An exhibition and essay curated by Michael Thornton-Smith.

In the early part of 1980 the Whitney Museum of American Art , Downtown Branch at 55 Water Street I co-organized an exhibition entitled 'The Architecture of Lower Manhattan', albeit focusing on the three dimensional with Walking Tours of the area rather than visual artifacts. For myself being a freshman to New York it was an exiting project that was both enlightening and meaningful as it was the area of New York that I not only worked in but later was to become my home. The story as far as we are concerned here begins around 1910 and continues to this today, but we are primarily interested in the time period of the forming of this proud skyline and a metropolis that would eventually become the undisputed financial capital of the world. Of course the area known as Lower Manhattan has a nucleus that is Wall Street and it is the financial industry that has spurned this development; but this is not the whole story. Each area and each building created around this time of great growth has a defining character and sometimes with extraordinary expressive originality. We will delve into the issues of zoning and how new building codes were created to prevent abuses and the creation of architectural behemoths. The many anecdotes associated with many of the buildings add vitality and color to the history.

This is the story of the remarkable development of the building of Lower Manhattan; spurned by the economic climate to produce what was to become the world’s most famed skyline. It was a time of great ingenuity in American commerce and spurned a meteoric growth in Architectural Design and technology. The time period of this great building boom was the years between World War I and II. It was defined by the geology and existing layout of the earlier development of the area known as New Amsterdam. The area of study commences with Lower Broadway and the Battery proceeding north to Chambers Street and City Hall Park.

As with the Walking Tours when The Whitney project was conceived this will be organized by districts beginning with Bowling Green concentrating on the buildings that flank Broadway, the Wall Street area and proceeding north to City Hall Park.

The images/photographs are from many different time periods and a date will accompany the image. A map of the area will delineate the district and show the exact location of the buildings that we focus on.

The main featured buildings are –

The Customs House

The Cunard Building

The Standard Oil Building

One Wall Street-Irving Trust

Bankers Trust

The City Services Building-AIG

Twenty Exchange Place

The Bank of New York Building

The Stock Exchange

Federal Hall

The Equitable Building

The AT&T Building

The Singer Building

The Buildings of Newspaper Row

The Old Post Office

The Woolworth Building

The City Hall and City Hall Park

Monday, June 6, 2011


Exhibition of photographs of architectural details of selected buildings in Lower Manhattan.
Whitney Museum of American Art, Downtown Branch. 1980

Aerial view of Lower Manhattan 1934





Manhatta :  A Film by Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler 1920

In 1920 Paul Strand and artist Charles Sheeler collaborated on Manhatta, a short silent film that presents a day in the life of Lower Manhattan.
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1 comment:

  1. RockroseSeptember 12, 2011 at 10:56 AM

    Its amazing to see what Lower Manhattan looked like in the 1920s! Strand & Sheeler made a video time capsule when they made Manhatta. It would be nice if more clips like this existed. It is certainly a nice little history lesson.

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