The 1884 Villard Houses

from the collection of the New York Public Library

In 1853, at the age of 18, Ferdinand Heinrich Gustav Hilgard came to the U.S. from his native Bavaria without his parent's approval or knowledge.  The boy was a progressive thinker, his father a conservative one.  Their political differences finally drove Ferdinand to board a ship for America, never to return. Upon his arrival he promptly changed his name to Henry Villard to conceal his identity and possible forced return.

Henry's early life in the States was not dull.  He became a journalist for several Midwest newspapers, accompanied Lincoln during his campaign and rode the presidential train with him.  Villard covered the Civil War for the New York Tribune, and was Washington correspondent for the Chicago Tribune in 1865.  A confirmed pacifist, after the war he married Helen Frances Garrison, the daughter of the anti-slavery advocate William Lloyd Garrison.

By 1881 Villard was president of the Northern Pacific Railway, owned the New York Evening Post and The Nation and founded the Edison General Electric Company, which later became General Electric.  It was time for the Villards, who were living in an apartment on 17th Street, to have a home deserving of their social status.

Villard commissioned the fledgling firm of McKim, Mead and White to design a complex of six unified mansions on Madison Avenue at 51st Street.  The concept of separate houses designed to appear as a single structure was not new, but was rare in New York.  The firm, only three years old, used Rome's Palazzo della Cancelleria as its inspiration.  The result was a U-shaped Italian Renaissance palace; four homes opened onto the courtyard while two had entrances on 51st Street.

from the collection of the New York Public Library

While the plans were still being drawn up in 1881, the Real Estate Record and Guide presumed that Villard's strategy behind his vision of courtyard-facing homes was to "secure privacy and get rid of tramps, and to live in a quiet and secluded way."  When completed the courtyard was accessed through a lacy cast iron fence the gateway of which was joined by an scrolled arch and lantern.

The interiors were all unique, using the finest materials and artisans.  Artists like Augustus St. Gaudens carved exquisite mantels, intricate wooden parquet floors involving tens of thousands of hand-cut pieces were installed and vaulted spaces were encrusted with elaborate mosaics.

Portions of the intricate mosaic and parquetry floors.  Images from the collection of the New York Public Library

The project was completed in 1884.  The Evening Post praised the restrained architecture, preferring it to what it termed the "vulgar" mansions a block away on Fifth Avenue.  Unfortunately, Villard lost his fortune around the time the homes were completed and Elisabeth Mills Reid, wife of New York Tribune editor Whitlaw Reid, purchased the Villard residence.  Although in a decade or two the 5th Avenue millionaires would abandon midtown, moving northward ahead of the encroaching stores and hotels, the wealthy owners in the Villard Houses remained.  As late as 1925 Mrs. Reid was still living at No. 451 with her 17 servants, including four footmen and two French cooks.

from the collection of the New York Public Library

But while the owners did not flee northward from Midtown as commerce engulfed the district, they did eventually die, leaving their grand residences to be taken over by other interests.  After her death, Mrs. Reid's home was turned into Women's Military Services Club in 1943.  Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia was there for the dedication during which he wistfully said of the old home, "You won't see any more private mansions like this."

By the end of World War II in 1945, more than a quarter of a million military women had spent the night in Mrs. Reid's glorious mansion.  Their rooms cost them 50 cents a night.

While various concerns took over different houses, Random House and the Archdiocese of New York, for example; much of the interior detailing was astonishingly preserved.  In 1974 hotelier Harry Helmsley proposed a 51-story hotel on the site.  According to his plan the interiors of the homes, which had been landmarked in 1968, would be gutted and the eastern facades stripped off.

Preservationists bristled.  And Helmsley listened.  His hotel was redesigned in a more sympathetic glass and dark metal and original interiors would be preserved.  He commissioned architects Emery Roth & Sons and Hardy Holz­man Pfeiffer to design the modern structure and integrate the 1884 houses.  Started in 1977, the project was com­ple­ted in 1980.  The brownstone blocks removed from the rear of the houses were storehoused and is used even today for reparation of the historic facade, making for seamless restoration when needed.

Despite the lost of much of the interiors, the Villard Houses as part of the hotel project mark an laudable and creative reuse of vintage structures.

The Abandoned 1904 City Hall Subway Station

Early postcard of City Hall Station - author's collection

Rafael Guastavino's tiled arch construction was not a new idea in 1900; actually it had been used in Europe since ancient times.  He simply rediscovered and improved it, yet earning himself a powerful reputation in doing so. 

Guastavino, born in Valencia, Spain and trained as an architect in Barcelona, immigrated to the U.S. after he earned a medal of merit at the Philadephila Centennial Exposition in 1876.  He founded the Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company and marketed his tiled arch construction as the "Guastavino Tile Arch System."

His construction designs fit well with the popular Arts and Crafts movement of the period.  Interlocking terra cotta tiles were installed in layers of mortar which enabled him to create strong arches with no visible means of support.  Although the clay tiles were, individually, fragile; together they were incredibly strong -- often compared to the inherent strength of an eggshell.

While Guastavino was perfecting his tile construction, New York City was planning a subway system.  Not only could the 19th Century elevated trains no longer efficiently move the multitudes of New Yorkers, they spewed ashes and soot and were noisy.  Through the Rapid Transit Act of 1894 the State had authorized the city to build and run a subway.  Six years later things got underway with the formation of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company.

At what would become the City Hall Station, Mayor Robert Van Wyck put foot to silver shovel and formally initiated construction on the subway system.   Architects George Lewis Heins and Christopher Grant LaFarge were commissioned to design the stations which were functional, white-tiled, nearly-claustrophibic spaces with individual mosaic themes or, in some cases, ornate tiles proclaiming the stations.

Except for City Hall Station.

The new mayor, George B. McCllellon, was explicit.  He wanted it to be a showplace.  "My station under City Hall," he insisted, "will be more beautiful than the rest."  Calling on Rafael Guastavino, Heins and LaFarge incorporated his graceful soaring tiled arches, creating a vast, elegant station.  Twelve brass chandeliers illuminated the earthy ochre, green and black Arts and Crafts tiles.  Nine stunningly ornate leaded glass skylights pierced the ceiling of every fourth bay.  On the opposite wall from the platform large bronze plaques honored the architects, the engineers and the politicians responsible.

As the system was being readied for opening, the Interborough Rapid Transit described the station.  "It might readily have been supposed that the limited space and comparative uniformity of the underground stations would afford but little opportunity for architectural and decorative effects.  The result has shown the fallacy of such a supposition."

At 1:00 on October 27, 1904 ceremonies marked the opening of the New York City Subway at the City Hall Station.  After customary speeches, Mayor McClellan personally turned the silver key and acted as  motorman, transporting the dignataries far uptown to the 137th Street Station.  At 7:00 that evening, paying passengers (admission was by five-cent ticket) were admitted.

According to The New York Times that day, "The rush for tickets to the opening continued unabated yesterday, and scores of demands had to be refused, with the result that the applicants went away declaring they had been slighted."  More than 7,100 paying passengers entered the City Hall Station that evening; a fraction of the system-wide horde of New Yorkers eager to ride the new system.

The City Hall Station was unusual in that, because it was situated at the beginning of the loop where trains would swing around to head back north, its platform was tightly curved.  Eventually lack of use and this design element would doom the station.

photo NYPL Collection

During World War II the beautiful skylights were blacked out for security purposes, eventually becoming covered over.  Then, because the nearby Brooklyn Bridge Stop was more convenient, fewer and fewer passengers were using the elegant station.  In 1945 the Transit Authority shut down the City Hall Station, demolishing the ornamental kiosks and sealing the entrances under concrete slabs.  The tiled arches and brass chandeliers were thrust into tomb-like darkness and the station was essentially forgotten.

Any hope that the City Hall stop would be resurrected was smashed when modern train cars became too long for the sharp curve of the platform.  The wide gaps created between the platform and cars would be unsafe and logistically unreasonable to attempt to correct.

In 1995 plans were made to rehabilitate the stop as an annex to the Transit Museum.  Over $1 million was granted by the federal government and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to restore the space and, for awhile, was opened for tours.  However, in 1998 after terrorist bombings around the globe, Mayor Rudolph Guiliani shut down the space again in concern over the accessibility to the area under City Hall.

Today tours are again conducted, although sporadically.  While some of the skylights have suffered severe damage, some are surprisingly intact.  There is some water damage and the once elegant chandeliers are covered in decades of gray dust.  Yet the grandeur of Mayor McClellan's showpiece is still evident over a century after its opening.

The Village Cigar Store and the Mystery Mosaic

While the neighborhood changes, the Village Cigar store has been an unaltering presence at the sharp point where Christopher Street runs into Seventh Avenue for nearly a century.  Slathered with metal signs and often peeling paint, the eccentric little building never seems to change.

But more interesting than the building is the mysterious little triangular mosaic imbedded into the pavement just in front of the cigar store's entrance.  It is all that remains of a David and Goliath-type struggle of a man who fought City Hall.  And won.

At the turn of the 20th Century Seventh Avenue terminated at 11th Street in Greenwich Village as originally laid out in the 1811 Commissioners' Plan.  The famous midtown grid pattern of streets and avenues was designed by a committee of three in an astonishing example of urban preplanning -- decades before the city would expand that far north.

Exactly a century later in 1911, however, civic groups pushed to extend Seventh Avenue south to better connect midtown to downtown as well as to augment the commercial access to the Village.  The extension would also allow construction of the IRT subway along 7th Avenue southward.

Armed with the power of eminant domain, the City seized property in the path of the projected avenue and, like Sherman cutting through Georgia, demolished everything in its way including buildings like the historic 1840 Greek Revival Bedford Street Methodist Church.  And the Voorhis Apartments.

And that's when the fight began.

The Voorhis was a five-story apartment building facing Christopher Street and owned by David Hess.  Hess fought the City in an attempt to save his building, but lost.  All that was left of his property in 1914 was a tiny triangle of land approximately 500 square inches.

The City, in an act of what Hess must have considered the ultimate insult, wanted him to donate the little plot to New York to become part of the public sidewalk.  Hess refused.  The City had taken his building but they could not have his triangle.

David Hess went to court against the City of New York and won.  When the little Village Cigar store went up a few years later, Hess commissioned the in-your-face mosaic.  Everyone who stood on that corner would know that David Hess fought and won.

In 1938, having made their point, the Hess Estate sold the tiny triangle to The Village Cigar store for $1000 -- about $2 per inch.  Today the Village Cigar store looks exactly as it does in any vintage photograph.  Its sole architectural feature is the interesting pressed and painted metal cornice.  While not a significant building, it remains an old friend in the Village.  And the story of the little mosaic triangle in front of it is priceless.

Byzantium on Park Avenue - Christ Church

Timing is everything.  And if the leaders of Christ Church, Methodist Episcopal did not know that in September of 1929, they found out very quickly.

In the early 20s, the congregation, originally called the Madison Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church was rapidly outgrowing its Romanesque 1882 R. H. Robertson-designed structure on Madison and 60th Street.  A plot was purchased one block away on the northwest corner of Park Avenue and 60th Street in 1929.  The title was signed in September -- exactly one month before the Stock Market crash and the onset of the Great Depression.

Using the funds from the sale of the former church and land, plans went on.  The church, now officially renamed Christ Church, Methodist Episcopal, of New York City retained architect Ralph Adams Cram --reknowned for his ecclesiastical and collegiate buildings -- to design the new structure.  Having just finished a 22-year position as Supervising Architect of Princeton University, Cram had earned his reputation with such commission as The Cathedral of St. John the Divine and 5th Avenue's St. Thomas Church.

While Cram was highly recognized as a master of Gothic design, he chose a combination of Romanesque and Byzantine styles for the Park Avenue church.  Protestants, he explained, were "adverse to Medieval Catholicism both by inheritance and doctrine."

Anything but light and airy, Cram's building -- at once sophisticated and rough -- combined brick and stone, pillars and arches to create the illusion of a venerable, centuries-old structure.  Its solid mass is softened by the deep 60th Street arches and the pillared gallery of the top-most level.

Cram's plans included a sanctuary seating 800 congregants, a chapel that could accomodate 110 and a parish hall large enough to hold 250.  Included in the complex was a parish house incorporating a gymnasium, clubrooms, a men's lounge and women's parlors.  The nave and chapel were dedicated November 26, 1933 however the Depression finally took its toll.  Funds ran out and no interior work could be done.  Unadorned grey concrete walls would surround the congregation for years.

Timing is everything.  Just as the Great Depression started to ease it's grip, World War II broke out in Europe and two years later in 1941 the United States was drawn in with the attack on Pearl Harbor.  The resulting shortages in materials prevented any interior work being done on Christ Church until 1948.

Finally in the summer of 1949 the breath-taking sanctuary was complete.  Drawing on the Byzantine mood of the architecture the interior was encrusted with over 7 million Venetian mosaic tiles covering 14,000 square feet.  Thirty-four separate types of marble were used.  The generous use of gold tiles is visually staggering.  There is not a new visitor who enters the sanctuary without gasping in awe.

The Episcopal roots of the church are evident in several physical aspects.  A decorated choir screen hides the choir from the congregation -- unheard of in Methodist tradition.  Behind the altar are 16th Century icons from the collection of Czar Nicholas II; flanking the choir screen are a pair of 17th Century doors removed from a Russian Orthodox cathedral; and filling the half-dome above the altar, rather than the expected Methodist cross, is a majestic seated figure of Christ.

Interior photographs via Christ Church United Methodist

Now called Christ Church United Methodist, it took nearly 20 years to complete, but the result is one of the most remarkable churches and visually overpowering interiors in the city.  The church conducts tours of the sanctuary on Sundays after 11:00 services.

non-credited photographs taken by the author