Envy, History, and a Mistake

From the Wurts Brothers, a tenant directory at 250 Park Avenue:

(Note that the photo date is listed as “1887 to 1964, approximate,” which would seem to cover all the possibilities.)

I love that style of directory, which is dying out in favor of touchscreens and concierge desks. “POSTVM BVILDING” caught my eye. I am vaguely aware of Postum as a coffee substitute – apparently with a more convoluted history than one might expect – but I did not know there was a Postum Building in New York. The address of 250 Park Avenue raises some interesting questions: that address, between 46th and 47th Street, is part of the original “Terminal City” development north of Grand Central. That area was, before the construction of the modern station for electric trains, a huge train yard badly-polluted by coal smoke. The change to electric trains and the construction of a two-level underground yard opened up a prime chunk of midtown for development by the New York Central Railroad, which quickly lost the “Terminal City” name.

In 1916, the site was vacant, with a rail yard below and nothing at grade (green for the future Postum site):

The Postum Building was built in 1924, but shows up in the 1923 map:

Unlike a lot of the first generation of buildings constructed on the air-rights over the new train yard, this building is still there, still office space. Note the Hotel Roosevelt west of Postum, with a stub of the future Vanderbilt Avenue between them. The only problem with that is that the Roosevelt is between 45th and 46ht Streets, a block to the south. Here’s a map from 1955 that shows it correctly:

The hotel also opened in 1924, and apparently the Bromley Map company, in showing buildings that were still in construction, made a mistake. It’s a good reminder that no source of historical information is perfect. The hotel is now closed and may be redeveloped in its current form, altered, or demolished.