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67th & Fifth

One of the most remarkable things about these photos from a 1956 Seventh Regiment ceremony are how traditional the buildings in the background are.

Not a single glass box! Not a hint of white brick! How I would have loved to have seen New York in those days… it must have been glorious.

DPC over at New York Social Diary informs us that, in 1886, the infamous Jay Gould bought a Victorian mansion on the corner of 67th & Fifth for his son George Jay Gould and his actress bride Edith Kingdom.

In 1906, blessed with seven children, the Goulds decided the place wasn’t roomy enough and had the great Horace Trumbauer design a larger, beaux-arts style house on the same site. While the architect’s country houses leave something to be desired, Trumbauer was a master of the urban Parisian style deftly adapted for Manhattan’s gridiron. Woefully, Trumbauer’s beautiful handiwork did not survive, and today we are left with a revolting apartment tower on the site: Marxist architecture in the service of materialist greed.

Published at 7:32 pm on Saturday 29 November 2008. Categories: Architecture New York Tags: , , , .
Comments

Hardly over fifty years ago.
New York, like the country it once inspired, is no more.

— L Gaylord Clark 1 Dec 2008 7:01 pm

I was really taken aback by these photos.

Men of honour and dignity, buildings of beauty and order…what a time – and how sad these men are mostly gone and the buildings are being replaced with nothingness….

— George Bougias 2 Dec 2008 6:18 am
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