More construction photos of the St. Regis Hotel under its temporary name “the Astor Building.” Keep in mind that this is the corner of Fifth Avenue and 55th Street, an area that had been partially developed in the fifteen years prior to these photos as a high-end residential neighborhood, with some mansions along Fifth and smaller individual houses and rowhouses on Fifth and on the side streets, particularly on the east side of the avenue, on the blocks towards Madison Avenue. Commerce got here after 1900, with the St. Regis being one of the early examples, but in the guise of high-end residences.
The earliest superstructure construction photos in the collection are from September 15, 1901. Looking south at the 55th Street side:
Looking east at the Fifth Avenue side, with the tower of the First Reformed Episcopal Church in the background:
There are sone quite heavy built-up girders in there, presumably to transfer columns for the lobby layout. If we jump ahead a month, the steel hasn’t advanced all that fast, and now, looking west, we see the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.
Now that steel is being erected for the third, fourth, and fifth floors, so the simple fence from the early photos isn’t enough: they’re building a heavy-timber sidewalk shed.
A week later, on October 21, the pace seems to have quickened:
The last photo shows a very house-like construction shack on top of the Fifth Avenue sidewalk shed, and the brand-new University Club across Fifth. My guess is that the speed-up occurred as the steel erector got out of the details of the first and second floor and into the typical framing of the floors above.
Photos 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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