Really, there are more than four, but once I kill the suspense, I’m going to rush through to the end. First up, June 13, 1923, not quite 102 years ago:
That’s 350 to 356 West 31st Street, on the south side of the street west of Eighth Avenue. Astute observers can guess what comes next, on June 22, 1923:
(Did you notice the missing windows? The houses were empty in the first photo.) Here’s 1940:
The house on the far left of the first two photos (348 West 31st Street) and at least its next two neighbors to the east are still there. The houses that were demolished in 1923 have been replaced by the 8-story steel-frame loft Pennman Building. The houses further west were replaced in 1931 by another steel-framed loft building. Finally, current day, via Street View:
The building on the right is the 1931 loft, the 1924 building that started the cycle is in the middle, then we have a 1972 garage covered in a cross between chain-link fence and mosquito netting, and then, at the end of the block, a 1953 office building/school.
In other words, an entire blockfront of rowhouses was piecemeal removed and replaced by utilitarian buildings. The earthquake that cause this upheaval is across Eighth Avenue on the north side of 31st Street: Pennsylvania Station. The construction of the 1910 station didn’t have as big an effect on this neighborhood as Grand Central did on Midtown East, and the effect was mostly east of the station, on Seventh Avenue, where, for example, the Hotel Pennsylvania was built. But the 1914 completion of the new General Post Office for New York, on the west side of Eighth Avenue, to replace the cramped old GPO at Broadway and Park Row, help speed the industrialization of the west 30s. This blockfront of rowhouses was, after 1914, facing the south wall of the massive post office rather than the houses that had previously been on the north side of 31st Street. The result may not have been inevitable, but if not it was close.
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