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New York
Architecture Images- Gone WANAMAKER'S |
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architect |
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location |
Fourth Avenue and East 9th Street |
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date |
1862 |
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style |
Renaissance Revival |
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construction |
Cast Iron Facade |
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type |
Shop |
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images |
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Special thanks to the Museum of New York, www.mcny.org |
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notes |
In 1862,
department store magnate Alexander T. Stewart opened this huge cast-iron
emporium, which filled an entire block from Broadway to Fourth Avenue and
from East 9th to 10th Streets. Abandoning his popular Marble Palace at
Broadway and Chambers Street for what many considered an architectural
monstrosity sited too far uptown, Stewart proved his critics wrong. The
store was painted white inside and out with a dramatic central rotunda
topped by a skylit dome, and became the anchor for "Ladies Mile." Twenty
years after Stewart's death, the Philadelphia-based John Wanamaker Company
bought the store, and in 1902 built an equally large annex across 9th
Street. A second-story bridge connecting the two, seen at the left of
Abbott's photograph--was called "The Bridge of Progress."
In 1954, Wanamaker's sold the store, at a time when Herald Square had eclipsed "Ladies Mile" as New York's shopping mecca. Just prior to its demolition in 1956, the building caught fire and burned out of control for a full day before firemen could contain the blaze. The cast-iron construction withstood the fire, only to fall to the wrecker's ball. Today, a 21-story apartment block, built in 1960 and named Stewart House, occupies the site; the 1902 Wanamaker annex is an office building. |
