Another set of construction photos to look at, starting with a mystery. Here’s photo 22 in the sequence, from August 13, 1902:
The title of the photo, and all the photos in this book, is “The Astor Building,” which raises the question: which Astor Building? The Astor family built a lot of big buildings in Manhattan over the years, and a fair percentage were named after themselves. This is obviously (because of the date) neither the Waldorf or the Astoria wings of the Waldorf-Astoria; it’s far too small to be the Hotel Astor in Times Square, built around this time. It’s too tall and not shaped right to be the Astor Apartments at Broadway and 75th Street. The floor plans show apartments on the upper floors (alternate plans for a single apartment per floor or three per floor) and a commericalish lobby, suggesting a residential hotel:
The only real hint is that the architects are Trowbridge & Livingston and the builder was Thompson-Starrett. That information pointed me in the right direction: this is the St. Regis Hotel at Fifth Avenue and 55th Street. Once I knew that (a) the church in the first image is the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church across Fifth from the hotel and (b) the elevation looked familiar:
The time it took me to identify the building is a good reminder of how utterly residential Fifth Avenue in midtown was in 1900. Note that the hotel opened in 1904 even thought the exterior looks pretty complete in the summer of 1902. The interior build-out of a building like this was incredibly complex and took time.
Coming soon: actual construction!
Photo from the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “The Astor Building” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1902.
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