A part of New York’s Civic Center, Foley Square sits on the site of a Collect Pond — the main source of drinking water in colonial New York. After the Pond got polluted and drained in 1811, the area became a home for the most notorious New York City slum known as Five Points. The…
Category: NYC architecture
Eldridge Street Synagogue
At the turn of the 20th century, the Lower East Side emerged as the most densely populated Jewish community on the planet! Running for their lives, escaping pogroms and prosecution, more than 2.5 million Jews immigrated to America; nearly 85 percent of them came to New York City, with the vast majority settling on the…
Temple Court – One Spectacular Office Building
The stunning Queen Anne–style Temple Court building, designed by James M. Farnsworth, was initially called the Kelly Building after the name of its developer, Eugene Kelly. It pioneered a new, developing concept of an office building. Most of its offices were occupied by lawyers, giving it the name “Temple Court” after London’s Temple legal district. A…
Stone Street – a homage to the Dutch colonial past
A short and slightly bent Stone street looks like it belongs in colonial New Amsterdam. And, in a way, it does. One of the city’s oldest and the first paved street in colonial New Amsterdam, Stone Street appeared shortly after the colony’s establishment in 1624. The Dutch called a part of it Brewers’ Street after…
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