230-236 East 90^th Street
Thomas H. Poole
1886-87

The rapid development of Yorkville following the arrival of elevated trains can be traced directly through the construction of Catholic churches in the area. These included St. Monica’s (founded 1879), St. Jean Baptiste (1882), St. Joseph’s (1888), St. Elizabeth of Hungary (1891) and St. Stephen of Hungary (1902). The Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel was one of the grandest, occupying an imposing building clad with Vermont marble. The design was called “thirteenth century English Gothic” by The New York Times and features crenellations and polygonal turrets. The heaviness of the rough-faced upper story is relieved by a giant stained glass window with delicate Gothic tracery, and the refined lower stories are clad in smooth ashlar stonework. The adjacent rectory was designed at the same time by Thomas H. Poole, a congregant who designed several Catholic churches in New York City. If you need a place to rest and reflect at the end of your tour, Ruppert Park (named after the brewery that once stretched from East 90^th to 94^th Streets) is located across the street.

1716-1720 Second Avenue
Lamb & Rich
1886-87

This pair of stately Romanesque Revival style brick apartment buildings was constructed at a time when apartment-style living was becoming more socially acceptable for New York’s burgeoning middle class. They exemplified the use of distinctive architecture and evocative naming (similar to today’s “branding”) to elevate the image of the multiple-dwelling building type, which had long been associated with the cramped and squalid quarters of Manhattan’s worst tenement-house districts. In this case, the choice of the noble-sounding names “Kaiser” and “Rhine” signaled the overwhelmingly German heritage of the buildings’ presumed occupants (the U.S. Census for 1900 shows that most of the residents were of German descent), as well as the prominent Rhinelander family’s involvement in their construction and in real estate development in Yorkville in general. Although built as two separate structures joined along a party wall with interior courtyards, the buildings’ Second Avenue façades present a unified, monumental appearance. The decorative iron balcony and pent eave roof anchor the façade’s center bay, while the round arches that are a hallmark of the Romanesque Revival style play across the façade at different scales. The red-orange brick façade is embellished by rich geometric patterning and delicate Romanesque Revival style detailing, including corbels, quoins and window spandrels featuring delicate cartouches with ribbons. The building was recently restored with the removal of the white paint that had been obscuring the building’s subtle texture and fine ornament. With luck, the cornices that flanked the pent eave roof in this once-picturesque roofline will also be restored.

316 East 88th Street
Barney & Chapman
1896-97
NYC Individual Landmark, National Register of Historic Places

The Church of the Holy Trinity complex—including church, parish house and parsonage—was sponsored by Serena Rhinelander in memory of her father (William C. Rhinelander) and grandfather (William Rhinelander). The property was once part of William Rhinelander’s 72-acre farm. The parish was established when the neighborhood church and mission of St. James joined with Holy Trinity Church, formerly of Midtown. Completed in 1897, this complex is an outstanding example of Gothic Revival architecture, clad in golden-hued Roman brick and terra cotta with a brownstone-like color and texture. The buildings’ impressive towers, turrets, chimney stacks and spires evoke a French Renaissance style château. St. Christopher’s House was the first building completed, and served neighborhood youth as a clubhouse, recreation center and kindergarten. The architects Barney & Chapman had earlier designed the French Gothic-inspired Grace Mission complex that still stands at 14^th Street and First Avenue for Serena’s nephew; though more modest in scale than Holy Trinity, it was a clear precedent. If Holy Trinity is open, it is well worth a look inside.

East 88^th Street and East End Avenue
Ezra Weeks
1799-1804
NYC Individual Landmark, National Register of Historic Places

Most New Yorkers know Gracie Mansion as the home of New York City’s mayors, and indeed it has served as the official abode since 1942, when Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia first took up residence there. The stately Federal-style mansion was originally built as the country estate of merchant Archibald Gracie, who in 1798 purchased the land from British loyalists. The site’s naturally high topography offered strategic advantages, and by the 1770s Gracie Point—as it was then called—was the scene of military activity and fortifications. Over the centuries since then, Gracie Mansion has been many things: country seat, first home of the Museum of the City of New York and ice cream parlor. The elegant frame building with its wide porch now sits quietly within the picturesque landscape of Carl Schurz Park, overlooking the East River, and is maintained by the New York City Parks Department. It was also among the first New York City Landmarks, designated in 1966. The only mayor not to have lived at Gracie Mansion full time was Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who felt that the house should be fully open to the public (and that mayors should pay for their own housing).

photo credit nyc.gov

NYC Historic District, National Register of Historic Places

The Henderson Place Historic District is an early example of a planned real estate development intended to cater to “persons of moderate means.” In 1880-82, John C. Henderson, a fur and straw goods merchant, planned for 32 modestly-sized rowhouses on the north side of East 86^th Street, both sides of Henderson Place (the short alley running north from the east end of 86^th Street), the west side of East End Avenue (then known as Avenue B) and the south side of East 87^th Street. The eight houses built on the west side of Henderson Place were demolished sometime after 1940 and replaced with a high-rise building. Because the houses of Henderson Place were smaller than the average four- or five-story brownstone—only 18 feet wide and three stories high—they rented for slightly less than the going rate of $700 to $1,500 a year for an entire rowhouse. Despite Henderson’s choice of the prestigious firm of Lamb & Rich, who also designed The Kaiser & The Rhine apartment buildings (site 19), to design the picturesque Queen Anne-style rows, Henderson Place was not generally regarded as a desirable address until the 1920s. By that time, a Duke and Duchess could be found living at 140 East End Avenue, the corner building anchoring the southern end of the development.

c. 1861
NYC Individual Landmark

412 East 85^th Street is a rare surviving example of a wood-frame building in Upper Manhattan. Built by an anonymous craftsman, the house is one of only six wood-frame buildings still standing in this section of the city. Because of the very real danger of fire in urban settings, during the 19^th century the construction of wood buildings was increasingly prohibited in dense sections of New York. In 1866, Manhattan’s “fire limit” was extended north to 86^th Street, leaving 412 East 85th Street among the last wood buildings to be constructed on the Upper East Side. The house is a modestly-sized three-story structure, set back from the sidewalk and overshadowed by the taller 20^th century apartment buildings book-ending this block. The building expresses a simplified Italianate style, featuring a raised brick basement, a three-bay façade clad in clapboard siding, a porch with a tall stoop, floor-length parlor windows and a prominent bracketed cornice. Originally occupied as a single-family residence, by the turn of 20^th century the building had been converted for multi-family use and the raised basement was converted to commercial use—both reflections of Yorkville’s changing demographics. Over the decades since the 1950s, the heavily altered house has been restored in phases, resulting in its present appearance.

*Photo courtesy Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts

339-341 East 84^th Street
Michael J. Fitz Mahoney
1888-89
National Register

Over its history, this church has been associated with three German congregations, including one of New York City’s earliest. The inscription above the main entrance still announces (in German) the German Evangelical Lutheran Church of Yorkville, which originally commissioned the building. A smaller inscription beside the left entrance lists two dates: 1883, the year that congregation was founded; and 1888, the year the cornerstone was laid. The building, though relatively austere on the interior, proved too costly for the Evangelical congregation to maintain. In 1892, it was sold at auction and the Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church moved in. A half century later, in 1946, Zion merged with St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church. The latter congregation was established around 1847 as a branch of the even older St. Matthew’s, and its original house of worship at 323 East 6^th Street still survives. In 1904, St. Mark’s was devastated by the General Slocum tragedy, in which roughly 1,000 people died when an excursion boat caught fire in the East River. The disaster led many Germans to abandon Kleindeutschland, with many moving to Yorkville. St. Mark’s persevered for a number of decades, but it too eventually moved northward, bringing its altar, which still adorns the interior.

244 East 86^th Street
Charles W. Clinton
1879-80

The six-story Manhattan is one of many middle-class residential buildings developed by the Rhinelander Estate in Yorkville beginning in the 1870s. It is notable as an early example of “French Flats,” a building type that was a cut above a tenement or boarding house, with private bathrooms and windows in every room, but lacked the amenities of high-class apartment houses or hotels, which had servants’ quarters or fancy common dining rooms. French Flats evolved in the 1870s as demand grew for affordable, socially respectable working- and middle-class housing, and many of the earliest examples were built on the Upper East Side. Architect Charles Clinton contiguously designed the Seventh Regiment (Park Avenue) Armory, and there is certainly an architectural kinship between this relatively humble five-story building and the monumental and imposing armory. Both buildings feature monolithic red brick façades enlivened by contrasting stone banding and capped by muscular corbelled brick cornices. The Manhattan was built around an interior courtyard and made use of two airshafts to ensure sufficient light and ventilation in every apartment. The Rhinelanders managed the building until 1961, when they sold the property. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission has called the Manhattan one of the last surviving large apartment houses of this era anywhere in the city.

1491 Third Avenue
George Dress
1930

This unusual Art Deco music hall is distinguished by its wonderful terra-cotta ornament, which hints at the building’s original use with musical lyre motifs in the spandrels between the second- and third-story windows. According to city permits, the ground floor originally contained stores and a cabaret, the second and fourth stories offices, and the third floor a “hall for public assembly.” One of its earliest tenants was the Mayo Ballrooms (named after the Irish county), which advertised itself as “New York’s Most Beautiful Irish-American Ballroom.” (Its interior was divided into Irish and American sections by a folding partition that would be thrown open at the end of the evening to let everyone mingle and enjoy each other’s music.)  The building was commissioned by Peter Doelger, Inc., a real estate company that evolved from one of New York’s older German brewing operations. A few doors up, in front of 1501 Third Avenue, is one of New York’s landmark street clocks, manufactured by the E. Howard Clock Company and designed to resemble a giant pocket watch, likely an advertisement for the pawnbroker who occupied the adjacent storefront.

305-311 East 82^nd Street
C. B. J. Snyder
1904

When P.S. 290 (originally P.S. 190) opened, it had the capacity to serve 1,600 students. Architect C. B. J. Snyder was Superintendent of School Buildings from 1891 to 1923 and was instrumental in modernizing the city’s school buildings through new technologies, such as passive venting, and the implementation of standards for fireproofing and safety, as well as classroom, corridor and stair design. P.S. 290 was part of a citywide school construction campaign to address the city’s critical shortage of school facilities. By the turn of the 20^th century, both rising immigration rates and the Compulsory Education Law of 1894, which mandated school attendance until the age of 14, meant that overburdened public schools were literally turning children away at the door. During his long tenure, Snyder oversaw the construction of around 200 new school buildings and countless renovations to existing schools. Not only was he concerned with the functionality of the buildings and the comfort of the students, Snyder clearly thought of public schools as important contributions to civic architecture. P.S. 290 is designed in a robust Beaux-Arts style, using a bold palette of rusticated red and buff brick and chunky limestone ornament, like the lion’s head at the main entrance. Today, the building is home to the Manhattan New School, a magnet school specializing in literacy instruction. Note the separate ‘Boys’ and ‘Girls’ entrances that can still be seen at either end of the building.

225-227 East 80^th Street
Fowler & Hough
1893

This striking Romanesque Revival style building was originally erected as the Industrial School No. 7 for the American Female Guardian Society. Founded in 1834 as the Female Moral Reform Society of New York, a religious-based group concerned primarily with sexual morality, the society changed its name in 1839 and refocused its efforts on giving material aid to the city’s poor. By the early 20^th century, it operated 12 schools in New York, as well as a substantial “Home for the Friendless” in the Highbridge section of The Bronx. In 1918, the society built a new school farther uptown and sold this building to the New York City Baptist Mission Society, which altered it with a church on the ground floor, Pastor’s apartment on the second floor and bedrooms for young women on the top floor. The Society primarily served Yorkville’s growing Hungarian immigrant community, especially young women seeking employment. For several decades the building housed the Hungarian Girls Club, and in 1957 it was sold to the First Hungarian Baptist Church. Note the intricate terra-cotta ornament, particularly the door hood and round transom windows above the entrance, as well as the solid two-tone brickwork and round-arched windows—all hallmarks of Romanesque Revival style architecture.

1465 York Avenue
Babb, Cook & Willard
1906

The Webster branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL) is one of 67 branch libraries built throughout the five boroughs with funds donated by steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1901 to establish a city-wide branch library system. Its Beaux-Arts style (the unofficial style of the “Carnegie libraries”), was the work of Babb, Cook & Willard, which designed eight of the city’s public branch libraries, as well as Andrew Carnegie’s mansion on the Upper East Side (now the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum). The original Webster Free Library, which pre-dated the NYPL system, was founded in 1894 with a donation from Charles B. Webster and operated in conjunction with the East Side Settlement House. Notably, the Webster Free Library established a Czech Book Collection in 1897, which by the 1920s had grown to become the country’s largest library of Czech language and culture (the collection is now held at the NYPL’s main branch). The branch continues to serve a diverse population of New Yorkers, and like all of the city’s historic Carnegie libraries, it is instantly recognizable: the large arched windows give ample light to the first-floor reading room; the iron lanterns mark the entrance; and the “New York Public Library” cornice inscription proclaims the building’s continuing civic purpose. A few blocks away at 222 East 79^th Street, well worth a detour, is the Yorkville Branch (James Brown Lord, 1902), the first Carnegie Library completed in New York City that also served as a template for many of the later branches.

John Jay Park at East 77^th Street
Jaroslav A. Kraus
1913-14

John Jay Park is bounded by FDR Drive to the east, East 76^th Street to the south, Cherokee Place to the west, and East 78^th Street to the north. This park was planned as early as 1891, but the parcel of land wasn’t acquired by the city until 1902. The first public bath house was erected in the park in 1906, to be replaced by the red brick and limestone park pavilion seen today at the park’s northeastern corner. Built in 1913-14, the pavilion was designed in the Tudor Revival style, which was gaining popularity at the time. The swimming pool in front of the pavilion was added in the early 1940s under the tenure of Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, an avid swimmer and champion of public pools, and designed by Aymar Embury II, the Parks Department architect responsible for the numerous pool complexes constructed across the city in the late 1930s and early 1940s under the Works Progress Administration. At the same time as the pool went in, the pavilion underwent renovations to provide park goers with an auditorium, recreation room, gym and changing facility for nearly 2,000 bathers.

507-523 East 77^th Street and 508-522 East 78^th Street
Henry Atterbury Smith, 1909-11
NYC Individual Landmark, National Register of Historic Places

Across 78^th Street from the City and Suburban York Avenue Estate is another, slightly earlier, example of philanthropic housing. The Shively Sanitary Tenements (also known as the East River Homes, and now the Cherokee Apartments), were four buildings built to provide curative housing for tuberculosis patients. At the turn of the 20^th century, tuberculosis, or “consumption,” was the second-leading cause of death among New Yorkers (pneumonia was first). The Shively tenements, sponsored in large part by Mrs. Anna Harriman Vanderbilt and named in honor of physician and home-care proponent Dr. Henry Shively, were an attempt to put into practice current theories of the day regarding appropriate treatments for tuberculosis. The disease was thought to spread contagiously in the dark, cramped and airless conditions of old-generation tenement buildings in the city’s poorer districts. In 1910, an article in the journal American Architect said of the traditional tenement house, “No part is more subject to horrors, physical and moral, than halls and stairs.” For the Shively Sanitary Tenements, architect Henry Atterbury Smith designed an orderly grid of donut-shaped buildings with generous interior courtyards, plenty of balconies and exterior stairwells and corridors leading directly to each apartment. Gone today are the many rooftop pavilions that once provided residents with ample outdoor space and fresh air, which was regarded as the best cure for tuberculosis. These technologically innovative buildings employed fireproof construction techniques, such as the structural Guastavino-tile arches visible in the exterior stairwells, and are also notable for their handsome Beaux-Arts-style façades.

1470 York Avenue
Harde & Short; Percy Griffen; Philip H. Ohm
1910-13
NYC Individual Landmark, National Register of Historic Places

The City and Suburban Homes Company Avenue A (York Avenue) Estate occupies the entire city block between 78^th and 79^th Streets and York Avenue and the East Side Highway/FDR Drive. This collection of 18 beige brick model tenements represents a pioneering era in the development of low-income urban housing. When it was completed in 1913, it offered 1,257 well-ventilated, modern apartments for working families, as well as a 336-room hotel for working women. What made the unprecedented scale and quality of this new housing type possible was the privately financed limited-dividend corporation, whose members agreed to a limited return on their investment. Investors in this fairly novel real estate business model included philanthropic and socially minded New Yorkers like Caroline and Olivia Stokes, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Darius Ogden Mills. Although the York Avenue Estate presents a nearly unbroken line of simplified Renaissance Revival style façades to the street, each building is designed around a generous interior courtyard that brings fresh air and abundant light into the apartments within. A sister complex, the City & Suburban Homes First Avenue Estate, contains an additional light-court type buildings at First Avenue and 64^th Street, built between 1898 and 1915.

351 East 74^th Street
Church: R. H. Robertson, 1888;
Neighborhood House: Ludlow & Peabody, 1915

Designed in what can be described as the Bohemian Gothic Revival style, this church stands as a symbol of Yorkville’s Czech immigrant community. Named for Jan Hus, a 14^th century Czech priest, the church was originally founded in 1877 by Hungarian missionary Rev. Gustav Albert Alexy, and borrowed meeting space from a nearby German sanctuary. The parish grew to become the First Evangelical Bohemian Presbyterian Church, serving New York’s Czech-speaking population. In 1888, seeking its own building, the parish commissioned this church on East 74^th Street. By the 1950s, most of the Czech community had left Yorkville, so it has catered to a diverse population over the years. The structure itself features a tall, square tower topped with a shingle-clad spire, evoking the iconic towers of Prague. The Neighborhood House to the east was added in 1915 to celebrate Czech folk music, dance and marionette theater, as well as to serve broader needs of the Czech community, including job training, a dental clinic, clubs, athletics and language classes. By the 1950s, it also became a performance venue known as the Jan Hus Playhouse Theater, which is still in operation. Today, its other mission is outreach and advocacy for the homeless.

321-325 East 73^rd Street
William C. Frohne
1895 and 1897
NYC Individual Landmark

During the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, immigrant populations adopted the American tradition of forming fraternal organizations. In the mid- to late-19^th century, the Czech and Slovak communities of the Lower East Side rented space in a variety of locations, including German social halls. It was not until 1882 that the community found its own space, renovating an old saloon at 533 East 5^th Street and calling it Národní Budova or “national hall.” Around that time, however, many Czech and Slovak immigrants were moving to Yorkville, so the Národní Budova soon followed suit. The new building was constructed in two phases in 1895 and 1897 for the Bohemian Benevolent Literary Society, but was meant as a meeting place for all Czech and Slovak organizations and became known as Bohemian National Hall. The Renaissance Revival style structure is highly detailed, with a Roman brick façade and stone and terra-cotta ornament.

1251 Third Avenue
John Sexton and F. S. Barus
1870s; alteration: Louis E. Ordwein, 1947

Originally constructed as three four-story tenements with commercial bases, these buildings were combined and converted into a Colonial Revival style bank building clad in red brick with cast stone trim in 1947 for the Bank for Savings in the City of New York. The Colonial Revival style was chosen to reference the institution’s early history as the oldest savings bank in New York State, established in 1819. The tower and cupola, added at the time of the conversion, were inspired by the Governor’s residence in Williamsburg, Virginia. When the buildings were combined, the 45 units on the upper floors were converted to veterans’ housing. The building’s base has since been converted to retail use.

331 East 70^th Street
Frederick P. Kelley
1926-28

In 1894, the Normal College Alumnae Settlement House was established by members of the Alumnae Association of Normal College, now known as the Hunter College of the City University of New York. Originally located at 446 East 72^nd Street, the settlement housed a free kindergarten for the children of immigrant families in Lenox Hill and Yorkville. The organization grew to offer a multitude of social welfare, educational and recreational programs, and by 1915, the settlement constructed a larger building at 511 East 69^th Street and renamed itself the Lenox Hill Settlement. In 1926, the settlement outgrew its space once more, and constructed this building, funded in part by donations from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Once complete, this simplified Romanesque Revival style structure was the largest settlement house in the world, serving over 10,000 families and including a multitude of modern features, including gymnasia, a pool, theater, health clinic, cooking school, workshops and lodging rooms. It was at this time that the settlement changed its name to the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, which today serves over  individuals across five locations on the East Side between East 54^th and East 102^nd Streets. Its services include adult education, English courses, an early childhood education center, summer camps, a fitness center, homeless and housing services, legal advocacy, elderly services, a visual and performing arts program and a volunteer program. Both the building and the institution are important reminders of the area’s cultural and immigrant history.

346 East 69^th Street
Emery Roth, 1916
National Register of Historic Places

This striking, yellow stucco church building was designed in a Hungarian vernacular style by prominent New York City architect Emery Roth—himself a Hungarian immigrant—for the First Hungarian Reformed Church, whose congregation was originally located on the Lower East Side. This is the only Christian religious building that Roth designed during his long and successful career. The style of the building, which features a two-story structure, 80-foot central tower, red shingle roof and terra cotta and tile ornament, evokes countryside churches found in Central Europe. The building served as an important gathering place for the Hungarian immigrant community, whose arrival in New York City swelled between 1890 and 1910. Around 1913, many Hungarians migrated to Yorkville seeking employment at Ehret’s and Ruppert’s Breweries, and East 79^th Street became known as “Hungarian Boulevard.” In order to continue serving its congregants, the First Hungarian Reformed Church purchased three rowhouses on East 69^th Street, two of which were demolished to construct the church and the other turned into a parsonage. Above the church doorway is a tripartite stained glass transom window featuring a bird motif, which is likely the Turul bird, an important bird in the origin myth of the Hungarian people.