City - NY - Welcome to the big city 1941 Postcard

Colorized photo from 1941 Dec Original title: Elevated structure and buildings, Lower Manhattan Photographer: Arthur Rothstein Location: About 40 Water St. NY You get off the ferry, this is the first time you get to see the big city. What do you see? A bunch of miscellaneous bunch of buildings with no historical significance. But they are certainly tall, bigger than the silo back home anyway. Look at that train, its practically flying, who ever thought to put a train up there? Everything is so big and amazing. But if you live in the city this is just a normal street with lots of color. And today it lost all that charm with the replacement of most of these buildings. Only one survived, the Standard Oil Building, the one with the pyramid roof, is still there. Though you can't see it now, as its covered by more buildings. The train is gone as well. All those buildings on the right look so bad now they probably took them down after this photo was made. See that big brown building in the center? That was the Army building, built in 1886, closed in 1972. It was bought in 1978, to be used as a Racquet Club, preserving the building, while using the upper floors as apartments. But the plans went no where, until 1983. On this year, the historical commission wanted to designate this building into a historical landmark. Practically on the day they gave it that designation, the owner of the building, demolished it with a wrecking ball. It was so badly damaged that it had to come down. He only got a fine for what he did. Then replaced with a plain ugly building.