1928

Manhattan: Union Square - 14th Street - [Union Square Park.]

Classification: Parks Union Square, seen from the S.W. corner at University Place and 14th Street, nearly identical in scene with the New York Edison Company's photograph No. 49767, taken in 1893. Most of the new buildings shown here were erected between 1902 and 1910. The new Union Square Savings Bank is on the N.E. corner of 15th Street, and the 11-story Reliance Building at 32 Union Square, adjoins the old building now occupied by the Freiheit, a radical Yiddish paper. To the same period belong the Everett Building on the N.W. corner of 17th Street and Fourth Avenue, and the Guardian Life Insurance building (originally Germania Life Insurance) on the N.E. corner. On the street floor of the old Union Square Hotel may be seen one of the signs of S. Klein's dress emporium. In 1930 The Daily Worker, organ of the Communist Party, will be occupying the old building next to the Freiheit, where Elite Styles are shown in this picture; and by 1933 S. Klein will have overflowed into both these buildings. The principal change during these years, however, will be the demolition of the old Westmoreland at 17th Street and of 44 Union Square adjoining, to make room for the new Tammany Hall and Manufacturers Trust Building, and the drastic changes in the park, which in this picture still has much the same general outlines as it had thirty-five years earlier. January 11, 1928. New York Edison Company Collection, (No. 60533).

Photo from the New York Public Library - Milstein Collection