Speaking of the orphaned triangle of land at the southeast corner of Union Square, here it is, in the foreground of the photo:
The title from the Wurts Brothers is “Parks – Union Square – looking north from Fourth Avenue – West 14th Street” which is already wrong, as this is East 14th Street. The statue of Washington on horseback is the “monument” referred to in yesterday’s post, and was moved to actually be in the square, rather than perpetually crossing the street, in 1930.
The tall building with the big flag, far left, is the Bank of the Metropolis1 building, completed in 1903. The five-story white building on the left side of Fourth Avenue, past the square, was the Everett House hotel, demolished in 1908 for the 20-story Everett Building. Union Square was originally a developer’s plan for an exclusive residential neighborhood, similar to the way Gramercy Park was developed, but, inevitably, the central location of Union Square led to the residential uses being overwhelmed by commercial ones. The Everett House was one of the last remnants of mid-1800s gentility in the neighborhood; the Everett Building, now landmarked, was the beginning of a wave of high-rise office and loft buildings running up Fourth Avenue from 17th Street (the north end of Union Square) to about 30th Street.
Finally, given the timing of this photo, that pile of wood in the lower right corner may be related to the construction of the IRT subway.
- The best-named bank in the history of New York, with the short-lived name “Chemical Corn Bank,” formed by the merger of the Chemical Bank with the Corn Exchange Bank, running a distant second. ↩︎
You must be logged in to post a comment.