Commercial Palaces of New York: 1845–1875

Abstract

ON Thursday September 10, 1846, Philip Hone, former mayor of New York City, noted in his diary that “Mr. (A.T.) Stewart's splendid edifice … in Broadway, between Chambers and Reade Street, is nearly finished, and his stock of drygoods will be exhibited on the shelves in a few days. There is nothing in Paris or London to compare with this drygoods palace.”¹ In the years that followed, so many other palatial business buildings rose from the sidewalks of New York that Charles Mackay, an English lecturer and one-time editor of the Illustrated London News, could write of a trip taken to the city in 1857: “Broadway offers one grand procession of commercial palaces…. Brown stone edifices rank next in size and number to the marble palaces; and a few of cast iron, with elegant Corinthian pillars, add to the variety of architecture….”²