The Peter L. Bernhardt Saloon and Tenement - 180 First Avenue

 

A hint of the original appearance of the 4-story house-and-store can be gleaned in the building next door.   photograph by Ted Leather

Most of the houses that filled the block on the east side of First Avenue between 10th and 11th Streets in the first half of the 19th century had stores on the ground floor.  The four-story house-and-store at the southeast corner of West 11th Street was erected in 1841.  By 1851, A. T. Higbie operated a grocery in the store space.

The neighborhood was filled with Irish immigrants in the years just before the outbreak of the Civil War.  John McGuire, who came from County Fermanagh, Ireland, lived here in 1860; and the following year Bridget Brenan, a widow, and John McManus, a laborer, occupied rooms here.  In the meantime, Thomas Butler had opened a saloon in the former grocery space.

The saloon saw a succession of proprietors over the subsequent years.  Mary McLaughlin, the widow of Charles McLaughlin, not only ran this saloon, but owned another at 390 Tenth Avenue in the notorious Hell's Kitchen district.  Michael J. McCabe took over in 1867 and moved his family into the upper floors.  By then, German immigrants were changing the personality of the neighborhood.  Among the McCabes' neighbors in the building were Jacob Gebhardt, a porter; Elizabeth Phahl, a widow; and Eliza J. Purty, who ran a candy store on West 18th Street.

Change came in October 1872 when Henry Bernhardt transferred the title of 180 First Avenue to Peter Ludwig and Maria Bernhardt.  No money was exchanged in the transaction.  In return for the First Avenue house, Peter and Maria transferred title to another on East 13th Street, just east of Avenue A.

Peter L. Bernhardt converted the house to a tenement, adding an additional floor.  His architect added an ambitious cast metal corner with half-round pediment that announced the date of construction and Peter's monogram.  A single-story store was erected to the rear at 400 East 11th Street.  It doubled as the residential entrance to the tenement.

photograph by Ted Leather

Bernhardt was born in Germany in 1831.  He married Maria Geiger in New York City in 1853.  The couple had four children, Henry, Dorothea, Helena J. and Louise.  The family moved into one of the upstairs apartments.

Peter Bernhardt took over the saloon.  It was not long before trouble occurred.  On February 2, 1872, The New York Times reported, "At noon yesterday an affray occured [sic] in the oyster-saloon, No. 180 First-avenue, during which William Swezey, one of the employes [sic] of the saloon, was struck on the head by Fred[erick] Golden, and received a severe wound."

It appears that Golden was on a mid-day drunk and got out of control.  Swezey was, most likely, trying to eject his unruly customer.  It is unclear what Golden used to bonk him on the head, but it might have been a bottle, which broke.  The New York Times noted, "Philander Weeks, another employe [sic], was cut on the hands and severely injured."  Golden was arrested and jailed.

The Saul family, who lived upstairs, suffered a horrific tragedy on June 11, 1874.  The Sun reported that four-year-old Emma Saul "fell into a tub of boiling water" at 2:00 that morning.  The Daily Graphic explained, "She was rescued from the boiler almost immediately, but was terribly burned, having been completely immersed in the water, which had but just been removed from the stove."  The little girl died in the apartment that afternoon.

Peter and Maria Bernhardt would eventually own several Manhattan properties.  As early as 1879, the family moved out, although retaining possession of the building.  That year Meyer Himmelweit ran a drygoods store in the former saloon space, and Adloph T. Glunz ran a grocery in the 11th Street store.  The names of the tenants upstairs were mostly German by now, Aneshansel, Sternshorn, and Kochendoerfer among them.

Charles Euler and his wife became medical pioneers of a sort when they brought home their seven-month-old baby boy in the summer of 1895.  When born, the premature infant had little hope for survival.  But Charles Euler, Jr., "a crinkled little roseleaf of humanity," as described by The Weekly Press on June 26, was sent home inside an incubator--a relatively new invention of the Boston-based Hub company.  The article said, "He is a precocious little chap--this tenant of an incubator, for he already has begun to hold on with his little lips to the instrument which drops barley water and sterilized milk into his dot of a mouth."

Charles Euler, Jr. came home to 180 First Avenue in this incubator.  The Weekly Press, June 26, 1895 (copyright expired)

On June 10, 1910, six months before his death at the age of 79, Peter Ludwig Bernhardt sold 180 First Avenue to Lambert S. Quackenbush.  

Among the tenants Quackenbush inherited were the Porazzo family.  Carmine Anthony Porazzo and his wife, the former Maria Addonizio, moved into an apartment here around 1874.  The couple were both natives of Avellino, Italy.  Born in 1850, Carmine eventually earned the nickname the "Father of the East Side," according to the New York Telegram.  The newspaper said, "If he heard of a family about to be evicted, he hastened around with a little something to satisfy the landlord.  If somebody were out of luck, or, as often happened, got into trouble with the police, Carmine could be relied upon."

Among those who "got into trouble with the police," were Carmine, himself, and his son, Pasquale, known as Patsy.  He, his wife, Rosina Catania, and their six children also lived in the building.  Carmine and Pasquale converted the drygoods space to an illegal saloon.

On February 23, 1912, The Plattsburgh Sentinel reported on the raids of "fifty drinking places, cafes, hotels, cellars and sub-cellars that...had no licenses to sell."  The article said, "Over three hundred barrels of wine were confiscated in the place of C. A. Porazzo...which the commissioner values at about $15,000."  (The figure would translate to about $511,000 in 2025.)  The American Advance added, "Many of the joints had regular bars fitted up for business."

The following month, on March 20, The Evening World reported that Pasquale's 17-year-old son, George, was "indicted for forgery in the second degree."  Having had no previous conviction, George's charge was dismissed.

At the time, the Italian community was plagued by a terroristic group called La Mano Nera, or the Black Hand.  The Italian-American group used violence, including assassinations and bombings, to extort money from well-to-do Italians.

On June 14, 1914, the New York Herald reported on the "hundreds of bomb outrages in New York city--all directly traceable to the Black Hand" that had been committed the previous year.  On the list was the March 5, 1913 bombing at the "Carmine Porazzo wine cellar, No. 400 East Eleventh street."

Julius Regina and his wife occupied a fifth floor apartment here in 1915 with their four children, Katherine, Louis, Josphine and Lena.  The oldest was five years old and Lena was still an infant.  

On the afternoon of November 23, 1915, Mrs. Regina went shopping, leaving her the children unattended.  The Evening World reported that they, "played with matches until a curtain caught fire.  They were screaming in terror when their mother, Mrs. Julius Regina, returning from a store, heard their cries and rushed into the room."

Expectedly, other residents rushed into the hallway.  The Evening World reported that 11-year-old Modesta Taduca darted through the crowd and into the apartment.  She aided Mrs. Regina to pull all the children out of the "blazing room."  The article said that firefighters soon extinguished the fire.

Pasquale Porazzo was in trouble again in 1922.  On January 13, The New York Times reported, "The local Italian lottery business, which is said to have resulted in forty murders since 1916, finally has been broken up."  The article that six men had been arrested, including Pasquale Porazzo, "a tailor."

Carmine Porazzo's sometimes shady operations did not taint his reputation in the neighborhood.  On April 4, 1924, the New York Telegram reported on his funeral, the article's headline reading: "'Father' of East Side Buried / Huge Throngs Weep at Bier of Carmine Porazzo--Funeral of Record Size."  The article said: 

There were at least thirty carriages loaded down with flowers.  The horse-drawn procession of mourners required an hour to pass a given point.  Some said there were 300 vehicles, but as it is unlucky to count the coaches in a funeral train the exact number probably will never be known.

In 1941, a massive advertising mural was painted on the building's side.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

The tenement continued to be home mostly to immigrant families throughout the subsequent years.  In the third quarter of the century, the neighborhood's demographics changed and trendy restaurants and shops redefined its personality.  In July 2018, Brazilian-born artist Eduardo Kobra painted a colorful mural of Michael Jackson on the building's side. 

Kobra's mural depicts Jackson as a youth (left) and an adult (right).  photograph by Ted Leather

There are still 16 apartments in the vintage building that Peter L. Bernhardt substantially remodeled in 1872.

photograph by Ted Leather

many thanks to reader Ted Leather for suggesting this post

The Thomas Malloy Saloon - 138 First Avenue

Before 1840, a two-and-a-half story house and store was erected at 138 First Avenue.  Typical of its Federal style, it was faced in Flemish bond brick and its windows wore splayed lintels and keystones.  One or two dormers would have pierced its peaked roof.

As early as 1852, Thomas C. Devlin operated his painting business from the store.  A teenaged apprentice working for Devlin was looking for a new situation in September 1853, but the separation between the trainee and employer appears to have been amiable.  His ad read: 

To Painters--Wanted, by a young man, 18 years of age, a situation to learn the trade.  A note addressed to J. Pease, 138 First avenue, in the paint store, will meet with immediate attention.

Josephine Adams, the widow of Oliver H. Adams, occupied the upper portion of the building by 1855.  Around 1859, Thomas Malloy purchased 138 First Avenue and converted the former paint store to a saloon.  Sharing the upper floors with him was the family of carpenter Daniel Stapleton.  On December 4, 1863, an advertisement appeared in The New York Sun offering, "For Sale--A carpenter's chest, with some tools, all in perfect order.  Inquire at 138 First ave."

Daniel Stapleton would not be needing his work tools for a while.  About a month earlier, he, his sons Michael and Edward J., and his landlord, Thomas Malloy, had all enrolled in the Union Army.  

Following the war, Malloy was back behind his bar.  In 1867, he had four roomers--Henry Bindewald, a cooper (or barrel maker); carver Lewis Leining; policeman John O'Connor; and Charles Turei, a shoemaker.  The number of residents was made possible by the raising of the attic to a full third floor.  Astoundingly, the builder continued the Flemish bond brick and nearly copied the splayed lintels of the lower floor.  A fashionable Italianate cornice was installed, and a brick intermediate cornice over the second floor marked the former roofline.

Malloy's tenants were experiencing a serious problem at the time.  On August 24, 1867, the New York Herald addressed the "group of slaughter houses" around three blocks to the south.  The newspaper said they had been, "described by the inhabitants of neighboring houses to be simply sinks of corruption and pesthouses of uncleanliness, bad smells and cholera."  Despite a prohibition against driving cattle through the city streets, the article said, "huge beasts and bullocks gambol through First avenue."  

More concerning for the occupants of 138 First Avenue, however, were "the dead offal and the bad sewerage of the place."  The New York Herald reported that at 138 First Avenue, "Many of the people have been seriously ill, and two or three deaths have occurred from the evil within the past three months, while to the neighboring streets the slaughter houses in question have been equally as noxious and pernicious."

The following year, Michael C. Cuddy and his wife, Bridget, purchased the building and he took over the saloon.  Cuddy was born in County Tipperary, Ireland in 1829.  His Irish roots were reflected in his membership in the Patrick Mutual Alliance Association.  He was, as well, a member of the 17th Ward Tammany Association.

Cuddy was the victim of a forgery in November 1869.  Every year, the day before an election, a parade and target shooting contest was held in the neighborhood.  Politicians donated prizes hoping to gain votes.  The New York Herald reported, "one prize at least was awarded which was valueless, inasmuch as it bore the forged signature of one Michael Cuddy, residing at 138 First avenue."

John Dalton had won an order (what today we could call a gift certificate) to the hat store of C. W. Burroughs at 49 Third Avenue.  Dalton picked out "an elegant hat of the latest style and the most approved shape."  When Burroughs attempted to collect the money from Cuddy, the forgery was discovered.  A month later, on December 17, the New York Herald reported, "Yesterday afternoon [Burroughs] recognized the hat carrying the wearer along First avenue and at once caused his arrest."

Cuddy died on February 28, 1871 at the age of 42.  His funeral was held above his "oyster saloon" two days later.  Bridget Cuddy leased the tavern to Francis (known as Frank) T. Cavanagh.

Like Michael Cuddy, Cavanagh was a Tammany supporter.  The Assembly District group continued to use the rear room of the saloon for its meetings, like the one on the evening of October 23, 1872 when they nominated William Gleason for alderman.

On April 23, 1882, the New York Dispatch published a long article about the alarming number of police officers caught drinking on duty.  Among the incidents was that of Officer Reilly on April 1.  The article said, "Reilly was found in the oyster saloon, No. 138 First avenue."  The cop quickly came up with an excuse.  He said that while patrolling, a citizen informed him that he was needed right away by Frank Cavanagh.  "He hurried to the saloon and without thought entered and asked the proprietor what he wanted."  Cavanagh laughed, according to Reilly, and said he must have been the target of an April Fool's joke.  "Turning to come out he met the roundsman [i.e., police officer]," Reilly explained.

The relationship between Cavanagh and his landlady became romantic.  In October 1888, Bridget sold the building to Charles Docen for $14,500 (about $479,000 in 2025).  In reporting the transaction, the Record & Guide described her as "Bridget, wife of Francis Cavanagh, formerly wife of Michael Cuddy."

Charles Docen was a baker, not a saloonkeeper.  (His bakery was close by at 142 First Avenue.)  He, therefore, rented the saloon space.  In April 1897, he leased it to George Sinram and Frederick Schmidt, of Sinram & Schmidt, which operated several saloons in the city.  Later that year, in October, he sold 138 First Avenue to Herman Kipp, who operated an undertaking business across the street at 135 First Avenue.

Among Kipp's tenants in the summer of 1908 was Irene Wilson.  She and the other occupants had to rely on public bathhouses to bathe, and on the evening of July 20 that year, she went to the bathhouse on Avenue A near 24th Street.  She and two other young women were in the showers when suddenly they were plunged into darkness.  They groped about until, luckily, they found a telephone and called police headquarters.

One of the women explained, "We were talking and didn't know it was closing time.  Please send a policeman to let us out."

Told that an officer would be there in a few minutes, the caller cautioned, "But please tell him to turn on the light and wait awhile before he comes in."

"Why?"

"Because it's dark and--well--we can't find our clothes."

Policeman Dunduro and the janitor entered the building, turned on the lights and, "sat down and waited," reported The New York Times.  "Presently one of the girls announced that they were prepared to depart and the big door was opened."

In August 1909, Herman Kipp hired architect Frederick Ebeling to remodel the interior walls.  The minor renovations cost Kipp about $10,000 in today's money.

Forty-year-old Michael Eagan was a bartender in the saloon in 1911 when he was arrested with two others in a swindling ring.  According to the Brooklyn Daily Star on June 12, they had been "going around selling advertisements for society programs or selling tickets for [an] outing for some charity organization."  The affair, however, "was never coming off."

On January 27, 1915, the furniture and fixtures of the saloon were auctioned.  Herman Kipp moved his funeral home into the space.  Known as Kipp's Parlor, it operated here for decades.

With the end of Prohibition, liquor returned to the ground floor of 138 First Avenue.  In 1934, Max Winarsky received a liquor license and opened a retail liquor store in the space.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Five years later, a renovation resulted in one apartment each on the upper floors.  That configuration survives today.

The tradition of a liquor store on the ground floor continues with East Village Wines, which was here as early as the late 1990s.  The diminutive building is a rare survivor of the earliest stages of development in the neighborhood.

photographs by the author

The 1885 112 First Avenue

 

photograph by Ted Leather

In the late 1840s, the neighborhood around Tompkins Square had filled with refined mansions.  But drastic change was on the near horizon.  The post-Civil War years saw thousands of immigrants--first German and then Eastern European--flooding into the district.  Private residences were replaced with tenement buildings to accommodate the exploding population. 

In 1885, developer Bernhard Wertheimer completed a five-story store and tenement building at 112 First Avenue.  Faced in red brick and trimmed in brownstone, its neo-Grec-style design originally featured bracketed, molded sills and hefty, earred lintels embellished with incised decoration.  The ambitious cast metal cornice announced the date of construction in the fascia.  Its triangular pediment contained a sunburst, a frequent motif of the current Queen Anne style.

photograph by Ted Leather (cropped)

The store was leased to Emanuel Berger for his retail and wholesale cigar and tobacco operation.  He had founded his company in 1866 on Second Avenue.  The 1891 History and Commerce of New York said, "At the First Avenue premises an efficient staff of cigar makers is employed, and the proprietor gives his personal attention to its affairs in all departments."

While living here in 1888, Francisco Bona, went to the grocery store of Christian G. Thomas at the corner of Second Avenue and 7th Street.  He purchased five eggs and handed Thomas a $5 bill (equal to about $165 in 2025).  Thomas recognized the bill as a fake, and on July 19, 1888 The Evening World reported that "Francisco Bona, alias Frank Avona" had been arrested for counterfeiting.  "The scheme turned out badly and Francisco was soon before Commissioner Shields, who sent him to Ludlow Street Jail."

In November 1903, two half-sisters, Rosalie Feigelson and Frida Hanover, 22 and 18 years old respectively, arrived in New York City on the steamship La Touraine from Bremen.  The Evening World said, "Their dress was handsome and they seemed to have money."  The young women, who hoped to make a living in America as photographers, took an apartment at 112 First Avenue.

Although reportedly "proficient" in their craft, they struggled to find work.  "Gradually their money ran out," said The Evening World.  Eventually, in January 1904, Frida was forced to pawn their large camera.  "The money was used at once to pay debts," said the article."  She then took a job doing embroidery at $4 a week.  On February 2, The Evening World reported, "Her disappointment was great on Saturday when she received $1.50.  She and her sister could not exist on this."

Mary Levy, who ran the tenement with her husband, offered to help, but the sisters declined.  "That isn't independence," said Rosalie.  On the evening of February 1, they wrote a letter in Russian to the United States Government that explained they had been failures in this country.  The article said, "The girls, after writing the letter, turned on the gas and lay down to die in each other's arms."

Mary Levy upset their plans by detecting the odor of gas.  Officer Frank Muller carried the girls to the open air where they partially revived before being taken to Bellevue Hospital.  Their plight caught the attention of Mrs. Gichner, of the Baroness Clara De Hirsch Home on East 63rd Street.  She appeared in the Yorkville Police Court on February 3 (attempting suicide was a jailable offense) and told the magistrate that "she would give the young women a home until they could find suitable employment."

Another resident faced a judge that year.  John Mason and his friend, Richard Herlihy, who lived at 1,212 First Avenue, went to Central Park on May 29, 1904.  At around 72nd Street, they noticed a robin's nest in one of the trees.  Mason attempted to climb the tree, but it "was not strong enough to bear his weight, and broke, throwing Mason and the nest to the ground."

A passerby, Fred Foss, witnessed the incident and reported it to a policeman.  He "found Herlihy and Mason handling the robins," said The New York Times.  Magistrate Crane fined each man $5 (about $175 today).  The article said, "Mason wept in court, and the Magistrate delivered a lecture to him on the rights of the beasts and birds who are the city's wards when they make their homes in the precincts of the public parks."

The sills and lintels were intact in 1941.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

By 1916, the ground floor store was home to Harry Levy's floor covering shop, which offered "carpets, rugs, and linoleums."  In 1988, the Miracle Grill opened in the space.  The southwestern cuisine was the creation of "brat-pack chef Bobby Flay," who was 23 years old at the time, according to New York Magazine on October 10, 1988.   The restaurant would remain into the 1990s.

In the early 2000s, fledgling writer Cat Marnell moved into the building.  Born in 1982, she attended The New School where she studied nonfiction writing.  In her 2017 autobiography, How to Murder Your Life, she described her "alcove studio" here, saying, 

The creaky, dark, small building was above a strange Polish restaurant and a porny video shop; there was also a McDonald's and a combination Dunkin' Donuts/Baskin Robbins on the block.

Marnell soon realized she was not alone--there was a rodent infestation.  Unable to leave ("I'd just moved in; I'd paid a broker"), she resolved to bring nothing edible into the apartment.  "My fear of mice was more powerful than my eating disorder," she wrote.

Marnell became an established journalist and commentator, writing columns for periodicals like Vice, Glamour and Self.  Her autobiography became a New York Times bestseller.

photograph by Ted Leather

The attempt to modernize the building by shaving the brownstone detailing disfigured the 1885 design.  Happily, the bold cornice survives.

many thanks to reader Ted Leather for requesting this post

The Lost East Side Airline Terminal - First Avenue and 37th Street

 

The Manhattan Post Card Publishing Co. produced this image of the newly-completed terminal in 1953.

At mid-century, the Airlines Terminal Building in Midtown, across from Grand Central Terminal, was obsolete.  Designed by John B. Peterkin in 1939, it had solved the problem of airports being remotely located from urban passengers.  Buses ferried fliers from the terminal to the New York Municipal Airport (later renamed LaGuardia Airport).  By now, however, the terminal building was overcrowded and the tangle of buses along with their suffocating exhaust had become intolerable.

The Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority brought Peterkin back in 1951 to design a larger facility blocks away near the East River.  The site that engulfed the block between 37th and 38th Streets on First Avenue was out of the way of Midtown businesses, yet still convenient for passengers. 

Ground was broken on July 25, 1951 and construction was completed two years later at a cost of $684,100 (around $74.8 million in 2023).  Peterkin's Modernist design smacked of the sleek ocean liners of the period--its long, low profile punctuated by regimented rows of windows.  The architect's minimalist treatment of the exterior relied on clean lines rather than the Art Deco ornamentation of his earlier building.  With its rounded corners and unbroken band of openings at the second floor, the East Side Airline Terminal was as much sculpture as architecture.

Refrigerating Engineering, March 1955

As the building neared completion on November 8, 1953, The New York Times promised, "passengers will find the last word in conveniences while the city will be relieved of bus traffic congestion."  The article said the new building would "accommodate about 7,000 passengers a day."

The building was leased to the Airlines' Terminal Corporation, a consortium of ten domestic airlines that held space inside.  It was dedicated at 6:00 on November 30, 1953.  The speakers were Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri; Mayor-elect Robert F. Wagner Jr.; the chairman of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, Robert Moses; and president of the Airlines' Terminal Corporation, Paul H. Brattain.

from the collection of the University of Wisconsin

As with the former terminal, here customers could buy their tickets, check their luggage, and board one of the 100 buses which made a total of 550 trips to the airport each day.  The bus garage was below ground, while on the roof was parking for 300 automobiles.  Inside, according to The New York Times, "The main portion of the building is the second-floor rotunda, a vast and pleasantly colored hall (bluish green and tomato red) filled with hard wooden waiting-room benches and lined by the check-in and ticket counters of the ten United States lines."

John B. Peterkin's interiors were as sleek and clean as his facade.  The columns were colored a deep "tomato red."  photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

The newspaper mentioned that the new location would shave minutes off passengers' trips.  The ride to LaGuardia was 25 minutes, down from half-an-hour; and the trip to Idlewild (today's JFK.) was 37 minutes, a savings of five minutes.

The estimate that the East Side Airline Terminal would serve 7,000 passengers daily fell far short.  Eight months after its opening, on July 18, 1954, The New York Times reported, "Nearly 10,000 travelers a day are processed by the airline offices in the First Avenue air depot."  The article said that the results of the first half year of operation "are gratifying to nearly everyone concerned."  It explained in part:

Instead of wandering the sidewalks around the old terminal building in search of the right bus for the right flight, passengers now are led by unerring loudspeakers to a specified slot on a sheltered ramp to board their buses.  The new building is spacious, air-conditioned, well-equipped with food and drink and a 300-car parking lot on the roof.  All this pleases the airline passengers.

 

The article concluded saying, "Over on Tenth Avenue at Forty-first Street, excavation has been completed for the West Side Airlines Terminal, which is scheduled to handle all departures and arrivals for Newark by September of 1955."  That terminal would substantially reduce the number of passengers utilizing the East Side Airlines Terminal.

Exactly two decades after the terminal opened, on May 8, 1973 The New York Times reported, "The consortium of 10 domestic airlines managing and operating the East Side Airlines Terminal has refused to renew its lease, raising the possibility that the facility will close when the contract expires next Oct. 31."  A spokesperson for the group said there had been "an annual operating deficit of $750,000 to $1-million for the last eight years."

The concept of urban airlines terminals was already outdated.  The West Side Airlines Terminal had closed a year before the article.  On October 17, 1973, the chairman of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority announced that a three-month truce had been arranged with the tenants to keep the terminal open "while working on plans to continue its operation 'indefinitely.'"

A postcard ca 1955 depicted the new building with its rooftop parking lot relatively full.  

The terminal limped along.  The severe reduction in its use was evidenced in December 1977 when the parking lot on the roof was converted to tennis courts within pressurized air bubbles.  On January 16, 1978, The New York Times reported, "On the roof of the old East Side Airlines Terminal, near cabs and buses, this new facility is unquestionably the standard by which all other indoor tennis clubs in New York will now be judged."

Early in 1985, the inevitable finally came to pass.  The building was sold for $90.6 million on February 13 to developers "who plan to build a luxury apartment house on the site," reported the New York Times.  The price, equal to about $246 million in 2023, was believed to be the highest ever paid at auction for parcel of Manhattan real estate.  Peter L. Malkin, speaking for the joint venture buyer, said the terminal "would be torn down as early as next year and an apartment house of about 50 stories would be built."

Close inspection reveals portions of the terminal building in the base of the new apartment building.  photo by Rhododendrites.

In fact, architects Der Scutt and John Schimenti, incorporated much of the old structure into the 57-floor The Corinthian.  

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