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on Amsterdam Avenue and 103rd Street, in New York City
The photograph above is from New York Architect, which
has many more photographs of the building
[Click on above image to see larger size]
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I'm in New York for a couple of weeks, and I am constantly amazed at the city's architecture. Almost anywhere I walk, there is something that surprises (astonishes) me.
The above building is one I stumbled onto on Amsterdam Avenue and 103rd street.
Here's what Wikipedia says about the building:
The flagship residence of the American Youth Hostels in the United States is in New York City, located in a landmark building designed by noted architect Richard Morris Hunt. This popular hostel occupies the entire east blockfront of Amsterdam Avenue between 103d and 104th Streets in Manhattan.Here's information on the architect of the building, Richard Morris Hunt:
Richard Morris Hunt (October 31, 1827 – July 31, 1895) was an American architect of the nineteenth century and a preeminent figure in the history of American architecture. Hunt was, according to design critic Paul Goldberger writing in The New York Times, "American architecture's first, and in many ways its greatest, statesman." Aside from Hunt's sculpting of the face of New York City, including designs for the facade and Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty and many Fifth Avenue mansions lost to the wrecking ball, Hunt founded both the American Institute of Architects and the Municipal Art Society.The building was originally:
...designed for the Association for the Relief of Respectable Aged Indigent Females (1883). [It] was renovated in the late 20th century and is now a youth hostel.[Source Wikipedia]Here's a site which gives more descriptive information on why the building was commissioned by "the women who ran the Association for the Relief of Respectable and Indigent Females."
The building design and construction started in 1881, and it was completed in 1883.
Here's more on the architecture of the building:
The Association Residence Nursing Home, also called the Association for the Relief of Respectable, Aged and Indigent Females, is an historic building in New York City built from 1881-1883 to the design of Richard Morris Hunt in the Victorian Gothic style...An addition was constructed on the south end of the property in 1907, which contained seven Tiffany windows which are now in the collection of the Morse Museum of American Art. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.[Source: Wikipedia]And finally, on the "demise and rehabilitation" of the building:
Financial problems due to the longer life expectancy of residents began following World War II. Robert Moses proposed razing the building as part of an Upper West Side slum clearance project. When Medicaid funds became available to nursing homes in the early 1970s, the Association planned to tear down and replace the building with a modern facility. A group of historic preservationists with ties to nearby Columbia University fought to preserve the building, making it into a community cause. Despite a fire during the New York City blackout of 1977 the preservationists prevailed and by the late 1970s, the building was acquired by the City of New York, and declared a New York City Landmark in 1983. During the 1980s the building was unoccupied as American Youth Hostels arranged neighborhood and government support for rehabilitating the building. They opened the hostel in January 1990 and with 670 beds it is now the largest hostel in North America.[Source: Wikipedia]The building was designated a landmark site in 1983 by the Landmarks Preservation Commission:
On the basis of the careful consideration of the history, the architecture and other features of the building, the Landmarks Preservation Commission finds that the Association Residence for Respectable Aged Indigent Females (Association Residence for Women), has a special character, special historical and aesthetic interest and value as part of the development, heritage and cultural characteristics of New York City. [Source: Landmarks Presevation Commission, April 12, 1983, Designation List 164 (pdf file)]