The Ansonia, the Belleclaire, the Dorilton, the Belnord, the Apthorp: five of the finest apartment hotels of “The Boulevard” on the Upper West Side. It was the turn of a new century and people like William Waldorf Astor and William Earl Dodge Stokes had a vision for a new way of living. They imagined the well-to-do […]
One of Manhattan’s—and the Upper West Side’s-- most successful real estate family dynasties of the 1900s was the mighty Paterno clan. Incredibly, nearly all of their buildings still stand generations later. Carla Golden, great-granddaughter of Dr. Charles V. Paterno, provides a fascinating history of the Paterno family’s UWS real estate development legacy spanning from 1896 […]
Please join Landmark West! and architectural historian Jessica Larson in this exploration of the ways in which Black charity and reform initiatives shaped the landscape of San Juan Hill, the community Robert Moses demolished to make way for the Lincoln Center for the Perforning Arts complex, in the early decades of the 20th century. Larson […]
Celebrity obsession, con artists, and fake news. Long before Lin-Manuel, the 1890s public already had an insatiable appetite for all things Hamilton. By the era of Alexander Hamilton’s great-grandson, esteemed politician Robert Ray Hamilton, the name still signified political and financial power, privilege, money, and status. That is, until this privileged heir of one of […]
The Upper West Side of Manhattan is filled with historic sites that help tell the stories of the past, both the struggles and achievements that got us to where we are today. Among these are many sites commemorating the people and important moments in our country and city's civil rights history. Landmark West! invites you […]
LW favorite speaker Eve M. Kahn, curator of a spring '23 show at the historic Grolier Club museum, To Fight for the Poor with My Pen: Zoe Anderson Norris, Queen of Bohemia, brings to LW! the remarkable story of a foremother of modern-day social justice advocates and confessional bloggers. In millions of published words of fiction […]
On Friday, March 31, from 4:30-6:00pm, Eve Kahn will offer a size-limited private tour for 12 Landmark West! members at the Grolier Club, the oldest existing bibliophilic club in North America, at 47 East 60th Street. In addition to her own exhibition on Zoe Norris, highlights of the tour will include the 1910 club building’s […]
In August 1967, Mia Farrow, Roman Polanski and the cast and crew of the film Rosemary’s Baby arrived in New York City for two weeks of location shooting. The famed Dakota apartment building on the Upper West Side, where most of the story takes place, was the main focus of attention. Levin’s original inspiration for […]
Riverside Drive is best known for elegance and quiet. But behind its century-old facades lie secrets—from surprising architectural details to scandalous crimes. There are hidden passageways and “spite walls”, a surprising tower and a “slum with a view”, a hidden quintuplex apartment and a sweet and sad memorial to a young child. The Drive is […]
19th-century asylums are often portrayed as sinister, but the Bloomingdale Asylum in upper Manhattan was different. Architectural historian Dr. Nina Harkrader reconstructs the site and buildings that from 1815 to nearly the end of that century were an important part of the treatment of thousands of troubled New Yorkers through the “Moral Treatment” approach to […]