Cary Building

The Cary building is located on Chambers street in Tribeca. It was built in 1856-57 and was designed by Gamaliel King and John Kellum. It is built in the Italian renaissance revival style and has cast iron on its facade. the architectural cast iron work was done by Daniel D. Badger. It is a 5 story twin facade building. It is now a residential building but was built as a commercial structure. The Cary Building became a New York City landmark in 1982. This building was once home to The New York Sun, a daily newspaper distributed from 2002-2008. The ground floor was series of windows and doors separated by slender columns and the upper floors are arcades of windows separated by paired columns. The top has a cornice and a large central medallion reading ”Cary Building.’ In the 1920′ church street was widened and homes next to the building were lost and now the building is on the corner. After the street was widened windows were cut through the facade and windows were added to the church street side. This created a big contrast between the church street side and to the delicately modeled cast iron.

Rich people started moving into apartment houses in the early nineteenth century. The tenements were erected largely for poor immigrants. As these tenements were built there was hardly any laws regulating tenement construction. Although having a fire escape was mandatory. The earliest tenements were built on a 25ft wide lot with hardly no amenities. These lots were planned to house single family but they were housing 20 or 22 in the building. They’re just like the building that the Tenement Museum now occupies on Orchard Street on the lower east side. With 3 rooms in each apartment with only one of them having a window, made it very difficult to have light or ventilation in the inner rooms. Even though Orchard street had access to water and sewage owners were not required to hook up lines in their buildings so many of them had no water in their buildings. There were toilets in the back yards but could only be flushed by the owners representative just once a day if that. So people lived in very poor conditions and in big crowded situations. I the mid-nineteenth century most immigrants in New York were Irish and German. Little maintenance was done to the buildings and conditions got worse at the end of the nineteenth century.

New York City harbors were used for trade and business. To get to the west was a long voyage. The creation of the Erie Canal made it easier, faster, and cheaper to travel and transport goods. The Eire canal also created jobs which were hard to find. The overcrowding of the city made it very competitive to obtain a job. Ethnic groups established societies that were on hand to help immigrants find homes and jobs.

Older buildings were converted into several apartments. The old brewery in five points could be considered the first tenement house. Building were four of five stories high with narrow hallways. The conditions were horrible. They were dark dirty and smelly. The population per acre rose to 165.5 persons in 1850. The rent varied between $3.00 and $13.00 even with an apartment with windows. The immigrants rarely complained about rent. The landlord threatened the immigrants of eviction because there was always someone else waiting for rooms. The water came from a street pump or well in the back of the building where the toilet was located. Water was carried to the kitchen sinks from the outside. They didn’t have bathtubs or showers. They went to bath houses or in the river. It was difficult to keep clean under these horrible conditions. Many died from disease and infections.

My New York…….
I was born in Mexico but grew up in Albany NY. While living in Albany I was always fascinated with NYC. I would always hear that it was the city that never sleeps and that always made me wonder. At the age of 11years old was my first time visiting NYC in a school trip. The memories of that is vague although I do remember seeing the Statue of Liberty. When I used to attend Hudson Valley Community College I would often make trips to NYC by myself for a day or two just to get to know the city a little better. I would love seeing buildings such as the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building as well as other high rise buildings. The architectural work on some of them were awesome. I would ask people for directions somewhere an a lot of people spoke spanish to me. In Albany there aren’t a lot of people that speak spanish. NYC also have a lot of different restaurants from different cultures that I did get to enjoy. I always dreamed of going to school in NYC. In August of 2013 we moved to Queens NY. I started school in September of that year. Although having a vehicle I learned to travel on the train. Boy oh Boy the subway of NYC is something else. So I started taking the train from Queens to Brooklyn to get to school. It was a challenge a lot of the time. Sometimes the trains would run with delays, sometimes on time, and other times not run at all. I got used to it like all other New Yorkers. Now I get around the city in trains with hardly any trouble. I learned that NYC is a fast paced city. New Yorkers don’t stop to smell the roses like tourist do, they just move like they are always running late, then again they probably are. Now, when my mom comes to visit me she can’t understand all the craziness that goes on here, and I told her live in NYC for a few months and you’ll get used to it. My New York is seeing the Empire State Building everyday and never getting tired of it. My New York is going to south street seaport in the summer.