The Lost "Knickerbocker Cottage" - 6th Avenue at 27th Street

The original Isaac Varian house, the central building, is still relatively unchanged in this etching.  The wings were added around 1815.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

According to the New Amsterdam Gazette in 1883, a "Hollander named Geisenheimer" captained his small ship to New York City in 1731.   After safely crossing the ocean, he met calamity in what later became known as Kips Bay when his vessel hit a rock "near the mouth of the Stuyvesant Creek."  The Gazette said "The pious Hollander saw the hand of Providence in the disaster.  He and his crew hauled the shattered timbers of his bark to the head of the creek and built a hut."

The term "hut" is questionable.  Sitting at what is today Sixth Avenue and 27th Street, the Dutch house sat unperturbed until just before the Revolution.  Isaac Varian purchased the land and had the house transformed into one of the elegant country estates that dotted the area.  The Georgian-style clapboard manse featured a stone basement level above which an elegant entrance and fanlight sat within a columned portico.

By 1815 Sixth Avenue had been extended this far north, but it ran directly behind the house.  So the building was carefully raised on logs and turned around to face the roadway.  The ambitious project included the enlarging of the former country house.

Ten years later it was converted to a roadside inn, the Knickerbocker Cottage.  It was taken over in 1850 by Samuel Rockenburg.  He would not run the inn long.  On March 10, 1856 he died "of a lingering and painful illness" according to his obituary, at the age of 53.  "His funeral will take place from his late residence, Knickerbocker Cottage, No. 456 6th-av."  (The address would be changed in 1925 to No. 792.)

The Knickerbocker Cottage was purchased by Peter Connor.  In 1861 he was adding to his staff.  On November 28 an advertisement in The New York Herald read "Boy Wanted--To tend bar and open oysters.  One who understands his business."  And a few days later another ad sought "A young man, as assistant barkeeper."

Conner sold the business in 1863 to Felix Astoin, who leased the proprietorship to Captain William Fowler and Captain Boyle, veterans of the Civil War.  The New Amsterdam Gazette reported that the two captains "took the cottage in their hospitable hands.  They rejuvenated the ancient structure, but conscientiously spared its old front, its massive oak timbers, and its antique rafters."

After Boyle retired, William Fowler continued to lease the property and brought in his son, William, Jr., and then son Rufus to co-manage the inn.  The Knickerbocker Cottage was a favorite gathering spot for political and social groups.  On April 12, 1867, for instance, The New York Herald reported "Yesterday being the anniversary of the birthday of Henry Clay, [the Henry Clay Festival Association] held its annual reunion at Knickerbocker Cottage."

In 1868 journalist Bill Curtis and Civil War veteran Henry Buermeyer rented a room on Sixth Avenue at 14th Street and formed what today would be called a local gym.  Equipped with Indian clubs, dumbbells, and other Victorian equipment, their facility was intended to improve "feats of strength and pugilistic aptitude."  Later that summer they placed an advertisement in the New York newspapers inviting "sports-minded young men" to a meeting at the Knickerbocker Cottage to discuss forming a sports club.

The fourteen young men who showed up on September 8, 1868 founded the New York Athletic Club.  In his 1891 autobiography, John Richard Judd remembered "On this night they organized and called the club the N. Y. A. C., and I believe we each put in $10, though my $10 was handed back to me again because I was a professional."

Despite occasional affrays among the all-male patrons, the events in the Knickerbocker Cottage were generally peaceful.  In 1870 a group of Masons met regularly for lunch here at a special table on the second floor.  Two within the group were actor William J. Florence, known as Billy and Dr. Walter M. Fleming.  Based on Florence's familiarity with Arabian costumes and customs, and Fleming's knowledge of fraternal ritual, they organized the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine.

The first meeting of the Mecca Shriners--the first chapter established in the United States--was held in the Knickerbocker Cottage on September 26, 1872.  What had been a luncheon group quickly grew.  On November 24, 1873 The New York Herald reported "On Saturday evening a 'conventicle' of the Monks was called in the usual form, and they assembled accordingly at the 'Monastery of the North,' in Knickerbocker Cottage, Sixth avenue."  The group was conducting the funeral of Civil War General Ryan.

Another out-of-the-ordinary club organized here was The Manhattan Turtle Club.  Founded in 1870, its rules were entirely gastronomic and its members portly.  On December 12, 1879 The New York Times explained "It is said that the average weight of the 100 [members] is 314 pounds before meals, and that one of the rules of the club is that no man can become a voter in it until he measures at least 49 inches around the waist."

The election of officers was unique.  "The highest office is always awarded to the member who can walk steadily around the dining-room four consecutive times without assistance after eating the greatest number of plates of soup at the dinner preceding the annual election."

During the election process in 1879 Billy Birch, a minstrel entertainer, "stopped eating suddenly when half-way through his twenty-eighth plate" of turtle soup.  He was carried from the dining room choking.  The other candidates continued eating until finally Benjamin Gregory, proprietor of the Adirondack Iron Works, was elected after consuming 37 plates of soup.

Now that the officers were elected, the members turned their attention to Billy Birch.  The doctor reported he was improving "and said that there had been nothing the matter with him except that, in his inordinate ambition, he had eaten his soup in too large mouthfuls, using a ladle instead of a spoon, in which business he had taken down a large napkin with a knot tied in the middle of it, which became lodged in his throat."  The physician said that it "interfered with his appetite."

A similar club was the Five-Pounders which met here monthly.  In 1893 The Times remembered "They feasted at the old Knickerbocker Cottage in Sixth Avenue, whose host Capt. William Fowler, was one of the best livers in the land.  Before sitting at table each month every man was weighed, and he was not suffered to leave the room, no matter how late the hour, until he actually weighed five pounds more than when he entered the dining room."  By the time of the article, the club was no more.  The article ended saying "Both member and guests grew so fat that the disbanding of the Five-Pounders became a matter of necessity."

Another club in which William Fowler was personally involved was The Thirteen Club.  It was organized on January 13, 1882 with 13 members "to combat the popular superstitions attached to that number."  It held its annual dinner in room 13 in the Knickerbocker Cottage every January 13.

The New-York Tribune reported on the 1883 dinner saying "The menu was a coffin-shaped card with a border of thirteen nails, and contained thirteen courses."  By now the membership had greatly increased from the original 13 to 169--not coincidentally the product of 13 x 13.  Speeches during the dinner were limited to 13 minutes each.

Felix Astoin, described by The New York Times as "the wealthy Frenchman," died on November 8, 1883 leaving an estate of $500,000, nearly $12.5 million in today's dollars.  He left the Knickerbocker Cottage to Helen Ransom, the widow of his son, Celestin.  She quickly sold it that same year for $17,750 to William Wilson--about $440,000 today.

When Fowler died suddenly 15 years later, on July 6, 1897, The New York Times mentioned "In his time, to the cottage every New Yorker of note and many men of National prominence came, to partake of its famous dinners and suppers.  Ex-President Arthur was a frequent visitor, as were James Fisk, William Travers Samuel Ward, Lawrence Jerome, Lester Wallack, the younger, and a whole host of the wits and bon vivants of those days."

In the meantime, William Wilson sold the Cottage at auction on March 18, 1885.  Newspapers noted "The reasons for the sale of the property were not stated" and The Times added "The Knickerbocker Cottage was built piece-meal in the early part of the present century." The newspaper got its facts slightly wrong, saying "More than 150 years ago the land on which the cottage stands was owned by the Varian family, one of whom was Mayor of New-York."

The Mouquin brothers initially made only a few changes.  The store at the left was their well-advertised wine and cheese stop.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Since 1857 Henri and Louis Mouquin had operated a stylish French restaurant downtown known as Chez Mouquin.  In 1898 they leased the old Knickerbocker Cottage and rechristened it Mouquin's Cafe de Bordeaux. 

The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1899 (copyright expired)

After closing for remodeling in 1899 they reopened in 1900 now welcoming female patronage.  An advertisement announced "Ladies' Restaurant--Mouquin has just opened the Old Knickerbocker Cottage at 454, 456 and 458 Sixth Avenue, foot of Twenty-eighth Street elevated station, as a first-class restaurant."

Well-dress patrons pause outside of Mouquin's around 1901.  image courtesy of Gene Gantt

The fashionable restaurant became the regular meeting place of a group of painters of the Ashcan School of art.  William J. Glackens had been a frequenter of Mouquin's for years and in 1904 he and his wife Edith Dimock; John Sloane, Robert Henri and their wives began meeting almost nightly.  According to Bernard B. Perlman in his 1979 Painters of the Ashcan School: The Immortal Eight, "Often they were joined by George Luks, Jimmy and May Preston, or Frederick Gruger, all of the old Philadelphia gang."  The group was enlarged with artists like Ernest Lawson and Everett Shinn.

Mouquin's became a subject of at least three paintings by artists of the famed group.

In 1904 Everett Shinn painted a wintry scene outside Mouquin's - collection of the Newark Museum of Art

And a year later William Glackens depicted the elegant interiors.  The model for the seemingly bored woman was the artist's wife.  Collection of The Art Institute of Chicago

On December 20, 1908 the New-York Tribune reported on a somewhat shocking transaction--"the sale of the site occupied by Mouquin's restaurant."  John F. Lambias purchased it for $300,000.  The newspaper noted "The property is a landmark," adding "the building on the site is the original Varian mansion, one of the oldest and most historic buildings in the neighborhood."

When this photo was taken by Brown Brothers around 1916 there was remodeling going on.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

Mouquin's continued to run its fashionable French restaurant.  Things looked bleak in April 1919 when The Evening World announced that the building faced foreclosure and Mouquin's, "for two decades one of the most famous restaurants in the tenderloin, is to close its doors within a few weeks."  When interviewed, Louis Mouquin shed a tear and sighed "Life is just one damned funeral after another."

Around the time of its closing the restaurant had disguised the facade with vines.  photograph by the Detroit Publishing Co. from the collection of the Library of Congress

But the restaurant earned a reprieve and continued for another five years.   It was not foreclosure, but Prohibition that ended Mouquin's.  The New York Times reported "With the advent of prohibition the lustre of the restaurant began to fade."  Then, when agents found alcohol being sold, it was padlocked by order of U.S. Attorney Emory R. Buckner in May 1924.

Prohibition was not only the ruin of many hotels and restaurants, but of human lives as well.  Such was the case with the closing of Mouquin's.  Alexander Chaput had been a waiter there for 20 years.  He went home one evening and committed suicide by inhaling lighting gas.

Strikingly similar was the case of Armand Francois De Lysle, who had been a Mouquin's waiter for 25 years.  His wife had been in charge of the female employees.   Now they were both out of work and after nearly a year of searching the 59-year old De Lysle feared they would never again find jobs.

When his wife returned home around 7:30 on the evening of March 25, 1925 she found him unconscious from gas escaping from open burners of the kitchen range.  The Times reported "He died in spite of efforts to resuscitate him."

In October that year the Clay Trading Corporation leased the building for a "quick service" restaurant.  But it was too late for the building universally deemed a landmark and "historic."  It was razed within months.  The replacement building survived until 1999, demolished for the 37-floor apartment building The Capitol at Chelsea, which opened in 2001.

photo via wirednewyork.com

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Gimbels Dept. Store -- 6th Avenue and 33rd Street

As the building neared completion, Daniel Burnham released a sketch  Real Estate Record & Guide, July 10, 1909 (copyright expired)

At the turn of the 20^th century, the main shopping district in Manhattan stretched from 14^th Street to 23^rd Street along 6^th Avenue and along Broadway—the area known as The Ladies’ Mile.  Rowland Hussey Macy ran his successful department store at 14^th Street, just below 6^th Avenue where palatial emporiums filled entire blocks.

But in 1902 Macy took a brave gamble.   He leap-frogged the district and built the largest store of them all ten blocks north at 34^th Street.   Near the mansions of Fifth Avenue, the new Macy’s was set so far apart from the other dry goods stores that a steam-powered omnibus was provided to shuttle shoppers back and forth.

Macy no doubt felt secure with his competitors located far to the south.  But his greatest rival was not yet in New York City; but in Philadelphia.

Sixty years earlier Bavarian immigrant Adam Gimbel opened a lace shop in Vincennes, Indiana.  In 1886 the first “Gimbels” store opened in Milwaukee, followed seven years later by a large department store in Philadelphia.

Following the turn of the century, construction began on the mammoth Pennsylvania Station near Macy’s.  The increased potential of the area was not lost on Benjamin Gimbel and, despite his five brothers’ reluctance, he convinced them to open a Manhattan store.  The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide would later recall “In those days the site of the present Gimbel Building and the Pennsylvania station were occupied by dwellings and old-fashioned flats and tenements typical of the period.”

The Gimbel brothers leased land atop the “McAdoo tunnel system” for a term of 105 years.  The New York Times announced on January 30, 1909 that the “massive store” would “be the terminal of the McAdoo tunnel system, or Manhattan tunnels, which, by the time the store building is completed, will connect with the Pennsylvania Railroad, Central Railroad of New Jersey, the Erie system, and the Lackawanna & Western Railroad, handling, it is estimated, 1,000,000 persons daily.”

The department store site covered the entire blockfront from 31^st to 32^nd Street facing Sixth Avenue and across from Greeley Square.  Gimbels chose Chicago-based Daniel Hudson Burnham as its architect—possibly influenced by his design of other department stores including Marshall Field & Co. in Chicago and the McCreery Department Store in Pittsburgh.  Burnham filed plans for a 10-story structure above ground, with more floors below street level.

The understated Renaissance-inspired design belied the list of superlatives used by the press.  Newspapers and journals made note of the 2,406 support columns, the 12 “vast entrances with seventy-two doors,” 27 acres of floor space and the 45 show windows.

On July 10, 1909 The Record & Guide reported on “A mile and a half of banister” that would run along the stairways, the 8,000 automatic sprinklers and the 50 electric elevators.  The journal estimated that the construction of the mammoth store gave “directly and indirectly, employment to thousands of operatives.”

Armies of workmen scrambled to complete the store in record time -- photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library

A copper box containing a history of the Gimbel operation and “other data which will be of curious interest to some future generation,” according to The Record & Guide, was placed in the corner stone on December 8, 1909.  The excavation of the foundation had taken five months alone and strikes slowed construction.  Nevertheless on June 11, 1910 the $12 million store, including land, was completed ahead of schedule.

Gimbel Brothers immediately capitalized on the convenience of sitting directly above the subway.  A double-height “Subway Store” was designed to make subterranean shopping as chic as the upper floors.  Advertisements boasted of the easy accessibility for shoppers even in remote areas.  Adding to Gimbels’ accessibility to mass transit was the 6^th Avenue Elevated train.  A station stop was created directly outside the store at 33^rd Street.

The Subway Store was a retail innovation -- The Sun, October 5, 1910 (copyright expired)

Macy’s greatest threat had arrived and a decades-long competition for patrons was on.

 

Shortly after opening Gimbels advertised black beaver hats for $5.75 and ostrich plumed hats for $15 -- The Evening World, December 6, 1910 (copyright expired)

While Gimbels did offer high priced goods, it mostly targeted the middle-class woman.  Gimbels advertisements repeated the word “plain” – “Plain as a butter tub” and “Plain old Gimbels,” for instance.  It gained a loyal customer base of women who knew they were getting quality items at affordable prices.

The Gimbels New York department store was so successful that in July 1919 the brothers broke the 105-year lease by purchasing the property for $7 million.

The Bernard Gimbel, who oversaw the New York store, was a brilliant marketer, staging fashion shows, carnivals and other gimmicks to draw customers.  In March 1920 wealthy socialites worked as saleswomen, donating their 10 per cent commissions to Bellevue Hospital.   On March 13 The New York Times commented, “Miss Fay Bainter sold a hat almost the moment she arrived, but selling became difficult, for customers increased so swiftly that the floor space was congested.  Mrs. George Baker, Jr., has been on duty for three days and Mrs. Charles Dana Gibson worked hard all Thursday afternoon.  Mrs. F. N. Watriss and Mrs. Mary Hoyt Wiborg are among the more recent workers.”

The 6th Avenue Elevated station was directly outside of Gimbels -- Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=24UAYWV0O7FN&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894

Among the conveniences offered was the nursery where mothers could drop off their children while they shopped.  On September 10, 1921 at 2:30 a young woman in a black silk dress dropped her one-month old baby girl with Stella Ellis, saying she would pick up the infant later.  When the store was closed, the baby was still there.

A policeman was called who took the child to Bellevue Hospital.  The nursery, it appeared, was an easy way for the mother to abandon her infant with the knowledge it would be cared for.

A model strikes a post during a fashion show around the time of the store's opening -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

Sitting between Macy’s and Gimbels was the nine-story Saks & Co. department store, engulfing the 6^th Avenue blockfront between 33^rd and 34^th Streets.  In 1922 the firm began construction of its new building on Fifth Avenue at 50^th Street.  Although the project would take two years to complete, Gimbels was quick to react. The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported on June 15 that Gimbels had leased the structure for 21 years at an annual rental of “between $400,000 and $500,000 net.”  It was, no doubt, no coincidence that the move followed closely on the heels of R. H. Macy & Co.’s announcement to erect an addition to its store.

In reporting on the lease, The New York Times mentioned “It was said that it was too early yet to make any definite announcement of plans for the actual physical linking together of the two structures, but two ways of joining them may be used.”  One idea was a tunnel, connecting to the various passenger tunnels already in place.  “There is also the possibility of building an overhead bridge,” said the newspaper.

But before any of this could take place, less than a year later, on April 25, 1923, The New York Times reported that Gimbels and Saks had merged.  “When Saks & Co. move to their new store at 617 Fifth Avenue, Gimbels, [which] already had acquired the present Saks building just across Thirty-third Street from the Gimbel store, will open there a special store similar to that now conducted by Saks.”

When Gimbels opened in the former Saks building in 1924, a platform from the 6^th Avenue El was extended down 33^rd Street and a connecting bridge built between the two structures at the second floor.  Now customers could easily alight from the elevated and enter either store.  The bridge had its drawbacks, however.  It became a favorite escape route for shoplifters who would dash from Gimbels into the former Saks building, or vice-versa.

A postcard captured the bridge between Gimbels and the former Saks Building after the demolition of the El.

Gimbels’ long list of innovative marketing perhaps reached its apex in September 1924 when it opened a radio station on the 8^th Floor.  “The entire station, including the studio in which the artists perform, the transmitting room and power room, will be in a glass enclosure, so that the public can see how broadcasting is done and how the apparatus functions,” reported The Times.  Shoppers were allowed into the studio during program were being aired; and a special “receiving room” was available for people to gather to hear important news events.

Louis Gimbel described the family-friendly programs, including “debates and concerts by school children and music students recommended by teachers of music.  A feature of the opening program will be Uncle Wip, the bedtime story teller of station WIP, Philadelphia, who has organized a club of 35,000 children by his broadcasts.”

Gimbels’ phenomenal growth was evidenced not only by its sales exceeding $100 million that year; but by the purchase the following year of the 18-story Cuyler Building at Nos. 120 through 126 West 32^nd Street.  When Gimbel Brothers announced the $2.5 purchase in October 1925, it said the acquisition “was made necessary by the great growth of the company’s business.”  To connect the Gimbels store with the Cuyler Building, architects Richard H. Shreve and William F. Lamb were commissioned to design another sky bridge—this one a three-story copper-clad Art Deco beauty.

An ambitious 3-story bridge connected Gimbels with the Cuyler Building.

The Gimbel store’s gimmicks to attract customers became more creative during the Depression years and in November 1935 the 6^th Floor was turned into a replica of the 19th century Barnum Museum on Broadway.  Adults paid 15 cents and children a dime to see the legendary museum’s attractions.

“It is really a complete Barnum,” said The Times.  “Joice Heth, wizened and witch-like, is there to remind you that she lived when George Washington was too young to chop down trees.  The Cardiff Giant looms coldly from his erect coffin in a corner.  The white whale, with an undulant tail and heaving sides, spouts regularly—at least as often as some one pushes a button hidden by the rail.”

Among the 60 life-sized models were Tom Thumb, the Fejee Mermaid, Jumbo the Elephant and Jenny Lind.  “Barnum himself stands at the side of his nightingale,” said The Times, “and when the electricians in the rear room see to it, he makes a speech of introduction.  Then Jenny sings, although her papier-mâché lips do not coordinate with the melody very well.”

On April 24, 1937 Amelia Earhart addressed a group of 500 in the department store’s restaurant.  The New York Times made special note of her announcement that “she purposed to attempt the ‘round the world at the Equator’ flight again ‘some time around the middle of May.’”

Although the old 6^th Avenue El was demolished in 1939, the second story bridge remained to link the Gimbels and Saks buildings. 

In August 1941, just months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the government instituted curbs on the manufacture of silk stockings.  Silk was necessary in the manufacture of parachutes.  The announcement sparked a near riot among female New Yorkers.  On August 5 a New York Times headline read “Women Stampede for Stockings As Result of Government Silk Ban.”

“Ropes controlled the crowds at Gimbel’s, where nineteen extra [employees] confronted the women who were lured there by a special sale of nylon and silk hosiery that disappeared early in the morning.  Even though salesgirls were summoned from near-by counters to assist with the stocking sale, there arose a plea from the buyer, ‘Get me some more girls, please,’ as the noon customers bunched in the store.”

Gimbels pitched into the war cause by selling Victory Bonds and, in 1943, installing a vegetable garden inside the store “to prove that two persons can grow all the vegetables they need for three months on a tiny plot,” said The Times.   It went even further, at the war’s end, by helping the Government sell off surplus property on the selling floor.

The rivalry between Macy’s and Gimbels was legendary; and never more so than during the Christmas selling season.  But in December 1955 an unexpected truce was called.  On December 9 The New York Times wrote “Bernard F. Gimbel, who has long been devoted to a department store that bears his name, did something extraordinary yesterday.  He went to Macy’s.”

Gimbel visited the office of Jack I. Straus, President of R. H. Macy & Co., with an surprising marketing strategy.  Soon “throngs of happy, rosy-cheeked shoppers, eagerly crowding one another off the sidewalks, were becoming aware of two huge signs on Macy’s and Gimbels.  The Macy sign read ‘This Way to Gimbels’ and ‘When Macy’s Tells Gimbels, It’s the Miracle on 34^th Street.’  The Gimbels sign was similar, except that it pointed to Macy’s.”

The competition was evident three years later when the motion picture Auntie Mame was released.  Rosalind Russell, in the role of Mame, walked off her job at Macy’s during the Christmas rush.  Infuriated customers wanted to know how they were to get the items they wanted.  “Go to Gimbels,” Mame responded.

Things were changing for Gimbels Greeley Square by the 1960s.  On December 29, 1965 E. J. Korvette, Inc. announced plans to take possession of the former Saks Building.  Four months later, on April 23, 1966, The Times reported on the removal of the second story bridge.  “After 42 years, the two-level bridge is being demolished.  In about a week, it will pass into oblivion—a fate that has overcome many other New York landmarks.”

Two years later Gimbels announced plans for a new store on the corner of Lexington Avenue and East 86^th Street.  The 14-story white marble and black slate building opened in February 1972, and the old 6^th Avenue building became known as “Gimbels downtown.”  But unlike its Upper East Side counterpart, the 1910 store sat in what was now an increasingly seedy neighborhood.

On June 6, 1986 the Associated Press reported “Macy’s no longer has to keep its secrets from Gimbels.  After 76 years of a fierce but friendly rivalry, Gimbels at Herald Square is going out of business.”   Within a year the Brooklyn-based department store Abraham & Straus announced it would take over the old 6^th Avenue building.  The intended gut renovation was part of an attempt to revive the Herald Square shopping district.  Earlier the old Saks-then-Korvettes building had become a vertical mall, Herald Center; however to date its reception among shoppers was tepid at best.

Burnham’s Edwardian façade remained—more or less—while the interiors were junked and replaced by the A&S Plaza that featured an enormous central atrium.  Walls of glass and a sleek two-story base retained the old structure's bones while giving it a decidedly modern feel.  And yet still clinging on high above 33^rd Street was the wonderful Art Deco sky bridge which had somehow survived.

The plan failed.  By 2002 when advertising agency Foote, Cone & Belding leased the 270,000 square foot building, Times reporter John Holusha remarked “The building once housed Gimbels, then Abraham & Straus and then Stern’s department store and along the way became known as the Manhattan Mall.”

Foote, Cone & Belding decided on another direction for the property--a mixture of business offices, showrooms and stores.  In 2006 the building was sold once again, this time to Vornado Realty Trust for about $689 million.

Little remains to remind New Yorkers that a massive department store one engulfed three buildings here.  Except a fantastic copper sky bridge, long ago sealed up, high above 33^rd Street.

current photographs by the author
many thanks to reader Karina Romero for requesting this post