In our continuing series of blogs focused on the Manhattan Building Plan project, this week Alexandra Hilton highlights three architecturally significant buildings documented in the collection – the New York Fire Department Shore Station” the Margaret Louisa Home on East 16th Street, and the “Little” Singer Building. 

Shore Quarters for Fireboat New Yorker

In 1891, the fireboat “New Yorker” became the first floating engine, as they called them, to have its own permanent shore station. No longer standing, the building was located near Pier A and Castle Garden in Battery Park.

The New Yorker was in service from 1891-1931. It was constructed by Julius Jonson from plans by Charles H. Haswell. Fireboats were part of engine companies until the Fire Department’s Marine Division was organized in 1959 and the New Yorker was part of Engine 57. It was 125 feet long and around 350 tons and could pump 13,000 gallons of water a minute. It was the most powerful fireboat of its day.

The building was similar to other engine houses and was intended to serve as housing for the company. There was a bunkroom upstairs, sliding poles to the ground floor and a complete set of telegraph instruments for informing the company of all alarms throughout the city. The company also responded to fires that occurred on the water. Boat disasters weren’t uncommon, the General Slocum steamboat tragedy took place not long after the New Yorker went into service.

The New Yorker responded to many such tragedies. One well-known event is the 1900 Hoboken Docks fire that happened in and around a German shipping company’s piers at Hoboken, New Jersey. Cotton bales stored on the company’s southernmost wharf caught fire and winds carried the fire to nearby barrels filled with turpentine and oil, causing them to explode. The fire destroyed the piers up to the Hudson River waterline, as well as nearby warehouses, three transatlantic liners and almost two dozen smaller boats. When canal boats, barges and other debris caught on fire and started drifting toward the New York City side of the river, the New Yorker and other fireboats were dispatched to help contain the fire. More than 326 people lost their lives in the accident, mostly seamen and other workers, but also women who had been visiting one of the destroyed ships.

The New Yorker also responded to the 1911 Dreamland Park fire in Coney Island. The park was only open for seven years before it burned to the ground. On the night before opening day of the 1911 season, a water ride named Hell Gate developed a leak. A contractor from a roofing company was repairing the ride, using tar to plug up the leak. For reasons probably having to do with an electrical malfunction, the lightbulbs illuminating the man’s space as he worked exploded, and in his surprise, he kicked over a bucket of hot tar. The ride was immediately on fire. Most of the park was made of wood lath covered by a mixture of plaster of Paris and hemp fiber, a wildly flammable combination. Many Coney Island amusement parks used this dangerous combination in construction and often experienced fires. A high-pressure water pumping station had been installed a few years earlier as a preventive measure. That night it failed. Chaos ensued, lions were on the loose, an NYPD sergeant heroically rescued babies from the incubator exhibit. Dreamland was completely destroyed and never rebuilt.

After this storied career, the New Yorker was taken out of service in 1931.  It was auctioned in 1932 and replaced by the John J. Harvey fireboat. The firehouse was reaching the end of its days and Battery Park was about to be closed for several years while the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel was built. Engine 57 was moved to then Pier 1 in 1941.

Margaret Louisa Home YWCA 

The Margaret Louisa Home located at 14-16 East 16th Street is part of the Ladies’ Mile Historic District. It was commissioned by YWCA-benefactor Margaret Louisa Shepard, daughter of William H. Vanderbilt. It was built in connection with the YWCA to serve as a temporary home for Protestant women seeking employment. Robert Henderson Robertson designed the six-story home to accommodate 100 female residents. Construction was completed in 1891.

The building façade is rock-face brownstone interspersed with brick in the Romanesque Revival style. The letters “YWCA” are inscribed on the exterior at the top of the second story, originally a mezzanine level. The midsection is punctuated with foliate designs and rows of dentils ending in carved lion masks. Alternating Romanesque columns run along the top, terminated by a cornice with block modillions and supported by decorative panels. Capping the facade is an arcaded parapet between higher end piers with carved panels. A seventh story under a peaked roof had been designed by Robertson but scrapped due to building regulations governing lodging houses.

The building included 78 bedrooms, a parlor and reception rooms, private dining areas, a public restroom and laundry. Bedrooms were furnished with a white-painted iron bed, small oak table, a rocker and washstand with toilet set.

A one-story building originally meant to be a studio or meeting rooms was built as an annex at the rear of the lot. It also housed the boiler in the basement. 

The home was very successful. Boarders could stay for four weeks. Rooms rented for 60 cents a day with an extra 85 cents for meals. Most women seeking employment were teachers, milliners, dressmakers and stenographers, but there were also physicians, lecturers, actresses, nurses, photographers, and all sorts of other jobs represented. Plus, the home had its own employment bureau to assist residents in finding work.

Parallel to the home, on a lot facing 15th Street, was the Young Women’s Christian Association, or YWCA, building, where women could take specialized training courses. It was built before the home, in 1887, also thanks to funds from Margaret Louisa and John Jacob Astor and other wealthy patrons. Robertson designed this building, in the Romanesque Revival style as well, with a mix of red brick and brownstone. An enclosed corridor and intervening garden space connected the building with the home on 16th Street. 

Both buildings are still standing today, although altered in use. The 16th Street YWCA was sold to the Society of the Commonwealth in 1917, where it became known as The People’s House. Organizations such as the National Women’s Suffrage Party, Margaret Sanger’s Birth Control League of New York and The Rand School, formed by members of the Socialist Party of America, took offices in the building.

The Margaret Louisa Home lasted longer and was operating until 1946. In 1951, it became the Sidney Hillman Health Center. The first floor was completely renovated, and the facade was modernized at this time. Most recently, plans have been approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission to convert the building into a hotel, which would include demolishing most of the structure but preserving the facade. As of 2020, developers planned to rebuild the first floor facade to match the original, as well as adding the never-built  gabled roof from Robertson’s original designs.

Little Singer Building 

The twelve-story Little Singer Building was designed by Ernest Flagg for the Singer sewing machine company in 1903.­­ It is located in Soho at 561-563 Broadway between Spring and Prince Streets. The intricate iron tracery on the exterior makes this one very distinctive and you’d be hard-pressed to miss it if you walked past; it’s a style unique to the time period.

Flagg, who was known for designs in the Beaux-Arts style, built the iron structure to be fireproofed with brick and terra cotta, a relatively new innovation at the time, with a rusty red and green color scheme. An abundance of recessed glass on the front of the building along with the delicate wrought-iron tracery gave it a lighter appearance. Bolted iron plates make vertical pilasters that mark the end bays. Five central bays join vertically with curled iron tracery at the top of the 11th story, where the cornice is also supported by wrought-iron brackets. A top story, simple in comparison, is set above it. More of this same look can be seen around the bottom two stories. Tracery continues around the window bases and lacy strip balconies across each story. It’s all very ornamental.

The building is L-shaped; the Prince Street facade is essentially a narrower version of the Broadway side with the addition of a sign that reads “The Singer Manufacturing Company.”

A few years after completing the building in 1904, Flagg was retained to build a larger structure for the Singer Company on Broadway at Liberty Street. When the new structure was completed, the first building became known as the “Little” Singer Building. The second Singer building was finished in 1908 and was briefly the tallest building in the world. It was demolished in 1968.

In 1979, the Little Singer building was converted to a co-op with offices and joint living and work quarters. In 2008, it received a much-needed restoration, which included a re-creation of the original glass and ironwork sidewalk canopy on the Broadway side.