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Avenue of the Idealists:

A Walking Tour of 42nd Street

Forty-second Street, looking west from Park Avenue circa 1900. ( Detroit Publishing Co./Library of Congress )

An Interactive History of 42nd St.’s Dramatic Transformation

There are two 42nd Streets. West of Sixth Avenue, what was once an artery of sordid drear has been almost entirely remade in the last few decades, preserving a few token theaters wedged between towers of glass. Otherwise, renewal marches on: Work has finally ended on Snøhetta’s revamping of the Times Square plazas, the Port Authority hopes to tear down and replace its Eighth Avenue bus terminal, and the western end will eventually get a jolt of energy radiating from Hudson Yards.

East of Sixth Avenue, though, the old stone metropolis has survived, partly because the Landmarks law protects it, but also because buildings that were once advanced and daring have remained doggedly useful as they age. The behemoths of 42nd Street proclaim this city’s nimbleness, its ability to navigate the chaotic present without jettisoning either its history or its dreams.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cj15pt3sx003k0hp664931k5w@published"]{font-size:20px;line-height:1.1;padding-top:15px;margin-bottom:7px;text-align:center;font-family:Arial;color:#7f7f7f} Walk 42nd Street with Justin Davidson as your tour guide.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cj18bk5ds00dv24yer9n8jn5s@published"]{text-align:center;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;margin-top:-10px;margin-bottom:17px} excerpt from the audiobook , courtesy of penguin random house audio..

This has long been New York’s most idealistic street, where fine instincts and modern technology fuse into a boulevard of high-minded civic aspiration. Even its roster of vanished landmarks is a testament to loftiness. This is where the press (the Daily News, the Herald Tribune, the Times, and The New Yorker ) has continuously tested the limits of the First Amendment, where pedestrians have reclaimed civic space from cars and dereliction (in Times Square), and where doctors tended to wounded veterans (the Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled, which once existed between First and Second Avenues). Charity workers (at the Ford Foundation) tried to staunch the world’s worst ills, and a global financial institution (Bank of America) erected what was then the world’s greenest skyscraper. On 42nd Street, the curious can enter one of the world’s great research libraries and dive into virtually any published book. And half a dozen blocks east of the New York Public Library, diplomats from all over the world convene to hammer out intractable conflicts, not with weaponry but by sitting around a conference table and talking. When you think about it, 42nd Street isn’t just the epicenter of spectacle but also a boulevard of noble ambitions.

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ca. 1900 Longacre Square at Broadway and 42nd Street. The theater sign on the left advertises “burlesque, ballet, and varieties.”

Museum of the City of New York

ca. 1940 Even in its heyday of glamour, 42nd Street had a reputation for sordidness.

Bettmann/Getty Images

1975 Times Square, a grindhouse movie theater at Broadway and 43rd Street, which is now near the location of 4 Times Square, where Condé Nast was headquartered until 2015.

Frederic Lewis/Getty Images

2015 Times Square, today.

Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images

These days, Times Square is perpetually clotted with pedestrians rushing to theater seats and office cubicles or ambling in an LED-ened daze. But at the turn of the 20th century, it was ground zero of car culture. In 1902, Studebaker, a carriage company that had nimbly retooled for the horseless kind, put up a ten-story factory with offices just off what was then called Longacre Square. The building, on Broadway at 48th Street, anchored a row of luxury automotive companies whose showrooms rivaled couturiers for chic. But even in its heyday of glamour, 42nd Street had a reputation for sordidness. From the Civil War to the 1990s, from the slaughterhouses along the East River to the rail yards by the Hudson, this stretch of pave­ment, pounded by hookers, con men, addicts, and pickpockets, knitted to­gether the most distasteful parts of urban life. By the 1960s, the area had became synonymous with sleaze. And yet it was still the city’s heart. In 1979, Madonna arrived in New York and told a cabbie to take her “to the middle of everything.” He dropped her at Times Square.

The Times Square of today, with its glass and glare, its polished granite benches and scarlet stairs, is the product of a protracted rescue operation. Determined to redeem it from crime and porn, the city turned it into a white-collar-and-entertainment complex, where lawyers, publishers, tourists, theater people, and reporters all shove past each other on expanded but still overflowing sidewalks. It is a place that everyone professes to hate but is always full.

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ca. 1853 Crystal Palace, built on today’s Bryant Park.

Fotosearch/Getty Images

ca. 1935 Bryant Park, after a reconstruction overseen by then–Parks Commissioner Robert Moses.

1983 By the mid-1970s, the New York Times was calling the park an “oasis rife with crime.”

Courtesy of Bryant Park Corporation

2015 Bryant Park, today.

sbostock/Getty Images

It’s July of 1853, and the Crystal Palace, all airy cast-iron lacework, topped with a great glass dome, is the largest building America has ever seen, built in just nine months to house the “Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations,” where according to the official catalogue, experts demonstrate “specimens of New-Orleans long moss for upholstery purposes,” immense, clanking steam engines, “an improved machine for breaking and dressing flax,” maps, window dressings, pistols, scythes, and “philosophical instruments.” Walt Whitman visits the exposition again and again. Nearly two decades later, he will write “Song of the Exposition,” which still quivers with the freshness of that first encounter with the industrial arts:

Around a Palace,

Loftier, fairer, ampler than any yet,

Earth’s modern Wonder, History’s Seven outstripping,

High rising tier on tier, with glass and iron façades.

And yet, the Crystal Palace barely lasted, collapsing in a quick and violent fire after just three years. A few decades later, the promise of the future underlying this very spot devolved into the kind of urban ghastliness that sent millions skedaddling to the suburbs. It’s not happenstance that in 1952 Ralph Ellison chose the street just outside Bryant Park as the setting for a viciously climactic moment in Invisible Man. Ellison’s narrator comes across the once-proud Brother Tod Clifton selling Black Sambo dolls on the sidewalk, making them shimmy in a grotesque minstrel dance at the end of a thread. When a policeman bears down on him for lacking a vendor’s permit, Clifton lashes out, effectively committing what we now call “suicide by cop.”

By the ’70s, these blocks formed a frightening caricature of urban threat. “It’s a dangerous park,” a groundskeeper told the Times in 1976. “There’s a crew in this park, all they do is walk around and mug people. It goes on all day.” A demoralized community-board chairman suggested that the only way to disinfect Bryant Park of crime might be to close it completely.

The 1990s cleanup of Times Square spread eastward, too. Now, out on the sidewalks beyond the park’s balustrades, New Yorkers move with a determined stride. The Bank of America Tower, a cream-white glass behemoth designed by COOKFOX Architects, disgorges lunchers. If you scooped up a shovelful of passersby at any given moment, you’d collect specimens from most of the world’s nations and the full economic spectrum from homeless person to plutocrat, with every gradation in between.

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1847 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. The Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue is in the foreground. The Croton Reservoir, as seen from the northeast side, is in the distance.

ca. 1850s The Croton Reservoir.

New York Public Library

1879 42nd Street at Fifth Avenue. The Croton Reservoir is on the right.

1908 The New York Public Library, a decade after construction began.

2012 The New York Public Library, today.

Victor Fraile/Corbis via Getty Images

Sunrise, July 4, 1842: A handful of early risers have gathered to witness a miracle of engineering. This island in a tidal estuary, laced with murky canals and surrounded by brackish currents, has been in dire need of clean, drinkable water. Here it comes, piped in from the Croton River, muddy at first, then clear and sweet. It rushes through 45 miles of tunnels that have been blasted and dug and lined with brick, crosses the Harlem River atop High Bridge and into the vast 86th Street reservoir (in what will later become Central Park), and flows into the great cistern at Murray Hill. From here, it will branch into narrower pipes and splash from public fountains and newfangled fixtures in private homes. The Croton Reservoir — a perfectly square, battlemented perimeter guarding a four-acre enclosure — is really just a holding tank, but it’s the most visible juncture in an immense new aqua-management system that will soon tip New York into a global metropolis. Over the rest of the day, 25,000 people will converge on the reservoir to watch it fill and to line up for a free drink of ice water.

The Croton Reservoir took years of planning and the then-colossal sum of $13 million to complete, and there was plenty of grumbling at the extravagance and delays. After all, New Yorkers were not accustomed to receiving much in the way of municipal services. The city still lacked a police force, garbage collection, with electricity decades away, and it had only the sketchiest form of public transit. Not everyone saw the need for those embellishments. But in July 1832, cholera attacked, killing thousands and inciting many more to flee. Three years later, fire decimated the mercantile core around Wall Street, destroying 700 buildings. On that frigid night, in December 1835, firefighters could only stand helplessly by, water frozen in their pumps, until they were finally able to stop the destruction by demolishing unburned buildings and creating a firewall of rubble. Suddenly an aqueduct looked like an instrument of survival. Its architecture invoked ancient Egypt, and its scale seemed eternal in a city destined for rapid change.

As it happened, it would last only 60 years, by which time a far more extensive web of pipes made the reservoir obsolete. That’s the thing about New York: Today’s unimaginable ambition becomes tomorrow’s quaint relic.

The New York Public Library sits right where the Croton Reservoir did, and it, too, wrestles with the challenge of keeping idealism up to date. Since the day the library opened in 1911, anyone, from the barely literate to the Nobel laureate, could pass between the friendly lions named Patience and Fortitude and climb the imperial-scaled stairs to the third-floor Rose Main Reading Room. With its profusion of sunlight and carved timber, and its great oak tables burnished by millions of elbows, the chamber expresses the democratization of earthly awe: Even people who live in joyless garrets have a right to grandeur.

While information increasingly lives in the ether, the New York Public Library’s headquarters is an intensely physical place. This iron-and-stone storehouse was built to enshrine knowledge in ink-on-paper form. But temples grow brittle. In 2014, one of the rosettes on the reading room ceiling broke off, failing to kill any patrons only because it happened in the middle of the night. The room closed for renovations for two years. There was also trouble in the stacks, where thickets of iron columns and seven levels of tightly gridded shelves support the upper floors, and where, until recently, 4 million volumes mold­ered away in a warm, damp fug.

Eventually, the volumes were moved for their safety, most of them to a newly renovated, climate-controlled vault deep beneath Bryant Park. But the old retrieval system endures, albeit in updated form: Whenever a call number is dropped (electronically, now) into the building’s bowels, library staffers — aptly called pages — unearth the requested titles and place them on a miniature train that hauls them up to the surface like hunks of coal from a mine.

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ca. 1880 Grand Union Depot, built by Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Photo Collection Alexander Alland/Corbis via Getty Images

ca. 1900 The renovation and expansion of Grand Union/Central Depot is completed in 1900, henceforth the expanded building is called Grand Central Station.

ca. 1935 Grand Central Terminal, which first opened in 1913.

2016 Grand Central Terminal, today.

Tomas Sereda/Getty Images

In the mid-19th century, 42nd Street was lined with jerry-built train stations, serving a tangle of competing lines. But by 1869, Cornelius Vanderbilt had bought up enough railroad companies and real estate to build a vast passenger’s palace. His Grand Union Depot opened in 1871, a great glass-ceilinged shed fronted by a brick château. In 1898, the building, now called Grand Central Depot, was overhauled, enlarged, and stylistically reshuffled into a French Renaissance showpiece — but a lethal accident four years later doomed it to instant obsolescence.

In the morning rush hour of January 8, 1902, two trains collided just outside the old depot on the site, filling the tunnel with boiling spray and coal smoke. Fifteen people were killed. The New York Central Railroad decided to switch to electric trains, which didn’t pump fumes into the air and so could run beneath the streets and enter the station from below. That meant demolishing the depot and replacing it with a multilevel terminal. Burying the tracks and decking over Park Avenue created vast quantities of freshly valuable real estate, unbesmirched by coal smoke and protected from noise. The company’s chief engineer, William J. Wilgus, realized that it could pay for an underground station by selling the right to build in the air. That incubated a colossal real-estate deal. Developers flocked to build hotels and apartment buildings that constituted Terminal City. And Grand Central Terminal became one of the world’s most high-tech facilities, dedicated to the era’s great mission: speeding people wherever they wanted to go.

In the rationalistic spirit of the age, the building was engineered down to the minutest detail, merging efficiency with beauty. Hallelujah shafts of sunlight angle through vast double windows and glass-floored walkways, heating the interior and minimizing the need for electric lighting. Early visitors rhapsodized over the ramps from street to tunnel. “The idea,” reported the Times, “was borrowed from the sloping roads that led the way for the chariots into the old Roman camps of Julius Caesar’s army.” To determine their precise angle, the architects made mock-ups and then recruited testers: “fat men and thin men, women with long skirts, women with their arms full of bundles.” The result is a complex of gentle slopes through which people move in a counterpoint of varying tempos. Thanks to that attention to detail, Grand Central was — and remains — one of the modern world’s most exquisitely complex and welcoming public palaces.

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1928 The corner of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue, the year before construction started.

Percy Loomis Sperr/New York Public Library

1929 The Chrysler Building, while still under construction. It was completed in 1930.

ca. 2015 The Chrysler Building, today.

Fernelis Lajara/EyeEm/Getty Images

Is there any human activity that architecture can’t elevate? In the early-20th century, the area around Grand Central Terminal was a rough and unglamorous neighborhood, crammed with three- and four-story tenements and businesses that produced an abundance of horse manure. Gradually, narrow-frontage houses made way for hotels like the Manhattan, the Belmont, and the Vanderbilt (later the Commodore) on the northeast corner of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. In the great burst of construction around 1930, even those recent buildings came down to make way for skyscrapers: the Chrysler, Graybar, and Chanin buildings and, farther east, the Daily News. The Chrysler Building, an auto company’s monument to itself that functioned as an urban-scale corporate logo, stamped the skyline with the glamour of driving.

It’s hard now to grasp the mixture of misery and dogged ebullience of those days, when a few towers raced glamorously toward the sky just as the U.S. economy was hitting rock bottom. In 1929, the Chrysler Building lunged past 40 Wall Street to become the tallest building in the world — until two years later, when the Empire State Building overtopped them both. The towers’ Art Deco energy emerged from the interaction of aesthetic fancy and legislation. In 1916, as new technologies threatened to turn Manhat­tan into a dark forest of high-rises, the city began reg­ulating the skyline. The law allowed greater height on wider streets and required buildings to recede as they rose, funneling sunlight to the sidewalk. Hugh Ferriss, the architect whose brooding renderings made him the Piranesi of New York, understood the romance embedded in the new zoning code. “We are not contemplating the new architecture of a city — we are contemplating the new architecture of a civilization,” he wrote. His rhetoric helped transform the zoning code into a spectacu­larly utopian tool. In 1929, he published his graphic manifesto, The Metropolis of Tomorrow, the book that shaped the dreams of architects, planners, comic-book illustrators, and Hollywood set designers. In a long essay with 108 drawings, he described a city of fantastical drama, in which pedestrians would move around by skyway and towers would have rooftop landing pads.

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ca. 1928 42nd Street, as seen from the Second Avenue el, in the year before construction was to start on the News Building.

ca. 2015 The News Building, today.

The original plan for the Daily News Building called for a low-rise home for a rumbling printing press that might rattle nerves in a newsroom above but had no sleeping neighbors to disturb. Architect Raymond Hood reimagined it as a skyscraping tribute to the business of asking rude questions of powerful people. It started construction in 1929 and opened in 1931 in a burst of delusional confidence, as if the Depression were just another journalistic opportunity.

The man who paid for it was Captain Joseph Medill Patterson, the left-leaning scion of the McCormick family, which owned the Chicago Tribune. Patterson, a populist idealist, had spent time in England on his way to the front and fallen in love with the Daily Mirror, a cockney-flavored tabloid that kept Londoners supplied with salacious gossip, provocative pictures, and short, punchy stories. He decided to create a similar publication for New York. By 1926, its circulation was well over a million, making it the largest daily in the country. After a few more years of success, Patterson knew where to place a new printing press — on 42nd Street, close enough to the Times that he could beat the competition to the newsstand every day.

Patterson wanted a printing plant with a newsroom on top; Hood charmed him into building a 36-story skyscraper. Hood, like Patterson, was an avowedly practical man for whom money was — in theory, anyway — an infallible guide. In his mind, and in his rhetoric, the News Building was the manifestation of virtuous slide-rule thinking, which held that the most efficient way to design a building was inherently the most harmonious as well. Despite his declared pragmatism, Hood produced an artistic creation, a jazzy concoction of syncopated setbacks and white-brick stripes shooting toward the sky. In a city of flat façades, this was a sculpture to be appreciated from all sides. Hood claimed that he simply stopped the building when he ran out of floors, rather than capping it with some fancy crown, but in truth the corrugated shell extends well past the roof, hiding the mechanical equipment and defining the top with a straight, sharp horizontal line. Simplicity is not usually simple to achieve.

Like all good architects, Hood knew how to deploy his budget for maximum effect, concentrating all the sumptuousness where people could see it. The relief above the main entrance teems with New Yorkers of all kinds — flappers, construction workers, financiers, a young girl telling off an overenthusiastic dog — and an inscription abridges Lincoln’s aphorism “God must love the common man. He made so many of them.” (The News version includes only the second sentence.) The shiny black-and-brass lobby is even stagier, with its quartet of clocks set to various time zones and its giant globe, symbolizing the paper’s worldwide reach. The News eventually abandoned the building (and many of its global ambitions), but so completely did Hood’s design capture the urban drama of journalism that his tower had a starring role in the 1978 film version of Superman, playing the headquarters of the Daily Planet.

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1863 42nd Street Between Second and Third Avenues, looking north.

New York Historical Society

ca. 1925 Tudor City, built in 1925.

Edwin Levick

ca. 2008 Tudor City, today.

Francesco Bittichesu/Getty Images

Walt Whitman, gazing east from the ramparts of the Croton Reservoir in the 1840s, imagined an orderly grid of private houses popping up as the city expanded, but the reality was more chaotic. A 1988 Landmarks Preservation Commission report, usually a dry research document, indulged in a vivid description of the afflictions of the neighborhood around East 42nd Street: “Bracketed to the west by the noisy Elevated Railroad and to the east by noxious abattoirs, meatpacking houses, gas works, and a glue factory, the area … had, by 1900, become a slum inhabited by ethnically diverse immigrants.”

Enter Fred F. French, a brawny Bronx kid who had dropped out of college and eventually became a bona fide mogul with a mantra that he’d rather make a small profit on a large business than a large profit on a small one. And the biggest real-estate business of them all was Tudor City.

Launched in 1925, Tudor City was the largest residential complex in the country. It was also a control freak’s fantasy, a hilltop enclave of 11 buildings with 2,800 apartments — practically a manufactured town. It boasted its own streets, hotel, a slightly cramped but fully operational 18-hole golf course, and two parks, each with a romantic gazebo. In building it, French placed the high-yield, high-risk bet that has enriched — or, often, impoverished — developers in every generation: He believed that middle-class people would choose to live in the city, rather than migrate out of town, so long as they could keep urban squalor and chaos at bay. He promised working stiffs an affordable bucolic refuge that didn’t require a long commute.

French fitted out his buildings with modern efficiencies (like refrigerators) and architectural flourishes evoking the days of monarchs in wide collars and rich brocades. Carved griffins, stained-glass windows, and ornate lanterns turned the oversize brick boxes into middle-class castles. The strategy worked. The development was stupendously successful, despite tiny apartments with almost no eastward-facing windows. Enjoying a river view would have had a disconcerting downside: a vista of charnel houses and the stench of blood and offal drifting in from neighbors like the Butcher’s Hide and Melting Association.

Today, the abattoirs, the el, and the slums are all gone. Tudor City’s claustrophobic layouts and phone-booth kitchens keep prices contained and children scarce. Though the city has evolved around it, a verdant retreat in midtown Manhattan still seems like an incongruous apparition.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cj15k7lep001l0hp6zhlowudn@published"]{font-family:'EgyptienneCondBold';font-size:43px;line-height:.8;text-align:center;margin:20px 0 0;padding-top:30px}@media (min-width:600px){[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cj15k7lep001l0hp6zhlowudn@published"]{font-size:65px;margin:39px 0 9px;line-height:.85}} 8. United Nations Headquarters

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cj15r9t9u004t0hp6vkq35j3h@published"]{color:#999;font-family:'arial';font-size:17px;line-height:1.2;margin-top:7px;margin-bottom:15px;text-align:center}@media (min-width:600px){[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cj15r9t9u004t0hp6vkq35j3h@published"]{font-size:19px;margin-top:0}} the u.n. is built on a slaughterhouse that used to be woodland..

ca. 1861 Turtle Bay Farm.

Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundation

1949 The U.N. Secretariat, under construction.

Bettman/Bettmann Archive

2016 The U.N. Secretariat, today.

Dea/W. Buss/De Agostini/Getty Images

The U.N. occupies a cluster of structures, but the Secretariat, the hive of diplomacy’s worker bees, is the international body’s contribution to the New York skyline, a big glass brick standing upright on the edge of Manhattan. In the 18th century, it was Turtle Bay Farm, a wild patch of woods and ravines that sloped down to a bucolic cove. Then came industry: ironworks, coal companies, slaughterhouses, and breweries, which needed access to the river for transportation and dumping. Until the 1940s, the eastern end of 42nd Street had to be one of the least appealing corners of the city. It shot between the cliffs of Tudor City, passed First Avenue, and terminated at the Veal & Mutton Co., a vast terrain of organized slaughter in the shadow of a Con Ed power plant’s smokestacks.

After World War II, the United Nations came into being, and among its first tasks — before the partition of Palestine or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — was to shop for real estate. A scouting party examined various other sites, including the suburbs of Philadelphia, the Presidio in San Francisco, Fairfield County, Connecticut, and the site of the 1939 World’s Fair in Flushing, Queens. But it was eventually decided that only Manhattan embodied the U.N.’s ideal of vigorous optimism. John D. Rockefeller, in a supreme gesture of noblesse oblige, offered to buy the reeking acres of riverfront from a local developer for $8.5 million (roughly $103 million today — still a spectacular bargain) and donate it to the organization. Wallace Harrison, Rockefeller’s architect — he had worked on Rockefeller Center and would later collaborate on Lincoln Center — helped broker the deal and hand-picked an international troupe of modernist architects to design the compound, taking for himself the role of ringmaster. Many contributed, not least two squabbling geniuses, the Swiss-French guru Le Corbusier and his Brazilian counterpart Oscar Niemeyer, who fought over the shape, number, and orientation of the buildings, whether the glass-curtain wall should include a sun-shading grid of stone, and — most ferociously — who got credit for what. The cocktail of haste, diplomacy, vanity, and genius might have yielded an architectural hangover. Instead, it produced the first monument of postwar modernism. Many critics found the complex soulless and its creators deluded in the idea that World War III could be averted by orderly administration. “If the Secretariat Building will have anything to say as a symbol, it will be, I fear, that the managerial revolution has taken place and that bureaucracy rules the world,” wrote Lewis Mumford in The New Yorker.

By 2010, the Secretariat had devolved into a decaying time machine. Rain seeped around ancient windows and leached asbestos from crumbling ducts. The lobby’s green marble walls sported the lovingly designed but now culturally unsuitable ashtrays. Architecture that once promised a more perfect world had now seen better days. A $2.1 billion overhaul begun in 2008 restored the original spare elegance. The Security Council’s 60-year-old chairs have been reupholstered in bright Naugahyde, water stains have been cleaned off limestone and marble panels, and decades of nicotine have been scrubbed away from buffed terrazzo floors. All the cosmetic improvements are icing on a high-risk rescue of a creaky modern landmark. When crews began removing the Secretariat’s exterior glass curtain wall, they found that it was barely hanging on. Windows were just a bad storm away from popping off. Then, in October 2012, Hurricane Sandy pounded through New York, causing $150 million in damage. It might have been easier — and possibly cheaper — to demolish everything and build anew. However, for an organization where precedent and symbolism govern every handshake, the historical meaning of the U.N.’s architecture still resonates.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cj15k7ott001m0hp600t16dn8@published"]{font-family:'EgyptienneCondBold';font-size:43px;line-height:.8;text-align:center;margin:20px 0 0;padding-top:30px}@media (min-width:600px){[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cj15k7ott001m0hp600t16dn8@published"]{font-size:65px;margin:39px 0 9px;line-height:.85}} 9. Ford Foundation

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cj15lnusk002f0hp68kyh80j5@published"]{color:#999;font-family:'arial';font-size:17px;line-height:1.2;margin-top:7px;margin-bottom:15px;text-align:center}@media (min-width:600px){[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cj15lnusk002f0hp68kyh80j5@published"]{font-size:19px;margin-top:0}} a foundation trying to save the world replaces a hospital for healing vets..

1912 New York Hospital for the Relief of Ruptured and Crippled.

Irving Underhill / Museum Of The City Of New York

1968 Ford Foundation Building, soon after its opening.

NY Daily News/Getty Images

2012 Ford Foundation Building, today.

Dario Cantatore/Getty Images

Along 42nd Street, one kind of civic ambition regularly forces out another. The construction of Grand Central displaced the New York Hospital for the Relief of the Ruptured and Crippled, the predecessor of today’s Hospital for Special Surgery. In an era of often-brutal medical intervention, the hospital specialized in gentler therapies: “sunshine and fresh air, along with diet, exercise, electrical stimulation, and gentle rehabilitation, known as Expectant Treatment.” In 1912, it moved toward Second Avenue and remained there until 1955, when it cleared out again to make way for the Ford Foundation, which was completed 13 years later.

Designed by Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo, it, like other mid-century office buildings, is made mostly of glass. But with its sunset-colored granite piers and weathered steel beams, the Ford Foundation has an imposing look of perpetuity. The foundation’s mission is to battle the full panoply of timeless injustices around the world, and its home base is a see-through fortress, braced for an endless war.

Today, green design is often a checklist of energy-saving features that soften a building’s environmental blow. Roche, however, created a work of environmentally sensitive architecture before the term had much currency. During business hours, anyone can step out of the cacophony of 42nd and into an indoor Eden. Walkways thread through an almost preposterously lush bower, designed by the landscape architect Dan Kiley (and closed in 2016 for a two-year renovation), which was meant to inculcate a sense of serene, almost monastic community in the foundation’s pencil-wielding professionals. “It will be possible in this building to look across the court and see your fellow man or sit on a bench and discuss the problems of Southeast Asia,” Roche predicted before construction had even begun, and he was right.

Ford gave up substantial floor area for the sake of trees, light, and air. That sacrifice made the building itself a magnanimous gesture, a gift of greenery to a city that has always been invited in to enjoy it. Part Victorian greenhouse, part modernist Crystal Palace, part corporate plaza, the landscaped atrium was a powerfully original idea, even though it later became a cliché. What better place to end a tour of civic aspiration than in this humanistic gathering place that distills 42nd Street’s dewy idealism?

This piece is adapted from Magnetic City: A Walking Companion to New York , to be published by Spiegel & Grau on April 18.

*A version of this article appears in the April 3, 2017, issue of New York Magazine.

Design and development: Jay Guillermo, Terri Neal and Ashley Wu

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42nd Street tour

Currently touring until 4 May 2024

42nd Street is a timeless and inspiring showbiz fairy tale that combines breath-taking tap dance routines, backstage intrigue, classic romance and delightful comedy to dazzling effect.

42nd Street is hitting the road a brand new UK tour in 2023 – here’s all you need to know.

From 42nd Street tour tickets to all the upcoming dates and venues, this is your guide to the show on the road.

This iconic song-and-dance spectacular features a hit parade of toe-tapping songs, including the title number, We’re In The Money, Lullaby of Broadway, Shuffle Off To Buffalo and I Only Have Eyes For You.

42nd Street tour dates and tickets

• Edinburgh , Edinburgh Playhouse 26 March 2024 - 30 March 2024 Book tickets ➤
• Birmingham , Birmingham Hippodrome 29 April 2024 - 4 May 2024 Book tickets ➤

Meet the cast and team!

The 2023 tour stars Samantha Womack will star as Dorothy Brock, alongside Michael Praed as Julian Marsh (to 23 September), Faye Tozer as Maggie Jones, Les Dennis (at select dates) as Bert Barry and Nicole-Lily Baisden as Peggy Sawyer.

The current tour cast is completed by Sam Lips as Billy Lawlor, with Erica-Jayne Alden , George Beet , Charlie Bishop , Kevin Brewis , Olly Christopher , Briana Craig, Jordan Crouch, Rhianna Dorris, Ashleigh Graham , Alyn Hawke , Aimee Hodnett, Connor Hughes, Deja Linton, Sarah-Marie Maxwell , Greta McKinnon , Ben Middleton , Benjamin Mundy , Anthony Ofoegbu and Jessica Wright.

This new production from Curve and Sadler’s Wells will be directed by Jonathan Church (Singin’ in the Rain, The Drifters Girl) with choreography and design by Olivier Award winners Bill Deamer and Rob Jones. Lighting design is by Ben Cracknell, sound design by Ian Dickinson and Gareth Tucker, video design by Jon Driscoll, musical supervision by Jennifer Whyte and orchestrations by Larry Blank.

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I Should Be So Lucky

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42nd Street on tour – new trailer released

The classic musical continues to showcase those dancing feet across the country

Exclusive: Take a look at the brand-new trailer for the current touring production of  42nd Street !

The show is on stage in Bristol this week, with further stops scheduled for Plymouth, Cardiff, Glasgow, Milton Keynes, Liverpool, Dartford, Woking, Southampton, Newcastle, Manchester, Belfast, Wimbledon, Edinburgh and Birmingham, with more venues to be announced.

The cast is led by Samantha Womack (as Dorothy Brock), Michael Praed (as Julian Marsh). Faye Tozer (as Maggie Jones), Les Dennis (as Bert Barry), Nicole-Lily Baisden (as Peggy Sawyer). Sam Lips (as Billy Lawlor) and Oliver Farnworth (as Pat Denning).

The company is completed by Erica-Jayne Alden, George Beet, Charlie Bishop, Kevin Brewis, Olly Christopher, Briana Craig, Jordan Crouch, Rhianna Dorris, Ashleigh Graham, Alyn Hawke, Aimee Hodnett, Connor Hughes, Deja Linton, Sarah-Marie Maxwell, Greta McKinnon, Ben Middleton, Benjamin Mundy, Anthony Ofoegbu and Jessica Wright.

42nd Street is directed by Jonathan Church, with choreography by Bill Deamer, design by Rob Jones, lighting by Ben Cracknell, sound by Ian Dickinson and Gareth Tucker, video design by Jon Driscoll, musical supervision by Jennifer Whyte and orchestrations by Larry Blank.

The musical tells the story of Peggy Sawyer, a young girl from a small town who arrives in New York City with dreams of becoming a star. It features such classic songs as “We’re In The Money”, “Lullaby of Broadway”, “Shuffle Off To Buffalo” and “I Only Have Eyes For You”.

Tickets for select dates are on sale below.

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DIRECT FROM LONDON’S WEST END THE NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE OF THE ACCLAIMED NEW REVIVAL 42ND STREET

• July 21, 2023
• Back to Press Releases

For Immediate Release Contact: John Karastamatis , Sue Toth , Erin Nantais – Mirvish Productions

DEC 9, 2023 TO JAN 21, 2024 AT THE PRINCESS OF WALES THEATRE  

“ UTTERLY FABULOUS… A TRIUMPH! CLASSIC TUNES SEND THE SOUL SOARING. If you want to feel the beat of the dancing feet, this really is the only show in town.” – The Telegraph   

David Mirvish proudly presents the North American premiere of the big, bright, brand-spanking new production of “the original showbiz musical,”  42nd Street  – direct from its recent smash run at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London.  

42nd Street  will play from December 9, 2023 to January 21, 2024 at the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto. 

Tickets will go on sale Monday, July 24 at mirvish.com and through 1.800.416.3333. 

42nd Street is a larger-than-life, massively entertaining celebration of musicals and the irrepressible spirit of Broadway, and a timeless and inspiring showbiz fairy tale combining tap dance routines, backstage intrigue, romance, and comedy.   

The show is set in New York in 1932 where entertainment is an escape from the depths of the Great Depression but producing a Broadway show, never easy at the best of times, is riskier than ever. The stakes are high, but everyone wants to be in show business. Fresh off the bus from small-town America, young and beautiful Peggy Sawyer arrives in New York City dreaming of her name in lights. She quickly catches the eye of big-time director Julian Marsh and lands a spot in the chorus of Broadway’s newest show…and when the leading lady is injured, Peggy gets her shot at stardom.

Based on the novel by Bradford Ropes and the subsequent legendary 1933 film – which launched choreographer and filmmaker Busby Berkley ’s groundbreaking style and established the backstage musical genre – 42nd Street  was adapted into a stage musical in 1980, originally produced on Broadway by David Merrick with original direction and dances by Gower Champion .    

With a book by Michael Stewart  and  Mark Bramble and featuring a hit parade of classic toe-tapping songs – lyrics by Al Dubin and John Mercer , music by Harry Warren  – including “We’re in the Money,” “Lullaby of Broadway,” “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” and “I Only Have Eyes for You,” 42nd Street  won the Tony Award for Best Musical and has become one of the most beloved musicals of all time.  

This new revival of  42nd Street received rave reviews: 

“A PERFECT PRODUCTION! It’s (forty) second to none.” – Daily Mail 

“THIS MUSICAL EXTRAVAGANZA WILL KNOCK YOUR SOCKS OFF!”  – Arts Desk 

“IRRESISTIBLY JOYOUS PRODUCTION! A sequin-studded riot.” – Time Out 

“THIS DEPRESSION-ERA GEM IS PURE FEEL-GOOD ESCAPISM”  – London Theatre  

The show arrives in Toronto with its acclaimed West End cast, which includes some of the UK’s biggest musical theatre names.

Ruthie Henshall stars as Broadway prima donna Dorothy Brock. In the last three decades Ruthie’s multi-award-winning career has seen her star in many of the most popular musicals, including  Cats, Miss Saigon, Crazy For You, She Loves Me (Oliver Award Best Actress),  Marguerite, Oliver!, A Chorus Line, Les Misérables, Billy Elliot  and  Chicago . Ruthie has also had tremendous success on Broadway. Previously in Toronto, she starred as Polly in the Canadian production of Crazy for You at the Royal Alexandra Theatre.    

Adam Garcia  stars as demanding Broadway director Julian Marsh. Originally from Australia, Adam originated the role of Tony Manero in the world premiere stage musical adaptation of Saturday Night Fever at the London Palladium in 1998, for which he was nominated for a Best Actor Olivier Award. His recording of “Night Fever” from that show reached number 15 in the UK Singles Chart. He starred as Fiyero in the West End premiere production of Wicked , alongside Idina Menzel. For his role in the Chichester Festival production of Kiss Me, Kate , directed by Trevor Nunn, he was nominated for another Olivier Award. Other stage work includes Singin’ in the Rain and the stage adaptation of The Exorcist .     

Josefina Gabrielle  stars as playwright and producer Maggie Jones. A former ballet dancer, her musical theatre credits include Trevor Nunn’s celebrated revival of Oklahoma! , opposite Hugh Jackman, for which she received an Olivier Award nomination, both at the National Theatre and on Broadway; Nicholas Hytner’s acclaimed revival of Carousel, also at the National Theatre and in London’s West End; Fame, A Chorus Line, The Goodbye Girl, Sunday in the Park with George, Chicago, The Witches of Eastwick, Sweet Charity, The King and I, Merrily We Roll Along ,  Les Misérables  and many other musicals and plays.  

Nicole-Lily Baisden  stars as naive ingenue Peggy Sawyer. This young actress has received critical and popular acclaim for starring as Nabalungi in the UK production of The Book of Mormon and Hope Harcourt in Anything Goes at the Barbican in London and on tour throughout the UK.    

Additional casting will be announced soon.    

The Creative Team 

Heading this new revival is director Jonathan Church , former artistic director of the Chichester Festival and one of the UK’s most renowned theatre makers and producers who most recently brought his international smash-hit production of Singin’ in the Rain to the Princess of Wales Theatre, where it enjoyed a sold-out run in September and October 2022. 

The production is choreographed and designed by Olivier Award-winners Bill Deamer and Rob Jones , respectively. Lighting design is by Ben Cracknell and projection design by Jon Driscoll . Sound design by Ian Dickinson and  Gareth Tucker . The musical supervisor and musical director is Jennifer Whyte and the orchestrations are by Larry Blank . 

About the show

• New York City, NY
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Lead Guest Meetings

Invite us... we'll show up! Since meetings are a great place to introduce a trip to your studio, we make that meeting easier and more productive than ever.  We offer both virtual and in-person meetings for studios to present the tour to your families and answer any questions they may have. 

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Each traveling group is assigned an on-site professional tour representative. This tour representative will coordinate all on-site activities, workshops, and performances. 

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42nd Street review – frivolous fantasy given punch, precision and panache

Sadler’s Wells, London This classic song-and-dancer directed by Jonathan Church has a tight ensemble cast and sunny vibes throughout

T here’s a seam of bright positivity running through 42nd Street, originally a book and film dating from the midst of the Great Depression. It says buck up, lace up your dancing shoes, get out there and put on a show. And also, be young, pretty and ever so nice, and good fortune will come your way.

While some 20th-century musicals are being revised for modern times ( Oklahoma! , Carousel ), director Jonathan Church has kept this one firmly in place, with period detail from mild sexism to the nasally twangs of those high female voices, deco sparkle channelling Erté glamour (from designer Robert Jones) and black and white news footage of the desperate unemployed.

Where the 1933 film was more abrasive in tone, the stage show, created in 1980, is sweetly endearing, just like its accidental leading lady Peggy Sawyer (Nicole-Lily Baisden), the classic small town girl looking to make it in the big city, rolling into Penn Station with raw talent and a dream. Baisden, last seen in the smash hit Anything Goes , has a dazzling smile to light up Broadway and plays Peggy the naif with innocent enthusiasm and turbo-charged tap skills.

The plot, well, what does it matter, but there’s a make-or-break opening, ageing star Dorothy Brock (Ruthie Henshall) juggling the sugar daddy bankrolling her career and her true love, a few unnecessary misunderstandings, fabulous hoofing and a glut of excellent songs by Harry Warren and Al Dubin. It’s those songs – along with the motoring rhythms of Bill Deamer’s choreography – that really drive the show. Just when you think it’s all getting a bit silly, then strikes up the classic Lullaby of Broadway, or Henshall singing the a cappella opening of I Only Have Eyes for You, and silly turns sublime. Henshall may be playing a faded star, but she’s still the commanding presence of this show. Bar one flat note, her singing’s on another level, the rich reeds of her voice and rounded tones in the lower registers especially. You’re Getting to Be a Habit With Me is a real treat.

The other great voice in the show is the suave Sam Lips as Billy Lawler, with his strong, bright tenor. Adam Garcia puts in a solid performance as demanding director Julian Marsh, although for someone best known as a killer tap dancer, you’re just dying for him to come out hoofing. So sunny are the vibes that those characters who are supposedly caddish or cantankerous come out as decent chaps. And there’s good support all round from Josefina Gabrielle, Les Dennis, Michael Praed and Anthony Ofoegbu as the show’s writers and Dorothy’s love interests respectively.

The ensemble is tight in harmony and choreography, Deamer’s tap routines sharply drawn, with anticipatory tension in the dancers’ bodies and rhythms exacting enough to hear the silence between the beats, plus Astaire-esque lightness in the soft-shoe numbers. Rhianna Dorris, as Diane, is the chorus member really selling it, giving punch, precision and panache.

42nd Street is a frivolous show, utter fantasy, that bounces along very nicely; a paean to showbiz and the restorative power of a strictly rehearsed song and dance number.

At Sadler’s Wells, London , until 2 July. Then touring until 28 October.

• Sadler's Wells

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42nd Street

42nd Street has now come to the end of it's 2023 tour… Sign up to our Touring Alerts and we'll let you know when the show is back on the road!

42nd STREET UK TOUR

This tour has now concluded.

Official Website:

Find out what musicals are coming to a theatre near you

Click the link to  Find A Musical Near You now, and choose your nearest town or city

WHAT IS 42nd STREET ABOUT?

42 nd  STREET  is a timeless and inspiring showbiz fairy tale that combines breath-taking tap dance routines, backstage intrigue, classic romance and delightful comedy to dazzling effect.

Fresh off the bus from small-town America, young and beautiful Peggy Sawyer arrives in New York City dreaming of her name in lights.

She quickly catches the eye of a big-time director and lands a spot in the chorus line of Broadway’s newest show…and when the leading lady gets injured, Peggy gets her shot at stardom.

The iconic song-and-dance spectacular features a hit parade of toe-tapping songs, including the title number, “ We’re In The Money ”, “ Lullaby of Broadway ”, “ Shuffle Off To Buffalo ” and “ I Only Have Eyes For You ”.

42 nd  STREET  is a larger-than-life, massively entertaining celebration of musicals and the irrepressible spirit of Broadway that’s guaranteed to lift anyone’s spirits. 

42nd STREET UK TOUR - 2023 CAST

The cast for the UK tour of 42nd Street is as follows:

• Samantha Janus  – Dorothy Brock
• Michael Praed  – Julian Marsh
• Fayze Tozer – Maggie Jones
• Les Dennis  – Bert Barry
• Nicole-Lily Baisden  – Peggy Sawyer
• Sam Lips  – Billy Lawlor
• Oliver Farnworth – Pat Denning
• Anthony Ofoegbu – Abner Dillon

The cast will be completed by Erica-Jayne Alden ,  George Beet ,  Charlie Bishop ,  Kevin Brewis ,  Olly Christopher ,  Briana Craig, Jordan Crouch, Rhianna Dorris, Ashleigh Graham ,  Alyn Hawke ,  Aimee Hodnett, Connor Hughes, Deja Linton, Sarah-Marie Maxwell ,  Greta McKinnon ,  Ben Middleton ,  Benjamin Mundy ,  Anthony Ofoegbu  and  Jessica Wright.

42nd STREET TOUR VIDEO TRAILERS

LISTEN TO MUSIC FROM 42nd Street The Musical!

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• Bournemouth
• Derry / Londonderry
• High Wycombe
• Kingston upon Thames
• Milton Keynes
• Newcastle Upon Tyne
• Northampton
• Peterborough
• Southampton
• Southend-on-Sea
• Stockton-on-Tees
• Stoke-on-Trent
• Wolverhampton

• Jun 14, 2023

Review: 42nd Street (Sadler's Wells & UK Tour)

Review by Daz Gale

The annual big summer musical at Sadler’s Wells is always something to look forward to with South Pacific and Singin’ In The Rain entertaining audiences (and both blowing me away) over the past two years. For this year’s musical it’s a big production of a truly iconic show as 42nd Street returns to London before shuffling off on a huge UK and Ireland tour. It has some big (tap) shoes to fill though when compared with not just last year’s summer musical at Sadler’s but the still quite recent West End revival which remains one of my personal favourite shows I’ve seen. That said, I was keen to see what this new production could bring to an absolute classic – so let’s get on with it and meet those dancing feet.

The stage musical adaptation of 42nd Street was first seen on Broadway in 1980 and arrived in the West End four years later. Based on the 1933 movie (itself based on the 1932 novel by Bradford Ropes), it has seen multiple revivals in the decades since it premiered, most recently concluding a two-year run at Theatre Royal Drury Lane in 2019. The show tells the story of a brand new fictional musical ‘Pretty Lady’ as it embarks on its journey to the Broadway stage with its leading characters including Dorothy Brock – a star who isn’t quite as talented as the others on that stage, and new chorus girl Peggy Sawyer who is keen to get started in the industry but has no idea how big her star is about to shine.

Produced by Curve who are known for their high quality and often bold productions of well-loved musicals, with Billy Elliot and Beautiful two recent examples, this latest production of 42nd Street is no exception, exhibiting exceptional production value that will adapt itself for the size of the stages it visits on the tour that follows this London season. Robert Jones set design keeps a backstage aesthetic that effortlessly transforms into scenes from ‘Pretty Lady’ and back to various places backstage going from glitzy to drab in a mere moment, but always visually exciting. Roberts costume designs are equally beautiful, notably different enough from the most recent West End production but still distinctive in their appearance so they have no trouble fitting in.

Jonathan Church directs the action beautifully, making beautiful use of the space, but it is Bill Deamers choreography and musical staging that makes 42nd Street burst with life. While keeping certain elements of the show from Gower Champion’s original direction and choreograraphy, Bill has added his own creations into the mix to form fresh and new sequences that always keep the genius level he is known for but this time to even more jaw-dropping effect.

42nd Street is nothing without its dance sequences and here it is every bit as sensational as you would hope – from the title number ‘42nd Street’ to a quite possibly better than ever ‘We’re In The Money’, it’s these big dance numbers that really elevates this show into something special and the choices in this production are every bit worthy of the shows timeless legacy.

Every production element in 42nd Street is executed flawlessly with particularly inspired use of lighting from Ben Cracknell – especially in one musical number which sees an incredibly rapid use of spotlights from one cast member to the other, all delivered with expert precision. Jon Driscolls projection adds a new element to the show, transforming the stage in a way I imagine will suit it on the road around the UK, while the crystal clear sound design from Ian Dickinson and Gareth Tucker allows the glorious sound of the tap numbers to play out to its full potential.

42nd Street is a classic and a big part of that is due to its content. Michael Stewart and Mark Brambles book takes a fairly thin premise and squeezes it for everything it’s worth, fabulously balancing the show within a show structure without ever confusing matters. As for the music from Harry Warren and lyrics from Al Dubin, they are as timeless as it gets with many recognisable songs multiple generations have grown up with. ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’, ‘Shuffle Off To Buffalo’ , ‘We’re In The Money’ and ‘Keep Young And Beautiful’ all performed phenomenally. As for ‘Lullaby of Broadway’ and ‘42nd Street’ itself, these are among some of the greatest musical theatre songs ever written and as such are obvious standouts during this show.

I’ve established the basic essence of 42nd Street is fantastic enough and this new production more than lives up to its high standard and, thankfully, the cast are also at the same level with some truly outstanding talents making up the characters in this production. Ruthie Henshall is at her fabulous best as Dorothy Brock. Having to reign in her own remarkable talents to reflect Dorothys less than blessed dancing abilities, she is an absolute marvel to behold – comic and captivating. A force to be reckoned with, she is suitably missed in the second act when she only makes a fleeting appearance.

Adam Garcia delights with an energetic performance as Julian Marsh. Played more likable than the last production I have seen with certain elements of his character toned down, Adam gives a commanding performance which culminates with him showcasing his own theatrical gifts at the climax of the show. Josefina Gabrielle and Les Dennis form a formidable double act as Maggie Jones and Bert Barry with precise comic timing and performances that never fail to raise a smile. Josefina in particular is a revelation, making the most out of a role that sometimes gets lost in certain productions but completely stands out in this one.

Nicole-Lily Baisden swaps one tap-dancing show for another. While she may have wowed audiences with her sweet performance in Anything Goes , she really gets to showcase her impressive talents here in a truly winning performance as Peggy Sawyer. An incredible dancer with bundles of charisma, she gives an assured and likable performance that easily eclipsed some of the bigger names in the cast and left no doubt who the true star of this production is and deservedly gave her the final bow (righting the wrong of the previous production).

Sam Lips gives a fine performance as Billy Lawlor, displaying a beautiful singing voice while Alyn Hawke is another standout as Andy Lee. A show like 42nd Street relies on its ensemble to bring it to life and with that in mind, every single performer in this cast is amazing in their own right. The ability to work together like a well-oiled machine, the precise nature of it is a testament to their abilities as performers in what must be one of the hardest working and greatest casts I have ever witnessed.

Markedly different from the 2017 West End revival but still distinctively 42nd Street , this latest production breathes new life into the show with inspired choices. All production elements come together seamlessly and flawlessly to create a show as spectacular as ever. When you factor in the truly stunning cast, you have a show that is impossible to fault. This is up there with the greatest productions of 42nd Street and in some respects might be better than ever before. Absolutely perfect, this is musical theatre at its very best.

42nd Street plays at Sadler’s Wells until 2nd July. Tickets from https://www.sadlerswells.com/whats-on/42nd-street/

It then tours the UK and Ireland until 28th October with dates and tickets at https://www.42ndstreettour.com

Photos by Johan Persson

- Windy Queen - Jan 25, 2020

- kimberly quick - jan 24, 2020.

- Amanda Dunne - Jan 24, 2020

- Laurie Lanouette - Dec 17, 2019

- paul outly - nov 13, 2019, - shannon lopez - oct 30, 2019, - ashley washmon - sep 20, 2019, - karen reedy - jun 21, 2019, - gary berish - jun 07, 2019, - renee milstein - jun 04, 2019, - denise sigler - may 31, 2019, - stacy lamorte - mar 30, 2019, - michelle stratton-wingerter - mar 19, 2019, - gina currera archer - mar 17, 2019, - sarah bock waggenspack - mar 11, 2019, - margaret westfall - mar 05, 2019, - seregil rogue - mar 02, 2019, - ann-marie basara - nov 21, 2018, - michael geiger - nov 12, 2018, - michael geiger - nov 08, 2018.

42nd Street Tours & Travel | 43 Cornwall Street, Highlands NJ 07732, United States

Historic northside Indy churches featured in Dec. 2 tour

Self-guided tour highlights architecture, history, and preservation of sacred spaces in Meridian-Kessler neighborhood.

Five historic churches and a seminary will be featured in Indiana Landmarks’ 2023 Holiday Church Tour, a Dec. 2nd self-guided exploration that highlights the architecture, history and preservation of sacred spaces in and around Indianapolis’s Meridian-Kessler neighborhood. All but one of the spaces will be available for interior exploration, and some will be decorated for the holidays.

The self-directed tour allows participants to go at their own pace, with select interiors open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Visitors should allow at least 2 hours to enjoy the full experience.

Tourgoers are responsible for their own transportation between stops. Parking is available at all sites but may be limited. Street parking is available on most surrounding streets. Steps are required to access some sites on the tour. (For more information, contact [email protected] .)

Indiana Landmarks presents this tour in partnership with area congregations, and a portion of the proceeds benefit Indiana Landmarks’ Sacred Places Indiana program.

Tour stops include the following:

•  North United Methodist Church , 3308 N., Meridian St. Built in 1931 with a series of additions over the decades, North United Methodist Church was the product of the 1921 merger of a new congregation with the existing Mapleton Methodist Episcopal Church. An English Gothic structure of Briar Hill variegated sandstone with Bedford limestone trim, the church interior designed by Schanbacher of Springfield, Ill., featured 12 art glass windows representing the apostles, and a chancel and chancel rail of amber travertine marble. In 1951, North United Methodist dedicated a new educational wing and, in 1973, added a tower, complete with electric carillon, which had been part of the original building plans. A 12,000-square foot expansion in 1997 added a chapel, the church’s west entrance and additional community outreach rooms.
• St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church , 4217 N. Central Ave. Created to accommodate a new parish in a rapidly developing neighborhood, the original Saint Joan of Arc was designed in 1921 by architect John Hagel in a Spanish Mission style to complement the neighboring D.A. Bohlen and Son-designed parish school. In 1929, the church added a limestone church designed by architect Henry J. Schlacks to resemble a Roman Basilica with an Italian campanile. Schlacks also designed the 65-ton marble high altar inside, and F.X. Zettler of Munich designed the 18 stained glass windows. A new building with a gym, school offices and kitchen replaced the original Hagel-designed church in 2001. In recent years, the parish restored the 1929 building as well as the clerestory windows, wall and ceil¬ing artwork and more.
• First Meridian Heights Presbyterian Church , 4701 Central Ave. Opened in 1928 to serve Meridian Heights Presbyterian Church, this Gothic-style, limestone church included seating for up to 820 people, along with stained opalescent glass windows representing the 12 apostles of Christ. A large community room and classrooms below further served the growing congregation, which added an education wing in 1958, replacing an original frame building and including a chapel, parlor, apartment for the church custodian and numerous educational rooms. In the mid-twentieth century, as traditional congregations moved into the suburbs, First Presbyterian Church – which had been located downtown since 1823 – merged with Meridian Heights to form what is now First Meridian Heights Presbyterian Church.
• Bethlehem Lutheran Church , 526 E. 52nd St. First meeting in a storehouse at 52nd Street and College Avenue in 1923, the Bethlehem Lutheran Congregation soon built – and then outgrew – a small structure on the corner of 52nd and Central Avenue, replacing it in 1931 with its current home, designed in Indiana limestone in the English Gothic style. Driven by a belief that physical environment influences the worship experience, congregants transformed the church’s interior into a work of art. In 1957, the congregation dedicated a compatible limestone addition with children’s classrooms, fellowship hall and offices. In 1962, the congregation added a sanctuary balcony for a choir and a new organ, designed by Robert Noehren in the classic Baroque style of northern Germany and the only organ of its kind in central Indiana.
• Northwood Christian Church , 4550 Central Ave. (Exterior exploration only.) Northwood Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) formed in 1920 to serve the city’s growing north side, occupying a white frame building on the southeast corner of 46th Street and Central Avenue. After World War II, the fast-growing congregation moved to a new building across the street, marking the move by lining up in class order, led by the nursery group, and marching across the street. While the new auditorium seated 450 and featured a rose picture window and Chicago adobe brick, plans for expansion began almost immediately. An educational wing was added in 1954, connected by a 30-foot cloister walk and garden to a new chapel with seating for 70 people.
• Christian Theological Seminary , 1000 W. 42nd St. Founded in 1925 as the College of Religion at Butler University, Christian Theological Seminary (CTS) separated from the university in the late 1950s, and, in the early 1960s, commissioned a master plan for its own grounds and buildings on 35 acres nearby. Led by modern architecture patron J. Irwin Miller, the effort brought landscape design by Dan Kiley and building design by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, who created the building’s exterior to blend into its wooded surroundings on a bluff overlooking the White River and its interior to emphasize space, volume and light. Subsequently, Barnes designed a library (1977) and Sweeney Chapel (1987). In 2017, CTS sold the buildings and most of the grounds to Butler, with a long-term lease in place. 

WHAT: 2023 Holiday Church Tour

WHEN: Saturday, Dec. 2 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

WHERE: North United Methodist Church, 3308 N., Meridian St. St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church, 4217 N. Central Ave. First Meridian Heights Presbyterian Church, 4701 Central Ave. Bethlehem Lutheran Church, 526 E. 52nd St. Northwood Christian Church, 4550 Central Ave. Christian Theological Seminary, 1000 W. 42nd St.

COST: Advance tour tickets cost $20/adult (age 12 & up), $15/member of Indiana Landmarks, $10/child (ages 6-11), and are free for kids ages 5 and under.

Day-of-tour tickets cost an additional $5 per ticket price and may be purchased at North United Methodist Church, 3808 N Meridian St., Indianapolis beginning at 10 a.m. on December 2.

TICKETS: Buy tickets at indyholidaychurchtour23.eventbrite.com or by calling 317-639-4534.

Indiana Landmarks revitalizes communities, reconnects us to our heritage, and saves meaningful places. With nine offices located throughout the state, Indiana Landmarks helps people rescue endangered landmarks and restore historic neighborhoods and downtowns. People who join Indiana Landmarks receive its bimonthly magazine, Indiana Preservation . For more information on the not-for-profit organization, call 317-639-4534, 800-450-4534, or visit www.indianalandmarks.org.

MEDIA CONTACTS: Mindi Woolman, Director of Marketing and Communications, Indiana Landmarks, 317-639-4534,  [email protected]

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