New York City Skyscrapers Souvenir Folder, IV

A last few images from the 1915 New York City Skyscrapers Souvenir Folder:  the view of Manhattan from Jersey City, Times Square during the day, the Brooklyn Bridge, and a shot of "high pressure in action" featuring New York City's finest.

The pictures from this folder posted in the last few days have reminded me of one of my favorite books:  Time and Again, by Jack Finney.  To describe the plot, involving time travel and self-hypnosis, makes it sound silly, but the book is an homage to New York City, as well as a great story.  The image in the book that comes back to me again and again involves the protagonist knowing he's traveled back in time when he looks out his apartment window and sees that the skyline has changed.   Every time I'm in New York, I think of this image when I look at the skyline, and these skyscraper postcards remind me of that as well.

New York City Skyscrapers, III

While these postcards from the 1915 "New York City Skyscrapers Souvenir Folder" don't focus on any particular skyscraper, they do feature well-known intersections surrounded by skyscrapers.  In the upper left corner, Wall Street, looking pretty much the same today, with the exception of the cars and the clothes.  In the upper right corner, Herald Square,  known primarily by most non-New Yorkers from the line in the song Give My Regards to Broadway where the singer asks "remember me to Herald Square".  The flagship Macy's Store is also located here.  Next up, lower left, the intersection of 5th Avenue & 42nd Street, dead center of one of the most expensive shopping areas in the world and the location of the New York Public Library.  Finally, in the lower right, Times Square, nicknamed the "intersection of the world".  and well-known for the New Year's Eve midnight countdown and ball drop, the theater district, and its seedy past. Around the time of this picture, it became the eastern end of the Lincoln Highway, conceived  in 1913 as the first automobile road across the United States, starting from 5th & Broadway (part of Times Square) and ending in Lincoln Park, San Francisco, 3,389 miles away.  The route has been streamlined over the years, and is now 3,142 miles long.   [Road Trip Bucket List!]

P.S.  It's Flag Day and Postcard Friendship Friday.  Check out the posting (as well as the other postcard people's postings) for an interesting history of Flag Day.   

New York City Skyscrapers, II

Another couple of postcards from the 1915 "New York City Skyscrapers Souvenir Folder":

The Singer Building (left) sadly, no longer exists.  Opened in 1908, the Singer Building was the tallest building in the world for about a year, until the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Building (seen in yesterday's post) was opened in 1909.  It was built as the headquarters for the Singer Sewing Machine Company in the Second Empire Baroque Style.  Other examples of this style of architecture in NYC include the St. Regis Hotel, the Plaza Hotel, Temple Beth-El, and Lord & Taylor.  In 1968 it was demolished to make way for the U.S. Steel Building (currently known as One Liberty Plaza), making it the tallest building ever demolished due to replacement (as opposed to attack as was the case in the Avala TV building in Serbia or the World Trade Center Towers in NYC).  Check out the images at the first link, above.  It was spectacular!

The Whitehall Building (right) does still exist, having been turned into apartment buildings in 1999.  It is located at 17 Battery Place next to Battery Park in Lower Manhattan, NYC.  It is referred to as a "skyscraper", but given it's only 20 stories tall it is hard to think of it as such.

New York City Skyscrapers

This "New York City Skyscrapers Souvenir Folder" features 22 fold out postcards, primarily skyscrapers, from around 1915.  It is printed by the H.H. Tammen Curio Company which, according to the Metropolitan Postcard Club of New York City was "a novelty dealer and important publisher of national view-cards and Western themes in continuous tone and halftone lithography."  They were located in Denver, Colorado and in business from 1896-1953.

Here's one of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building, located at One Madison Avenue, and which, with 50 floors, was the tallest buildling in the world from 1909 to 1913.  It is not to be confused with the Met Life Building which didn't open until 1963.













And here's the Flatiron Building, considered  to be among the first skyscapers ever built (1902) and located at 175 5th Avenue.  I could swear there was a movie about a music company located in the Flatiron building, and the song writers working there in the 60s, but I only find (among others)  "Spider Man", the 1998 version of "Godzilla", and the opening credits of "Late Night with David Letterman" as movies/television shows that feature the building.








More tomorrow!