R. Common, Races and Immigrants in America, new ed. [New York, 1927], P. 48).

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266

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Fig. 3. The Astor Place Riot, 1849 (courtesy New York Public Library, Eno Collection, No. 238).

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Fig. 4. First appearance ofJenny Lind in America at Castle Garden, II Sept. 1850 (courtesy New York Public Library, Eno Collection, No. 244).

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Fig. 5. Broadway, 185o, with Barnum's American Museum (left) and the Astor House (right) (courtesy New York Public Library, Eno Collection, No. 248).

"feel" of New York, we must turn to literature, to the

diarists of the period like Philip Hone and George Temple- ton Strong, to the impressions of travellers from abroad, and to writers such as Walt Whitman. John C. Myers' vivid and still timely description of "the greatest emporium

of the western hemisphere" will serve as our introduction to New York which he described as:

... a dusty, smoky, noisy, busy, great and animating emporium. In this mighty metropolis, the stranger from abroad may see its fine buildings, its long streets and handsome places; its dense throng

of inhabitants, the immense shipping and its enormous trade. He may observe on the one hand, the princely dwelling, the costly equipage and the splendid appearance; and on the other hand the squalid hut of poverty, of filth, of extreme misery and degrada- tion. He may perceive the eddying throngs gathering and whirl- ing, scattering and hurrying hither and thither, in the activity of commercial pursuits. He may here become confused by the never- ending turbulence and commotion, with the hundreds of mingled notes and noises which are ever rising from the multifarious trades

and occupations of its thousands of inhabitants. And among its. mingled crowds he may meet Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, Aus- trians, Swiss, Germans, Russians, Chinese, Jews, Turks, Africans, Portugese, English, Southrons and Yankees; all commingling in

the same hour, in the same street, in the same scene.... He here

sees that nothing is fixed, nothing is permanently settled-all is moving and removing, organizing and disorganizing, building up and tearing down; the ever active spirit of change seems to pervade all bodies, all things and all places in this mighty metropolis.9

In his last sentence Myers clearly echoed Walt Whitman: "He who at some future time shall take upon himself the office of writing the early history of what is done in Amer-

ica . . . will surely have much cause to mention what may

be called the pull-down-and-build-over again spirit!"'1 Foreigners were appalled by the traffic in New York. All

agreed that it was quicker to walk than to ride, and that to

cross Broadway at the noon hour was to take one's life in one's hands. In 1846 the engineer John Randel proposed the

9. J[ohn] C. Myers, Sketches on a Tour through the Northern and Eastern States, the Canadas & Nova Scotia (Harrisonburg, [Va.],

1849), pp. 50-5I. Io. "Tear Down and Build Over Again," American Review, ii

(Nov. 1845), 563-538, reprinted in Emory Holloway, The Uncol- lected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman . . . (Garden City, N. Y., 1921), I, 92.

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268

i f.~"~d~r "i?":P: :~?i~

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Fig. 6. Bay of New York from the Battery, 1851 (from Stokes, Iconography, Vol. III, P1. 137-A).

tot

Ll

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is sumo

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ii i ls~~2 "~L~L- ~ ~ ~~___~____ 1~!ANN(

Fig. 7. Broadway, Bowling Green to Morris Street (from Illuminated Pictorial Directory of Broadway, 1848, No. I, P1. 4, courtesy New York Public Library, Eno Collection, No. 222).

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269

construction of an elevated railway as a solution to the re-

curring question of "what to do with Broadway." A few years later Genin, the enterprising hatter, put up a bridge

across Broadway,11 from his store to St. Paul's Chapel, to take care of the crush below City Hall and Barnum's Amer-

ican Museum. The New-York Daily Times of 7 September 1853 contains an article entitled "Stray Notes of a South-

erner Adrift," a remarkable description of the ear-splitting

din of Broadway-the clatter of horses' hoofs over the rough pavement, the cries of the vendors, the raucous swearing-all coming to a shattering climax with the blar- ing of the band from early morn till evening at Barnum's Museum (Fig. 5).

Philip Hone, a former mayor of New York, and George Templeton Strong, attorney and man-about-town, remem-

bered the days when the Battery had been New York's favorite promenade (Fig. 6)12 and lower Broadway a quiet residential district, lined with neat two- and three-story red brick houses. By the late forties and early fifties, the character of lower Broadway had changed completely.13 Figure 7 reproduces one plate from The Illuminated Pictorial

Directory of New-York, published in 1848 to provide, ac- cording to the editors, "a literal Picture of the Western Emporium of Commerce in the noon of the 19th Century." The illustration bears witness to what Hone described as the

"mania for converting Broadway into a street of shops."14 In his message to the Common Council on 5 May 1851,

Mayor Kingsland predicted that the area south of City Hall

would very soon be devoted entirely to business.15 Indeed,

the descriptions and prints of New York in the mid-century

indicate that Broadway, as far uptown as Bleecker Street, was almost entirely a street of shops, warehouses, restau- rants, hotels, and places of amusement.

This transformation of lower Broadway, a gradually ac- celerating process, began in earnest in the late thirties. At

first, residences were not altered on the exterior. During the

183os, however, it became common practice, in altering residences for commercial use, to replace the usual Classic Revival entranceportico, raised a half-story above the street,

by a glass front with granite piers modelled on the store

type originated by Ithiel Town in his design for the Tappan

Store in Pearl Street (1829). This is illustrated by the houses

on the east side of Broadway above Bowling Green (Fig. 7). The effect of this revolutionary design upon commercial architecture, and the rebuilding of entire blocks in the older

business sections of the city, particularly after the Great Fire

(1835), and the spread of the Town formula to other cities

in the United States, was noted by contemporaries.16 Writ-

ers of the period bear witness to the fact that this transfor-

mation was far from orderly. Every visitor to the city commented upon the disgraceful condition of the streets. Lady Wortley, who toured the United States in 1849 and

I85o, found our thoroughfares so littered with "piles of lumber, mounds of brick, pyramids of stones, mountains of

packing-cases, and stacks of goods" that sidewalks were practically impassable. Of New York itself she wrote that

it "certainly is handsome . . . and yet there is something

about it which gives the impression of a half-finished city.""'

Nonetheless, every visitor was impressed by what she and Frederika Bremer, the famous Swedish novelist, called the

"go-ahead" Yankee spirit of New Yorkers who then, as now, were in such a hurry that the Scottish publisher Wil- liam Chambers wrote: "American minutes would seem al-

most to be worth English days!"18

II. On the danger to life and limb in New York, see Vetter, Zwei Jahre, p. 50o; "Easy Chair, "Harper's New Monthly Magzaine, v (Nov. 1852), 844, etc. For Randel's elevated railway, see I. N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909 (New York, 1915- 1929), Vol. n, pl. 133-A; for Genin's bridge, see Eno Collection, No. 287, New York Public Library.

12. As a child, Strong often played in Battery Park, and as a young man, strolled there almost every day: see The Diary of George Tem- pleton Strong, 1835-1875, eds. Allan Nevins and M. Halsey Thomas (New York, 1952), I, 40, 16 Oct. 1936 and passim. I am greatly in- debted to Mr. Thomas, now at Princeton University, but formerly the Curator of Columbiana, Columbia University, for access to the original "Journal" when it was at Columbia. See Kramer, "George Templeton Strong, Architectural Historian," (1953), 14 pp., unpub- lished MS. [on deposit at Avery Library, Columbia University, and at the New-York Historical Society]. For other delightful prints of the Battery, see Eno Collection, Nos. 219, 253, etc., New York Pub- lic Library. On a Sunday the Battery was crowded with children, sailors, new arrivals to this country, all enjoying the fresh sea breezes and magnificent view of the harbor: see Myers, Sketches, p. 428; N. Parker Willis, "Open-Air Musings in the City," Rural Letters and Other Records of Thoughts at Leisure (New York, 1849), p. 238.

13. Diary, p. 797, 26 Apr. 1847, p. 933, 3 Feb. 1851, and passim; Charles H. Haswell, Reminiscences of an Octogenarian of the City of" New York (181-5-186o) (New York, 1896), p. 461; Charles Astor Bristed, The Upper Ten Thousand, Sketches of American Society (New York, 1852), p. I7; Charles A. Dana (ed.), The United States Illus- trated, in Views of City and Country (New York [preface I854]), I, 156-159.

14. Diary, p. 913, 30 May 1850.

15. Quoted in Stokes, Iconography, v, 1833, under date. 16. Edwin Williams (ed.), New-York as It Is, in 1833 (New York,

1833), pp. 12-13; Schramke, "Einrichtung und Konstrukzion [sic] der Waarenmagazine Stadt- und Landhfiuser in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nord-Amerika, mit besonderer Riicksicht auf die Stadt

und Landschaft New-York," Allgemeine Bauzeitung, xI (1846), 80- 94, and pls. 19-21; A. J. Bloor, "Annual Address," [12 Oct. 1876], Proceedings A.I.A. (1876), p. 19.

17. Lady Emmeline Charlotte Elizabeth [Manners] Stuart Wort- ley, Travels in the United States .... during 1849 and 185o (London, 1851), I, 2; Ross, What I Saw, p. 178.

18. Wortley, Travels, I, 5; Bremer, letter of 15 Mar. 1850 in Homes of the New World... (1853), reprinted in America of the Fifties: Letters ofFrederika Bremer, ed. Adolph B. Benson (New York, 1924), pp. 92ff.; Chambers, Things as They Are in America (Philadelphia, Pa., 1854), P. 178.

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270

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Fig. 8. Broadway at Exchange Place (from Illuminated Pictorial Directory of Broadway, 1848, No. I, P1. 6, courtesy New York Public Library, No. 222).

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Fig. 9. View of Broadway from below Chambers Street, looking north, with Stewart's in foreground (from Hoff's Views of New- York, 1850, courtesy New York Public Library, Eno Collection, No. 260).

The building boom of the mid-thirties in New York, stemmed for a time by the panic of 1837, was resumed in the forties. By 1845 it had assumed such proportions that it

was commented upon time and again in the press.19 By the mid-forties, however, the Town formula, so well adapted

to the needs of the thirties, was outmoded. Larger, more

monumental buildings were needed, expressing the ever-

increasing importance of New York as a commercial cen-

ter. The U. S. Bonded Warehouse at Nos. 52-56 Broad- way, corner of Exchange Place (Fig. 8), erected ca. I846- 1847 in Greek Revival style, was the largest warehouse in

the city, capable of storing $3,000,000 worth of goods.20 It

provides an interesting contrast to the earlier practice of converting residences for warehousing, as at No. 18 Broad-

way (Fig. 7). A similar comparison may be drawn between the small three-story Hotel Francois [sic] Espagnol at 57 Broadway, north of Exchange Place and opposite the U. S.

Bonded Warehouse (Fig. 8), and the Delmonico Hotel at Nos. 19-27 Broadway, corner Morris Street, opposite a coal yard and converted residences (Fig. 7).

In 1845 A. T. Stewart, quick to sense the temper of the times, purchased from the Coster Estate land on the south-

east corner of Broadway and Reade Street, the site of Mc-

Comb's Washington Hall, with the intention of erecting a dry goods store. Hone prophesied that it would be "spa- cious and magnificent beyond anything of the kind in the

New World, or in the Old."21 When it opened on io Sep- tember 1846, Stewart's "Marble Palace" drew high praise. The New-York Herald published a long and enthusiastic ar- ticle on 18 September which is particularly interesting for

its description of the interior. Four years later, the building was extended to take in the whole blockfront between

Chambers and Reade Streets and Hone reported on 30 May 1850 that, "with the additions now in progress, this edifice

will be one of the 'wonders' of the Western World."22 Fig- ure 9 shows Stewart's as it looked after the i850o-85i ex-

pansion, but before further additions were made in subse- quent years.23

Of all the buildings on Broadway, to contemporaries Stewart's "Marble Palace" seemed best to symbolize the spirit of the new commercial age. Its unusual height, the use

of gleaming white marble, the fifteen large plate glass win-

dows at street level,24 and its well-organized, though sim-

plified, Italian Renaissance design made it one of the real turning points in the history of New York's commercial architecture, comparable in importance for its period to Lever House. In an article on New York's street architec-

19. The Evening Post of 22 June 1844 noted that "for many years there has not been observed anything like such activity as now pre- vails in this city" (Stokes, Iconography, v, 1785); see also New York Herald, 26 Feb. 1845 (Stokes, v, 1789). Cf. Walt Whitman's article of Nov. 1845, cited in n. io supra, and statistics on "New Buildings, 1834-1847," Valentine's Manuals (New York, 1848), p. 291.

20. Dated by Tax Assessment Records; mentioned in "New York

Daguerreotyped," Putnam's Monthly Magazine, I (Apr. 1853), 357. 21. Diary, p. 729, 7 Apr. 1845. 22. Ibid., p. 913, 30 May 1850. See also Cooper's letter of 19 Sept.

1850 in Correspondence, I1, 587, and Vetter, ZwveiJahr, pp. 96-99. 23. The development of the property is interestingly reflected in

deeds and tax records. For the original appearance of the store, be- fore its enlargement, see the water color scroll, "Panorama of the East Side of Broadway," by William James Pirrson, a young boy of sixteen or seventeen, ca. I848-ca. 1850, Print Room, New York Public Library.

24. Hone called them a "most extraordinary, and I think useless piece of extravagance" (Diary, 1, 722, 10 Sept. 1846).

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271

ture, which appeared in Harper's in 1854, the anonymous

writer, almost surely George William Curtis, distinguished

author and editor who was associated with the magazine for many years, had this to say:

A few years ago, when a man returned from Europe, his eye be- ing full of the lofty buildings of the Continent, our cities seemed insignificant and mean.... But the moment Stewart's fine build- ing was erected, the difficulty appeared. That tyrannized over the rest of the street-that was a key-note, a model. There had been other high buildings, but none so stately and simple. And even now there is, in its way, no finer street effect than the view of Stewart's building seen on a clear, blue, brilliant day, from a point as low on Broadway as ... Trinity Church. It rises out of the sea of green foliage in the Park, a white marble cliff, sharply drawn against the sky.

He concluded the article with a sigh of relief that the Greek

temple epoch of architecture had passed, and wrote: "even

we, as we totter up to our Easy Chair, will look up to the beautiful buildings in Broadway, and not long for Italy and

an Italian beauty, but be gratefully contented for what we

see."25 Stewart's, renamed the Sun Building after its pur- chase in 1917 by the Evening Sun, is still a handsome build-

ing today. Of Ottavino Gori, the Italian marble cutter whom A. J.

Bloor credited with the design of the building,26 little is known beyond the fact that he superintended the erection

of the eight marble pillars of the Merchants' Exchange in the late 1830s. By 1855, according to the State Census of that year, his marble "manufactory" at 895 Broadway was

doing a thriving business with fifty-six people in his em- ploy. As Winston Weisman pointed out in his discussion of the store, one would imagine that Stewart would have sought out a well-known architect, rather than a marble

cutter, to design such a large structure. P. B. Wight's attri-

bution to Gori of only the design of the exterior marble work and to Snook of the architectural supervision of the

structure27 would be worth investigating further, particu-

larly since the Stewart Store is closely related stylistically to

the Metropolitan Hotel (Fig. 12), designed by the firm of Trench & Snook.

Stewart's was one of the few buildings in New York

which achieved a really monumental effect. It was undoubt-

edly the first building in New York to use the Anglo- Italian palazzo mode on a large scale, a style which had been popular in Britain since the 1830s.28 Following Arthur Gilman's early advocacy of the style in the North American

Review in 1844,29 the Barryesque mode was introduced si- multaneously in this country byJohn Notman in the Phila-

delphia Atheneum ( 845-1847), so often referred to as the first exemplar of the type in the United States,30 and in the

Stewart Store in New York. The early application of the clubhouse mode to commercial architecture at Stewart's is

quite understandable if one considers the national origins of

Gori and Snook, Italian and English respectively, and, per- haps even more important, the character of that astute Scotch-Irishman, Alexander T. Stewart (1803-1876). As Henry-Russell Hitchcock has pointed out, Barry's club style

"early came to be accepted as an expression of urban wealth and power,"3' a fact which would not have been lost on the man who, in the course of the next several decades, did his

best to immortalize himself through architectural monu- ments.32

Of almost equal importance in contemporary descrip- tions of New York's commercial architecture was Joseph C. Wells's store for the silk merchants, Bowen & McNamee

(Fig. io) at Nos. 112-114 Broadway. Erected from 1849 to

I850, this store marked, in its way, as distinct an epoch in the history of commercial architecture in New York as the

Tappan Store, of which it was an offshoot, and Stewart's earlier.33 Built of white marble, Bowen & McNamee's silk

25. "Easy Chair Chats," Harper's, Ix (July 1850), 261. See also the long descriptions in Putnam's, I (Apr. 1853), 358, and a more critical evaluation in "The Modern Architecture of New York," New-York

Quarterly, IV (1855), 118. 26. For the difficult problem of attribution, which Winston

Weisman and I discussed at length, see his pioneering article, "Com- mercial Palaces of New York: 1845-1875," Art Bulletin (Dec. 1954), xxxvI, 288, and n. 18. Bloor's attribution was later echoed in History of Architecture and the Building Trades of Greater New York ... (New York, 1899), I, 146, a generally reliable source.

27. P. B. W.[ight], "A Millionaire's Architectural Investment," American Architect, I (1876), 148; see also [John Franklin Sprague], New York, the Metropolis. . . (New York, 1893), Part ii, p. 34.

28. Initiated by Pugin's Travellers' Club (1829-1831), Barry's Manchester Athenaeum, and the Reform Club (1838-1840), the mode was quickly transposed to commercial architecture: see the Brunswick Building (1841-1842), Liverpool, illustrated in Henry- Russell Hitchcock, "Victorian Monuments of Commerce," Architec- tural Review, cv (Feb. 1949), 62. For a detailed account of Pugin's r61e in the creation of the palace style, see Hitchcock's Early Victorian Architecture in Britain (New Haven, 1954), I, I62ff.

29. The attribution to Gilman of this unsigned article, ostensibly a review of Edward Shaw's Rural Architecture (1843), is generally ac- cepted. The relevant section (pp. 454-455) is quoted in Weisman, "Commercial Palaces," p. 287. One may note, in passing, that the advocacy of the Barryesque palazzo style was not the only new idea: see also Gilman's favorable comments on Boston's pre-Revolution- ary architecture (p. 457), important later in the century for the Co- lonial Revival.

30. Robert C. Smith, John Notinan and the Atheneum Building (Philadelphia, Pa., 1951), PP. 15-17.

31. Hitchcock, Early Victorian Architecture, I, 175. 32. Junius Henri Browne, The Great Metropolis: A Mirror of New

York . . . (Hartford, 1869), chap. xxxii; Appleton's Cyclopoedia of American Biography, v, 681-683.

33. A point made by W. Frothingham, "Stewart and the Dry Goods Trade of New York," Continental Monthly, II (Oct. 1862), 530; Bloor, "Annual Address," p. 19, and Architecture and Building Trades, I, 147. Henry C. Bowen and Theodore McNamee were two

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272

house was described as an "Elizabethan palace" presenting

"the most showy and elegant front on Broadway,"34 pro- viding a contrast to the sober Roman palazzo style of Stew-

art's. In this building Wells introduced New Yorkers to that

other variant on the palace theme, the gay and picturesque

Venetian type,35 here cleverly combined with Tudor rem-

iniscences. Wells (ca. 1819-I86o) was an English architect, established here since the late 1830s, and a founder of the American Institute of Architects:36 he should not be con-

fused with Joseph Morrell Wells (1853-1890) of the firm of McKim, Mead & White. The marble store created a sensa-

tion. The extensive use of iron was singled out for com- ment,37 as was its open design and picturesque verticality. The anonymous author of the interesting and well-illus- trated series of articles, "New York Daguerreotyped," pub-

lished in Putnam's Monthly Magazine from 1853 to 1854,

objected strenuously to this verticalization,38 a feature which was emphasized by the addition of a sixth story in 1853 and, still later, by a mansard roof. Other less ornate,

but definitely commercial, structures were beginning to ap-

pear on Broadway. The Moffat Building (1847-1848) and the Arcade Building (1848-1849), the latter a large brown- stone edifice given architectural distinction by rounding the

corner of the building, 39 a favorite device of English archi-

tects of the I840s, are only two examples of several build- ings constructed for strictly commercial use in these years.

If special emphasis has been given to the creation of the commercial palace, it is because these buildings represented the last word in architectural fashion. This is not surprising,

for the dry goods industry, accounting for more than half

of New York's trade, enjoyed a unique position within the

.-*qb

77:--*

VAI,~

Wks ~??- 100 N qE

041' 4W.::

OWN~

Fig. io. Bowen & McNamee Store, Joseph C. Wells, 1849-1850 (from The Citizen and Strangers' Pictorial and Business Directory for New-York, 1853, ed. Solyman Brown [New York, (1853)], P. 32).

city's economy. As one writer expressed it, "calico is om- nipotent, and whole streets melt away at her approach."40 Far exceeding their English prototypes in cost and splen- dor,41 these buildings faithfully reflected the reaction in taste of the new "calico aristocracy" against the simpler

ideas of the previous decades. The special fondness for the "so-called" Italian style was singled out for particular men-

of the five original owners of the influential magazine, The Independ- ent; Bowen was its publisher and editor from 1848 until his death in 1896. The date of 1849 to 1850 (cf. Weisman, 1848-1849, "Com- mercial Palaces," p. 290) is based on Tax Assessment Records and a report on "The New Buildings of Broadway," Evening Post, 22 Sept. 1849, in which the building is described as in the process of erection.

A date of 18 50 appears on the central gable of Fig. Io here, when city directories first list the firm at its new address, corroborating other contemporary sources. 34. Andrews & Co.'s Stranger's Guide to the City of New York (New York, 1852), P. 12. 35. The Venetian Sansovinesque mode was introduced to Britain by Sydney Smirke in his new front for the Carlton Club (1847): see Hitchcock, Early Victorian Architecture, I, i73. 36. Having established himself as an architect by 1839, when Wells was first listed in New York directories, he built up a large and varied practice in the metropolitan area. His best-known work is the First Presbyterian Church (1844-1846) on Fifth Avenue and Eleventh Street. He died on shipboard en route to England, according to the obituary published in the Crayon, vii (Sept. 186o), 270. 37. Noted in "New Buildings," Evening Post, 22 Sept. 1849. 38. I (February 1853), 129. 39. For the Arcade Building, see Weisman, "New York and the Problem of the First Skyscraper,"JSAH, xii (Mar. 1953), 16, Fig. 3.

40. Putnam's, I (Apr. 1853), 358. 41. Cf. Hitchcock, Early Victorian Architecture, Vol. II, fig. xii,

No. I, etc.

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273

tion, as well as criticism, by several European visitors.42 It

has been pointed out that the flexibility and economy of the

palazzo formula, whereby additional units could be added at little cost without destroying the visual effect, so well il-

lustrated by successive enlargements to the Stewart Build- ing, contributed in no small measure to its continued popu-

larity in the ensuing decades.43

It should not be forgotten that these buildings represent-

ed the work of the younger generation of architects, many

of whom were recent arrivals from Europe or Britain. An-

other outstanding palazzo of the time-this example closer to Venetian early quattrocento palaces than to Roman ex-

amples, with elements borrowed from the Rundbogenstil- was the Astor Library at 425 Lafayette Street, of which the

central portion (1849-1854) was designed by Alexander Saeltzer (Fig. II). Saeltzer, a German architect who had es- tablished himself here in 1842, had won First Prize in the

competition for the Library, held in the spring of 1849;

Renwick won Second Prize. George Templeton Strong was favorably impressed by the plans, which he examined at Saeltzer's office.44 A long description of the Astor Li- brary, built of brownstone and brick, appeared in Gleason's

Pictorial (later Ballou's) of 25 September 1852. After com-

paring the library to the royal palaces of Florence, the cor-

respondent remarked that "no building in the United States

of the character is formed to so large an extent of iron, be-

sides being altogether novel in this country."45 In both the

Astor Library and the Bowen & McNamee Store, the ex- tensive use of both cast and wrought iron was of consider-

able importance from a structural point of view, made pos-

sible primarily by the Cooper and Hewitt Iron Works in

Trenton, New Jersey, and perhaps also partially attribut- able to interest in the work of Bogardus and others.46 In

spite of the fact that Alexander Saeltzer had an important

practice in the I850s in New York, information regarding him remains distressingly scant.47 The Astor Library was saved at the last minute from the wrecker's ball, thanks pri-

marily to the unflagging determination of James G. Van-

fill(

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Fig. 11. Astor Library, Alexander Saeltzer, central portion 1849- 1854 (from Putnam's, II [1853], 13).

Derpool and the Landmarks Preservation Commission of the City of New York;48 the building is still (1967) under- going extensive alteration by Giorgio Cavaglieri for use as

the headquarters of Joseph Papp's Shakespeare Festival Theater.

The hotels of Broadway always figured prominently in accounts written by travellers. The plates of the Illuminated

Pictorial Directory of Broadwvay indicate a wide range of ac- commodations to suit every pocket book, from modest boarding houses lodged in converted private residences (Fig. 8), to larger establishments such as Delmonico's (Fig. 7), a handsome five-story structure erected in 1846 by Fred-

erick Diaper (18 o-19o6).49 The once popular City Hotel, built in 1792-1794 by John McComb and James Wilson, was razed in 1849.50 Just below City Hall stood the most

splendid establishment of all-the Astor House (Fig. 5). 42. See post, n. 84. 43. Weisman, "Commercial Palaces," p. 289. As Vincent Scully pointed out to me, this is essentially the same principle as the modern cubical loft repetitive bay system. 44. Diary, I, 356-357, 29 June 1849. 45. III, 200. The correspondent of the Evening Post of 28 Mar. 1854 also commented on the novelty of the construction. 46. Even a superficial attempt to indicate the literature on this subject would be out of place here. See Turpin C. Bannister's ex- haustively researched articles, "Bogardus Revisited: Part I The Iron Fronts," and "Bogardus Revisited: Part II The Iron Towers," JSAH, xv (Dec. 1956), 12-22, and xvi (Mar. 1957), 11-19. 47. An article on the work of Saeltzer is in preparation. I would gratefully acknowledge any leads or information, particularly re- garding his activities in later years.

48. Ada Louise Huxtable's fine series of articles on the Astor Li- brary in the New York Times, beginning in 1964, undoubtedly helped rally public opinion behind the efforts to save the building. 49. Diaper, one of the longest lived and most respected members of the American Institute of Architects, of which he was a founder,

had served his apprenticeship in England, under Sir Robert Snmirke. He arrived here in the late 183os and built up a substantial practice, working in a conservative style. He counted August Belmont and the Van Rensselaers among his clients. 50. My thanks go to Agnes Gilchrist for information on this and other buildings by McComb.

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274

Wi ll 10rir a

Fig. 12. Metropolitan Hotel, Trench & Snook, 1850-1852 (courtesy New York Public Library, Eno Collection, No. 261).

Built by Isaiah Rogers from 1832 to 1836, two decades later it was still considered a model of design by the astute critic

of New-York Quarterly and by Walt Whitman, who de- clared that it was "unsurpassed" among the buildings of New York "as a specimen of exquisite design and propor-

tion,"51 in spite of the fact that he generally disliked the derivative connotations of Greek Revival style. A German

visitor called it the "Palais Royal" of New York,52 an apt

phrase since the Astor House was the meeting place of the Whigs and, for many years, the political hub of the city. But its glory was short lived. Two new hotels farther up-

town appeared in the early I85os which eclipsed the older establishment in size, comfort, and luxury.

The Metropolitan Hotel (1850-1852), built by Trench & Snook on the site of Niblo's Gardens,53 occupied the en-

tire blockfront on Broadway between Prince and Houston

Streets (Fig. 12). It was steam-heated throughout and cost the hitherto unheard of sum of $940,000. Described in the

Evening Post of 15 June 185o as under construction, its cor- respondent remarked on 24 August 1852, shortly before the

official opening on I September, that "our public houses are beginning to rival those of Europe." This building, as well as the St. Nicholas Hotel, its rival, indicates once again

the adaptability of the palazzo style to large building sites.

The introduction of cast iron columns, or piers, at street

level with large plate glass windows for display purposes,

following the example of the dry goods industry, was also significant for the future. The St. Nicholas, built in marble

in contrast to the brownstone used at the Metropolitan, was

even larger and more luxurious. It opened 6 January 1853 and has been attributed both to Griffith Thomas, and to

John B. Snook, with earlier sources favoring Snook.54 One of the best contemporary descriptions of the fabulous in- teriors of the St. Nicholas was writtcn by W. E. Baxter, a British M.P. who visited New York in 1853; he confessed

that he was completely "bamboozled" by the profusion of

mirrors, gilding, marble, tapestries, velvet, and damask, and

claimed that the embroidery on the mosquito nettings might be exhibited to royalty."5 A French visitor, Oscar Comettant, marvelled at the central heating and the avail- ability in each room of hot and cold running water at all hours of the day and night, while an English comedian cn-

joyed telling his audiences that he was afraid to put his shoes outside his door to be polished for fear that the man-

agement might gild them!56 While most British travellers were favorably impressed

by the city's two grandest and newest houses of worship, Richard Upjohn's Trinity Church (1839-1846) and Grace

51. "The Modern Architecture of New York," p. 121; "Grand Buildings of New York City," 5 June 1857, reprinted in Whitman, I Sit and Look Out, Editorials from the Brooklyn Daily Times, eds. Emory Holloway and Vernolian Schwarz (New York, 1932), p. 128.

52. Dr. A. R. Thiimmel, Die Natur und das Leben in den Vereinigten Staaten ... (Erlangen, 1848), p. 167.

53. The Metropolitan, originally called "Niblo's Hotel," was owned by William Niblo, not A. T. Stewart (cf. Weisman, "Com- mercial Palaces," p. 291, n. 30), and operated by the Leland Brothers, who later set up the first chain of hotels in the United States. The at- tribution to Trench & Snook rests chiefly on The Architectural Iron Works of the City of New York, Illustrations of Iron Architecture ... (New York, 1865), p. 28, which is corroborated by a reference to Mr. French [sic] in the Evening Post, 6 June 1850, an error attribut- able to the penmanship of the period, which is carried over to Snook's obituary, American Architect, LXXIV (1904), 41. While Weis- man felt that Snook alone should be credited with the design, since

Trench may already have left for California, it should be noted that Trench's name continued to appear in the city directories and mu- nicipal records. Best known as the architect of the old Grand Central Station (1869-1871),John B. Snook (1815-1901) reportedly came to this country from Britain at the tender age of two. He was one of the most successful architects of the period. A large number of draw-

ings, as well as other-material, are on deposit at the New-York His- torical Society-all awaiting study.

54. Weisman's preference for Snook as the architect ("Commer- cial Palaces," p. 291, n. 34), rather than Thomas & Son, was based on the attribution to Snook in Illustrations of Iron Architecture, p. 28. This

is corroborated by earlier sources: the Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer of 4 Dec. 1852 states that the hotel was built according to a novel plan projected by Mr. Haight, the owner, but carried out by Trench & Snooks [sic], a reference I owe to Alan Hodge, "Early Boston and New York Hotels," (unpublished seminar report, Insti- tute of Fine Arts, New York University, 1955), n. 133. The pam- phlet issued by the hotel, The St. Nicholas, Its Plan and Arrangenments (New York, 1856), states that the plans and designs were prepared by D. H. Haight. Since John Snook was the architect of the R. K. Haight residence on Fifth Avenue and Fifteenth Street, built ca. 1849, one of the earliest, and easily the handsomest, examples of the palazzo mode in domestic architecture, the attribution to Trench & Snook of the design of the St. Nicholas is reasonably sure.

55. W. E. Baxter, America and the Americans (London, 1855), P- 33.

56. L'Aimirique telle qul'elle est ... (Paris, 1864), p. 46: Comettant had published an earlier book, Trois ans aux Etats-Unis, in 1857. The anecdote is recounted by Russell Lynes in The Tastemakers, Ist ed. [New York, 1954], p. 86.

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275

Church (1843-1848) by James Renwick (Fig. 2), visitors from the Continent were less than enthusiastic. Eugene Jouve, a Frenchman, commenting on the naivet6 of Amer- icans who considered Trinity a masterpiece, pointed out that it actually was a very small church, with a simple spire,

an opinion shared by Horatio Greenough, who referred to it as "the puny cathedral of Broadway, like an elephant dwindled to the size of a dog."57 In two editorials on "Splen-

did Churches" in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of 9 and 30 March 1846, Walt Whitman called Trinity "majestic and chaste," but singled out Grace Church for caustic criticism

as a "showy piece of architecture." The comfortable pews and exquisite arrangements and details are contrasted with the "massive simplicity and grandeur" of European religious

structures which "crush the souls of the supplicants ... and are no doubt conducive to make one realize ... his own

nothingness compared to God and the universe." He con- cluded by saying that "we don't see how it is possible to worship there.... There is no religion there. The worst forms and impulses of humanity, instead of being thrown aside, are incorporated in everything connected with the

establishment and its proceedings.""8 There can be no doubt that Whitman's remarks were intended less as a criticism of

the architecture of the church than of Isaac Brown, the sex-

ton, who once remarked: "The Lenten season is a horribly

dull season, but we manage to make our funerals as enter-

taining as possible."59

Regarding Grace Church, Philip Hone reported, not without humor, that "its lofty arches resound with astute

criticisms upon Gothic architecture from fair ladies who have

had the advantages of foreign travel." Strong, a vestryman

at Trinity, and no friend of James Renwick, wondered whether "the pipe-cleaners of columns that support the clerestory will tend to impress the congregation with the uncertainty of human life and suggest profitable meditation

of the instability of things temporal."60 His comments re-

flect the thinking of the Ecclesiologists. Both the English and the American Ecclesiological Societies vigorously at- tacked tendencies toward display in church architecture and

criticized the current disregard of what they called "reality"

in architecture. To the Ecclesiologists reality meant first, faithful adherence to the principle of truth to the nature of

the material, an axiom expounded by A. J. Downing and later by Ruskin, and second, subservience to structural

necessity,61 both unquestioned today. The Evening Post of 8 October 1845 called Grace Church "elegant," but criti- cized its "nasty" wooden steeple which "looks like nothing so much as an embellished paper horn for sugar plums," adding that "whoever countenanced . .. its erection should

be decorated with [that] which it [most] nearly resembles -a paper fool's cap. It is better to have a 'Church without

a Bishop' than a marble edifice with a wooden spire."62 In

fairness to Renwick, one should note that the spire was meant to be marble, but that wood was substituted as an

economy measure; the present spire is marble. In any case,

it is evident from critiques such as these that Ecclesiological

57. Jouve, Voyage en Ameirique ... (Lyon, 1853), pp. 23-24; see also Schramke, "Einrichtung und Konstrukzion," p. 73, who called Trinity "eine leidliche Kompilazion" (a sorry hodge-podge). For Greenough, see "American Architecture," U. S. Magazine and Dem- ocratic Review (1843), reprinted in Form and Function: Remarks on Art

by Horatio Greenough, ed. Harold A. Small (Berkeley, 1947), p. 53. 58. Reprinted in Whitman, The Gathering of the Forces. Editorials

... by Whitman as Editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, eds. Cleveland Rogers and John Black (New York, 1920), II, 91-93, 93-96.

59. Lloyd Morris, Incredible New York ... (New York, I951), p. 21.

6o. Hone, Diary, p. 754, 5 Feb. 1846; Strong, Diary, I, 256, 3 Mar. 1845.

61. See the articles in the New-York Ecclesiologist, 1848-1849, based on lectures given to the society by Frank Wills, an English architect who had recently established himselfhere: "Reality in Church Archi- tecture," I (Apr. 1848), 8-12, a thinly veiled attack on Grace Church, and two articles on church planning, I (Jan. 1849), 53ff., 73ff. Also, A Book ofPlansfor Churches and Parishes ... (New York, 1853), P. 2 1. For Downing, see Cottage Residences (New York, 1842), pp. 18-19, and The Architecture of Country Houses (New York, 1850), pp. 35-36; Vincent J. Scully, "Romantic Rationalism and the Expression of Structure in Wood," Art Bulletin, xxxv (June 1953), 132-133. George Templeton Strong became a great admirer of Ruskin after the publication in 1849 of The Seven Lamps of Architecture. See also the canons of architecture in "The Modern Architecture of New-

York," p. 121; The Crayon, mn (1856), 272-273. 62. Quoted in Architecture and the Building Trades, I, 129.

:i?IX

imai Jil i l it

i~liiiARM

Fig. 13. St. George's Church, Blesch & Eidlitz, 1846-1848 (from Putnam's, II [1853], 245).

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276

_" ??

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ai

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e-r,

Fig. i4. The Free Academy, James Renwick, 1849 (from Valentine's Manuals, 1849, opposite p. 224).

principles were widely supported and that any deviation was considered anathema from a moral, as well as an aes-

thetic and structural, point of view. Putnam's correspondent

summed it up neatly when he wrote that Grace Church provides proof that "all that flams is not Flamboyant."63 Blesch & Eidlitz' St. George's Church (1846-1848) at

Stuyvesant Square (Fig. 13), deeply under the influence of the Rundbogenstil, evoked an enthusiastic response, typically

Ecclesiological in tone, from the same writer, who called

this "the most chastely designed and the most sincerely built church in New-York-we are not afraid to say in the United States . . . ."64 George Templeton Strong found the massiveness and solidity of St. George's consoling after Ren-

wick's "pasteboard abominations."65 Of course, one must remember that Strong's critiques of his former classmate at

Columbia College were always colored by his intense dis- like of the man. After walking to a party with Renwick, he

described him as "that most windy of all the bags of conceit

and coxcombry that ever dubbed themselves Architect."

He went on to call him "an infatuated monkey" without "the slightest trace or germ of feeling for his art.... who degrades, vulgarizes and pollutes every glorious idea and form of the successive eras of Christian art that he travesties

and tampers with, as a sacrifice to the stolidity of building

committees and his own love offatjobs and profitable con- tracts. But he may improve and I hope he will."66

Renwick, one of the most successful architects of the pe-

riod, was considered a snob and appears to have been uni-

versally disliked. His building for the Free Academy (Fig. 14), later renamed the College of the City of New York, was opened on 27 January 1849 at the corner of Twenty- third Street and Fourth [Lexington] Avenue. In 1865 it still

elicited this venomous attack in the New-York Weekly Re- view of 4 March, interesting also as a reflection of the reac-

tion against the older phase of the Gothic Revival. After calling the Free Academy "the most hideous building to be found in this whole city of mongrel manifestations," the writer, fortunately anonymous, continued in this vein:

The design or plan of this nondescript caricature was, we under- stand, one of the masterpieces of that credit to his country, Sir Cristopher WRenwick, the distinguished architect (?) of Disgrace Church and of... sundry perpetuations too numerous and too horrible to mention. Renwick has applied ... Yankee genius, to what was usually been called Gothick architecture; and has suc- ceeded in patenting a style which could not be better known or described, than as Gothin. The Free Academy is decidedly in the Gothin style ..."

Until now, no mention has been made of the obviously important public and civic buildings of New York which were fully described, usually in glowing terms, in all guide

books to the city and, less enthusiastically, by most visitors.

The structures of which New Yorkers were most proud- -the City Hall, the Halls of Justice ("The Tombs"), the Custom House (now the Sub-Treasury Building), and Third Merchants' Exchange (Fig. 15)-were all products of stylistic tendencies of the previous decades. Monumental though they were, to Europeans they seemed retardataire and provincial. English visitors, such as Alexander Mackey and Thomas Grattan, admired the Custom House and the

Exchange, 67 but Charles Dickens, whose view of America

and Americans was somewhat jaundiced, described the Tombs as "a dismal fronted pile of bastard Egyptian."68 With the exception of the Astor House and City Hall, which reminded him of the Trianon, EugeneJouve charac- terized the public buildings of New York as pretentious and

maladroit in style, adding that "their taste and execution are

enough to make an architect's hair stand on end." Another

Frenchman, F. Dizac, stated flatly that there was "not a sin-

gle public building in New York which merits attention."69

63. 11 (Sept. 1853), 247. 64. Ibid., pp. 247-248. See also Carroll L. V. Meeks, "Romanesque

before Richardson in the United States," Art Bulletin, xxxv (Mar. 1953), 23, and fig. 2, a modem photograph of St. George's. Our Fig. 13 shows the church with tall spires, which were not finished until 1856; they were dismantled in 1890. 65. Diary, I, 335, 20 Nov. 1848, shortly after the opening of Grace

Church.

66. Ibid., I, 292, 16 Apr. 1847.

67. Mackay, The Western World; or, Travels in the United States in 1846-1847, 3rd ed. (London, 185O), I, 84; Sarah M. Maury, An Eng- lishwoman in America (London, 1848), pp. II9-120o; and Thomas Colley Grattan, former British consul in Massachusetts, recalling his impressions of years before, in Civilized America (London, 1859), I, 22.

68. American Notes ... , 3rd ed. (London, 1842), I, 199, an opinion shared by most visitors from the Continent. 69. The passage from Jouve's Voyage en Amerique (pp. 23-24)

reads: ". .. cathedrales gothiques ou temples grecs d'un gofit et d'une

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277

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Fig. I5. Third Merchants' Exchange, Isaiah Rogers, 1836-1842 (from Belden, New York, Past, Present and Future [1849], opposite P. 59).

"B.," the elusive author of one of the most interesting arti-

cles on New York, published in Atlantische Studien, wrote that, although he had acquired a poor opinion of German architecture following a trip to Italy, in comparison to American architecture, it was a "solid masterpiece."70 A number of visitors expressed admiration, however, for the

Croton Water Works (1842),71 on the site of the present

Public Library, with whose construction Renwick had been

involved (Fig. 16). Moreover, lest it be construed from this

account that the reactions of Europeans were entirely nega-

tive, it should be noted that all visitors were enchanted by

our domestic architecture: Jouve, for example, could not understand how Americans, who built such attractive pri-

vate houses, which he described at some length including a

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Fig. 16. The Croton Reservoir, 1842 (from Henry Collins Brown, Old New York, unpaged).

special mention of Lafayette Place, committed such "hor- rors" in their public architecture.72 Both Continental and British visitors looked in vain for

the great vistas, the magnificent avenues of approach which

architects abroad had exploited so dramatically for centur-

ies. Nowhere was this lack more apparent than in Wall

execution a faire dresser les cheveux sur la tete d'un architecte."

Dizac wrote: "I1 n'y a pas un seul monument public digne d'atten- tion" (Excursion aux Indes Occidentales et aux Etats-Unis d'Ainrique

.. [1853-1854] [Brive, 18551, p. 47). 70. The phrase reads "solide Kunstwerke" (I, 124). 71. E.g., Myers, Sketches, p. 79; Chambers, Things as They Are,

p. 176. 72. Jouve, Voyage, p. 23.

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278

: ii

n JiF? VJaltP;"I:

Fig. 17. Wall Street, 1850 (courtesy New York Public Library, Eno Collection, No. 251).

Street. Its general appearance in 1850 (Fig. 17) belied its reputation, well established by this time, as the financial capital of the United States-the center of worship of the

"God Mammon" and the "almighty Dollar."73 The Kll- ner View, illustrated here, is somewhat misleading: by ex-

aggerating the perspective, the artist has made the street ap-

pear much wider than it actually was. And Alexander Mackay was not alone in noting the symbolic incongruity of the site of Trinity Church, at the head of Wall Street, "as

if perpetually to remind the busy throngs that they cannot serve two masters."74

The Custom House (1834-1841) by Town & Davis, Ross

and Frazee, and Isaiah Rogers' Merchants' Exchange (1i836- 1842), the heart of American finance, dwarfed the other buildings on the street. Both were considered stylistically

passJ and functionally impractical by critics of the period,

hardly more than a dozen years after their completion. If

we compare the descriptions of these two structures in E.

Porter Belden's New York, Past, Present, and Future (1849),

the most noteworthy guide book of the mid-century, with

The Stranger's Guide around New York and its Vicinity (1853),

the change from the usual laudatory tone to a critical one is

immediately discernible.75 In 1853 Putnam's writer was un-

sparing in his criticism ofthe Classic style on practical grounds.

Of the Merchants' Exchange, he wrote "there is probably no building in the world so absurdly inconvenient." After

comparing the lighting to that of the pyramid of Gizeh, and

the basement to the catacombs of Paris, he summarized by

calling it "the dreariest, least inviting, and most expensive

place of business in the city."76 In an article on "Great Build-

ings in New York City" published in the Brooklyn Daily Times of 5 June 1857, Whitman criticized the Custom 73. Terminology used, interestingly enough, by Madame Pulszky

who, with her husband, toured the United States in 1851 and 1852 as members of the entourage of Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot (Pul- szky, White, Red, Black, I, 71-72). 74. Western World, I, 86.

75. Belden, New York, pp. 79-81; Stranger's Guide, pp. 33-34. 76. Putnam's, I (1853), 135-136; for the Custom House, see pp.

353-354-

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279

House as completely inappropriate to its setting, period, and function and concluded with a discussion of the Crystal

Palace which he considered "an edifice unsurpassed for beauty and all the other requisites for a perfect edifice."77

The important banks on the north side of Wall Street,

seen on the right of Figure 17, elbowed one another uncom-

fortably even though they were all relatively small struc-

tures, only two to three stories in height. By the early I85os their Classical Revival pretensions to architectural beauty

were no longer valid. The description of these banks of the

ancien regime in Putnam's clearly mirrors the change in taste:

"Doubtless, in their day, these tough granite dowagers bloomed with grace in the eyes of the young men who now

look down regretfully upon their beards, gray as the struc-

tures they once admired. Yet to our eyes these grim temples

... are matter only for lamentation." Concluding his de- scription, the writer likened "these forsaken specimens of

the pseudo-Greek remain with their bulky and ungraceful leg-like columns, out of place and out of proportion," to

"a crowd of. . . ballet dancers, who stand shivering and unregarded after the play and its applauses are over."78

The rest of the business concerns on the street operated

from high stooped converted residences, as may be seen on the left of our illustration, or from three- to four-story

buildings of the Ithiel Town type, such as Jones Court (1829-1830). But a new age was fast approaching. During the summer of 1849, the century-old stables at 37-43 Wall

Street were replaced by Jauncey Court, a group of seven brick office buildings, barely visible halfway down the block.79 Unpretentious and utilitarian in style, they none- theless were prophetic of the trend toward differentiation of

commercial from domestic architectural types, out of which

our modern office building eventually evolved. Nor was the new Barryesque palazzo formula long de-

layed in making its appearance on Wall Street. The Bank of

Manhattan (1847-1848), the fourth building from the cor- ner on the right (Fig. 17), was built of granite, in the old, rather undistinguished, residential style.80 Other banks, de-

molished in the course of the next few years, were replaced

by buildings more closely related to the new stylistic trends.

The razing of the old Bank of the Republic at the northeast

"T "- -_72 - 2--. -- - . .. _z- --5??7- -.- ~--_:_ i- "?7---- ------ - =?)[-2" '. :" ' : .... ' 7 r<- ?-:-- - ---

-I 21 i:I

Si;: ?

Fig. 18. Bank of the Republic, Hurry & Rogers, 1851-1852 (cour- tesy New York Public Library, Eno Collection, No. 305 n.).

corner of Broadway and Wall Street, was reported without

regret by Putnam's correspondent. Of the new bank (Fig. 18), he said: "in architecture as in history, Greece has fallen

a victim to Italy.'81 The Evening Post of 6 May 1851 includ- ed an unusually long and detailed description of the new six-story structure designed by the firm of Hurry & Rogers,

stressing the fact that it was to be "in the Italian style of ar-

chitecture ... to be ready for occupancy about six months hence.... the only one of the kind ever erected in this coun-

try."82 The massive principal entrance at the intersection of

Wall Street and Broadway, and the rounding of the corner, which the Post found so unusual, was criticized as "over-

done" and "against all constructive principles" by the critic of the New-York Quarterly four years later in his comments

on this, and other examples of the "American-Italian style.''83

There is no question that the English Barryesque palazzo tradition for banks and assurance offices, well established as

the dominant mode in Britain by i85O, furnished the in- spiration for the Bank of the Republic and many other buildings of the period, as indeed was pointed out by the German writer, "B."84 Yet one should also note a persistent

77. I Sit and Look Out, p. 130. For an evaluation of Whitman's attitude toward architecture, which appeared after this section of my dissertation was written, see Charles R. Metzger, "Whitman on Ar- chitecture," JSAH, xvi (Mar. 1957), 25-27. 78. I (Feb. 1853), 132. 79. Dated by newspaper sources cited by Stokes under dates of

26 May and 8 Oct. 1849 (Iconography, v, 1822). For a better view, see New-York Pictorial Business Directory of Wall-street, 185o, P1. Iv, Eno Collection, No. 230. 8o. Described in Evening Post, ii Feb. 1848 (cited in Stokes, Ico-

nography, v, 1809).

81. I (Feb. 1853), 132. 82. The firm of Hurry & Rogers consisted of William Hurry, long

active in New York, and John Rogers; the partnership apparently dated from 1850, when the firm was first listed in the directories at 13 Wall Street, Hurry's address for several years before. Weisman had tentatively attributed the building to Thomas & Son ("Com- mercial Palaces," p. 291, n. 33). 83. "Modern Architecture of New-York," p. I 16. 84. Cf. corner fenestration with contemporary British examples: e.g., Sancton Wood's Queen's Assurance and Commercial Cham- bers (1851-1852), London (see Hitchcock, Early Victorian Architec- ture, Vol. II, fig. xI, No. 15, etc.). The relation of our palazzo mode to that of the British was pointed out by "B." (Atlantische Studien, ii,

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280

emphasis upon vertical elements in the organization of building facades, mentioned earlier in connection with the Bowen & McNamee Store, and seen in this example as well, which differentiates these early examples of commer-

cial architecture, both in New York and Philadelphia, from

their British prototypes. In particular, the division of the

faqade into three clearly separated zones horizontally--a rusticated base, a middle section with vertically defined bays, and the roof area-seems to presage the age of Rich- ardson.85

New York in I850 was a busy bustling city. New York- ers prided themselves on the fact that Broadway, at least in

their eyes, had begun to rival the great thoroughfares of Europe. The commercial palaces and mansions of the mer-

chant princes were equated, by all but the most sophisticated,

to the palaces of Italian grandees. New ideas were eagerly taken up, in architecture as in business. The Classic Revival

was spent. Progressive architects were turning increasingly to new materials, brownstone, marble, and iron, and to new

building techniques. "Twenty years ago Broadway was a street of three-story red brick houses." "Now," wrote the

editor of Harper's in 1862, "it is a highway of stone, iron, and marble buildings. The few older ones that remain are

not even quaint, but simply old fashioned, and unhand- some.'"86 This, then, was the architectural climate which architects and travellers from abroad found in New York in

the middle of the nineteenth century-an architecture, like

the city itself, in transition. The eloquent critic of the New-

York Quarterly foresaw the time when "these western shores

will . . . see another Venice arising from her waves, and

New-York will be as celebrated for her triumphs in archi- tecture as she is now for her unrivalled commerce."87

183), who discussed at great length the special fondness of New York architects for the so-called Italian style and its handling: "Be- sonders beliebt ist jetzt der sogenannte italienische Styl, der aber nach hiessiger Behandlung nichts weiter als ein geschmackloser Zopfstyl ist" (ibid., in, 184). "Zopfstyl" is difficult to translate, but its derogatory connotation is made very clear in the next paragraph, where the author complains that the Italian style is handled by these architects as mere surface decoration, without regard to its structural basis and to general principles of composition. Madame Pulszky also commented on the introduction of the Anglo-Italian style (Red, White, Black, I, 49); elsewhere she criticized New York's architecture

as a chaotic conglomeration of styles and tastes, thrown together as if by chance (ibid., I, 71).

85. Cf. the Chemical Bank by Thomas & Son, which also fea- tured a rounded corner entrance (illustrated in Weisman, "Com- mercial Palaces," fig. 2, dated 1850o-1851). In contrast to the Bank of

the Republic, however, there is no attempt to organize the faqade vertically. Since the bank was described as in the course of erection in the Evening Post, 22 Sept. 1849, a date of 1849-1850 is probably more correct than 1850-1851.

86. xxiv (Feb. 1862), 409. 87. "The Modern Architecture of New-York," p. 123.

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