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New York - Manhattan - City Hall District Area: Fulton St. on the south to Franklin St. on the north; from Church St. east to Pearl St. One mile north of Battery Landing, the imperfect triangle of CITY HALL PARK is wedged into Broadway's steep eastern wall. Here is the venerable seat of the municipal government, and the scene of important historical events. Broadway clips the park precisely on the west -- as does Chambers Street on the north -- and hems it in with a palisade of commercial buildings whose architectural distinction, except for the Woolworth Building, lies mainly in their renovated store fronts. The apex of the park's ten-and-one-half-acre triangle points to St. Paul's Chapel, the oldest church in the borough and probably the only building that presents its back to Broadway. The eastern boundary of the park is fixed by two streets: Park Row, which slants northeast from Broadway past old "Newspaper Row," and Centre Street, which runs north from the end of Brooklyn Bridge through the new civic center at Foley Square. Paved walks subdivide the park into small grassy areas set with trees. Rows of benches bordering the walks accommodate strollers and idlers who pause to rest, to read, to have their shoes shined, to feed the pigeons, or to enjoy the transient sunshine. This is a restless park: six days a week crowds of office workers stream to and from the IRT subway kiosks on both sides; elevated trains rattle and screech in a rambling shed at the approach to Brooklyn Bridge; well polished automobiles bearing low license numbers nudge into a parking space "For Official Cars Only"; policemen ceaselessly patrol the grounds; lunch-hour crowds, released from near-by office buildings, fill the paths at noontime. There are but two buildings in the park proper, although a third, the triangular post-office building that was called "Mullett's monstrosity," occupied the southern segment until 1938. In the north central section of the park is City Hall, and to the rear and fronting Chambers Street is the City Court Building, formerly known as the Old County Court House. CITY HALL houses the offices of the Mayor, chief executive and magistrate of the city, and his staff; the City Council, the municipal legislative body; the Board of Estimate, the general administrative body; and the Art Commission, the agency that passes on the designs for all public buildings and works of art. Architecturally, City Hall is an exceptionally well-executed design of the post-Colonial period showing clearly the fact, noteworthy in its day, that professional rather than amateur architects planned it. The design, a beautiful adaptation of French Renaissance and American Colonial influences, was essentially the work of Joseph F. Mangin, a Frenchman, but his partner and co-winner of a competition for the commission, John McComb, a Scotsman, supervised the work in New York and received most of the contemporary credit. Reminiscent of the Hotel de Ville of the eighteenth century, the dignified marble structure, chastely embellished with Louis XVI pilasters between arched windows, is noteworthy for its unusual grace and delicate scale. The two wings are balanced on either side of a central portico that is surmounted by a cupola. Its finial is a figure of Justice, said to have been executed by John Dixey. The interior is marked by McComb's fine attention to detail, especially in the rotunda, in the superb double curve of the self-supporting marble stairway with its delicate wrought-iron railings, and in the slender columns of the upper gallery. Portraits of former governors crowd the walls of the corridors, and mayors' portraits are hung in the mayor's antechamber and reception room on the first floor. Over the mantelpiece in the mayor's office is a portrait of Lafayette, painted by Samuel F. B. Morse on the occasion of the general's visit to America in 1824. The Governors' Suite, on the second floor, was originally intended for the official use of the State's chief executive when in New York, but its three rooms have been converted into a museum. A mahogany writing table used by George Washington during the first days of his Presidency is exhibited along with other historic pieces of furniture. In the Governors' Room of the suite are Trumbull's portraits of such noted personages as John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington (valued at more than a quarter of a million dollars), and in the other two rooms are hung paintings by John Wesley Jarvis, Henry Inman, John Vanderlyn, Thomas Sully, George Catlin, and others. The portrait of Henry Hudson is the work of Paul van Somer, a seventeenthcentury Flemish master; the identity of the subject is doubtful, however, for there is no authenticated portrait of the navigator. This valuable collection is under the care of the Art Commission. The mahogany-lined City Council chamber, once the aldermanic chamber, on the second floor, contains portraits of Henry Clay and George Washington, a statue of Thomas Jefferson by Pierre Jean David (d'Angers), and a pretentious ceiling mural, New York City Receiving the Tributes of the Nations, by Taber Sears, George W. Breck, and Frederic C. Martin. The adjoining committee room is decorated with portraits of General George B. McClellan, by William H. Powell, and of William Bainbridge, by John Wesley Jarvis. The former Common Council chamber, on the second floor, is now the meeting place of the Board of Estimate. Corinthian columns and pilasters give the room an atmosphere of dignity. A bust of John Jay, on the north side, is the work of John Frazee; that of John Marshall, on the south side, is by an unknown artist. The steps of City Hall are worn smooth by official public receptions and ceremonies. Here the mayor welcomes distinguished visitors, awards promotions to members of the fire, police, and sanitation departments, and makes contributions opening charity campaigns. The CITY COURT BUILDING is a white marble structure with Corinthian columns and pilasters. Built ( 1861-72) by the Tweed Ring at the cost of more than $12,000,000, it provided the opportunity for one of the most gigantic steals in the city's history. City Hall Park is New York's approximation of a courthouse square or village green. This little plot of land is all that survives of one of New York's earliest municipal gathering places. The site was once part of the common lands. Whenever the community peace was threatened or cause for celebration arose, the populace gathered there. An oak planted near City Hall in 1911 does honor to the memory of Jacob Leisler, who fought against the tyranny of English rule and was hanged for treason in 1691 close to this spot. Near the front of the building the Sons of Liberty erected five successive "liberty poles" between 1766 and 1776. In 1776 the Declaration of Independence, brought by courier from the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, was read here, for the first time in New York, in the presence of George Washington. On February 13, 1837, the "Flour" or "Bread Riot" took place during a financial panic then threatening the country. The price of flour had advanced from six dollars to fifteen dollars a barrel amid widespread speculation. A placard was carried through the streets announcing a meeting at the park, and declaring: "All friends of Humanity, determined to resist Monopolists and Extortionists are invited to attend, rain or shine. Bread, Meat, Rent, Fuel -- the voice of the people shall be heard." The six thousand who attended vented their anger by breaking into the flour stores, dispersing only after the militia had been called out. The distressed gathered again in ominous protest during the lean days of the 1850's. The park was the scene of a peculiar riot in 1857 when opposing bands of policemen cracked one another's heads. The Municipal Police, venal and inefficient, had been abolished by an act of the State Legislature and a new body, the Metropolitan Police, established under State control. The Municipals refused to disband, however, and when a large force of Metropolitans attempted to serve warrants for the arrest of Mayor Fernando Wood, the two groups clashed in a savage battle that stormed through the corridors of City Hall and was finally checked only by a show of bayonets by the Seventh Regiment of the National Guard. During the Civil War, food for the soldiers went out across the park from the supply base at City Hall. A ceremony held here on March 24, 1900, marked the commencement of construction of the subway transit system. A STATUE OF NATHAN HALE, the work of Frederick MacMonnies, is on the west side of the park. The FIGURE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, near the east side of the park, was sculptured by E. Plassman and was erected in 1872 as the gift of Albert de Groot to the press and printers of New York. Another journalist, Horace Greeley, is honored by a heroic STATUE in bronze by Henry Bonnard. But the MacMonnies statue, Civic Virtue, erected in 1922, is the one generally associated with City Hall Park. Said to be the largest piece carved from a single block of marble since Michelangelo David, the central figure is a gigantic muscular youth, nude except for a dash of foam (or seaweed) encircling his middle: a sword over his right shoulder, he fixes his gaze forward, seemingly unaware that he is trampling on two sirens writhing at his feet. In summertime children splash in the basin of the monument. Protests against the unembarrased nudity of the group and the conception it presents of virtuous man's chivalry have brought a promise of removal to Foley Square, where, presumably, criticism is less stringent. The region north of City Hall Park is a district of wholesale commerce, where caps, pants, and woolens are manufactured and sold. For almost a score of years before 1930 the sixty-story WOOLWORTH BUILDING, erected in 1913 west of the park's apex, at Broadway and Park Place, was the world's tallest building; its architect was Cass Gilbert. Intended as a huge "sky sign" to advertise Frank W. Woolworth's chain of five-and-ten-cent stores, it was acclaimed a masterpiece, the first "cathedal of commerce." Its tower rises without a setback from the center of the Broadway front to 792 feet above the curb. The lower and broader section of the building mounts thirty stories to a height of about four hundred feet. This section has been criticized as being too high in comparison with the tower, when seen from the west. All the horizontal elements of the building are subdued in color to strengthen the soaring quality of the vertical lines. The color is as delicately graded as the modeling. The chief effect is a glistening white, set off by the weathered green of the copper peak and copper roof; but as many as six different colors were used on a single terra-cotta ornamental detail. Pinnacles, carved canopies, and gargoyles soften the silhouette and impart an atmospheric lightness. Crisp and delicate terra-cotta surface ornament drops over the building like a veil. All the details are Gothic, even to the tourelles that surround the peak, the finial that surmounts it, and the flying buttresses. Despite its Gothic decorations, the Woolworth Building was a genuine contribution to the development of an American skyscraper style. It represents one of the earliest attempts to express the steel-frame structure -- a departure from the "immobility of mass and weight of masonry" that characterized the classic type of building. Below the Woolworth Building, on Broadway between Vesey and Fulton Streets, is ST. PAUL'S CHAPEL OF TRINITY PARISH, the oldest church building in Manhattan. Its cornerstone was laid May 14, 1764, in a field sloping to the Hudson River. The architect, James McBean, a Scot, is said to have been a pupil of James Gibbs. Gibbs designed the Renaissance church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, in London, which greatly influenced the design of St. Paul's. The church was constructed of stone quarried from the site which is now the graveyard. Its original, lovely warm color has been greatly dulled by age. The church is surmounted by a tower at the west end, to which a wooden spire, more elaborate than the rest of the church but of excellent design, was added in 1794. At the east end, facing Broadway, is a carriage portico with a pediment and slender but well-proportioned Ionic columns. The light, spacious interior is handsomely decorated, with a barrel vault carried on slender columns, and a gallery on each side. On the north side of the interior a painting of the arms of the United States marks George Washington's pew; opposite, on the south, the arms of New York State mark Governor Clinton's pew. Immediately after Washington's inauguration, April 30, 1789, both houses of Congress accompanied him to St. Paul's, where Bishop Samuel Provoost conducted a service. On the Broadway side is a monument to Major General Richard Montgomery, killed in the attack on Quebec, December 25, 1775. It was executed by J. J. Caffieri, French sculptor, on order from the Continental Congress. Montgomery's grave is beneath the monument. Among the memorials on the west wall of the interior is a bust of John Wells ( 1770-1823) by John Frazee, the first known portrait bust by a native American sculptor. The graveyard, which flanks the church on three sides, is a favorite noonday retreat of office workers in the neighborhood. It contains the weatherbeaten tombs of many historic personalities. The churchyard gates are closed during the two days preceding the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, as they have been since the chapel's founding, to remind the public that the property belongs to Trinity Parish, and that it is open only by the courtesy of that body. Across Park Row from City Hall Park, near the approach to the Brooklyn Bridge, stands the brownstone PULITZER BUILDING, once the proud home of the World; its gilded dome makes it one of the section's most imposing buildings. George B. Post designed the structure in 1890; it was enlarged in 1908. This was an early example of buildings whose walls carry only their own weight; the floors are supported by columns. Nevertheless, the exterior walls are, in places, more than nine feet thick. A little to the south of the Pulitzer Building, at Spruce and Nassau Streets, is the red-brick, clock-towered TRIBUNE BUILDING, former home of the Tribune and one of the earliest elevator buildings. Dana Sun was once next to the Tribune -- in the same building, incidentally, which for a time housed Tammany. The modest building that housed the Times in the days of its humble beginnings occupies the site of the old Brick Presbyterian Church at Park Row and Nassau Street. The nonpartisan CITIZENS UNION, founded in 1897 for the purpose of obtaining honest, efficient municipal government, is now one of the tenants of the building. A little off the Row, on near-by William Street, were quartered Hearst Evening Journal and American. The Evening Post, edited by William Cullen Bryant , had its home at Broadway and Fulton Street. James Gordon Bennett Herald had its workshop on the southeast corner of Ann Street and Broadway, site of the old Barnum Museum. Long a familiar feature of the Row was the 120-year-old building of the Roman Catholic CHURCH OF ST. ANDREW, famed for its 2:30 A.M. Mass for night workers, most of them printers from the great dailies. In 1938 a new church structure was erected on the original site at Duane Street and Cardinal Place, behind the Municipal Building. The site also includes 15 Cardinal Place, birthplace of Patrick Cardinal Hayes. On New Chambers, corner of William Street, is the BRACE MEMORIAL NEWSBOYS' HOUSE, founded in 1853 by Charles Loring Brace and now one of five shelters maintained by the Children's Aid Society. It provides food and lodging at low cost for homeless boys. Horatio Alger is said to have found material for his rags-to-riches stories there. This section was New York's Rialto before it became the domain of the Fourth Estate. Its theaters presented the first American dramas as well as the most famous stars of the English and American stage. Through the Park Theatre's stage entrance -- the narrow lane still known as Theatre Alley, parallel to Park Row and connecting Ann and Beekman Streets -passed such celebrated stars as Edwin Booth, Edmund Kean, Edwin Forrest, and Fanny and Charles Kemble. In 1825 the first formal opera presented in America, Rossini Elisabetta, was performed here. Other playhouses in this section were the Anthony Street Theatre, Anthony Street (now Worth Street) near Broadway, which presented Joseph Jefferson, the elder, and James Wallack; the Old Broadway Theatre at Broadway and Pearl Street, which opened in 1847 with Sheridan School for Scandal; and Palmo's Opera House, 39 Chambers Street, renamed Burton's, which opened in 1844 and presented opera intermittently during two decades. South of the Brooklyn Bridge and east of Park Row is the "Swamp," center of the city's wholesale leather market since the late 1690's. When the tanning industry was expelled from Broad Street, the mart followed it to Beekman Swamp -- the site bounded approximately by Frankfort, William, Beekman, and Cliff Streets. During the nineteenth century, an encroaching population gradually drove the tanneries from the neighborhood, but the leather merchants remained. Beekman Street, southern boundary of the "Swamp," is the center of downtown New York's job printing industry, which took root in this section when most of New York's newspapers were published on near-by Newspaper Row. (The printing and publishing industry is the second largest in the city.) On the northeast corner of Beekman and Gold Streets is THE OLD BEEKMAN, a tavern and coffee house where General Grant is said to have imbibed his favorite Peoria whisky. Despite the northward expansion of the city, the vicinity of the City Hall has remained the center of governmental activities in New York. This concentration of official business -- municipal, State and Federal -occurs in an impressive group of buildings erected within the past decade in and around Foley Square, the neighborhood northeast of City Hall Park. On the two triangular blocks bounded by Park Row, Centre, and Duane Streets, and looking down on City Hall, is the forty-story MUNICIPAL BUILDING, designed by McKim, Mead, and White. It straddles Chambers Street, forming an arcade through which flows west-east vehicular traffic; this passageway has been called the "Gate of the City," the title of an oil painting of the scene by William Jean Beauley. The building has a flattened U-shaped plan, with its open side toward Centre Street. It gains dignity through the bold treatment of the intermediate stories, despite the poorly related tower and the disturbing character of the Corinthian colonnade at the base. In themselves the elements are well designed, but their combination lacks unity. It is surmounted by a heroic figure of Civic Fame, by Adolph Alexander Weinman, who was also the sculptor of the relief on the lower part of the building. The building, opened in 1914, cost about twelve million dollars. Despite its size (650,000 square feet of floor area), it has proved inadequate, and several departments have been housed in buildings on Foley Square proper. The municipally owned and operated RADIO STATION, WNYC, on the twenty-fifth floor, broadcasts no commercial programs; performers are supplied by government agencies and educational institutions. The MUNICIPAL REFERENCE LIBRARY, on the twenty-second floor, a branch of the New York Public Library, contains documents, pamphlets, maps, directories, and reports from all important cities. On the second floor, across the hall from the marriage license bureau, is the MARRIAGE CHAPEL, a sunny room decorated with flowered wallpaper and potted palms. The seven-story granite structure at Chambers and Centre Streets is the HALL OF RECORDS, repository for all legal records relating to deeds of Manhattan real estate and to court cases -- some of the documents were drawn as early as 1653, It contains offices of the New York County Register, Surrogates' Court, and Commissioner of Jurors. Designed by John R. Thomas and opened in 1911, it is New York's best example of the eclectic baroque style used in French nineteenth-century municipal buildings. Heroic statues of distinguished New Yorkers on the ornate granite façade and symbolic figures representing such conceptions as Philosophy, Poetry, and Industry are by Philip Martiny and Henry K. Bush-Brown. The Interior is sumptuously decorated. Beyond the Municipal Building and the Hall of Records lies Foley Square proper, a plot of land shaped somewhat like a hatchet head, around which several public buildings have been grouped to form a civic center. Unfortunately, this group lacks a unifying architectural design. Several city departments are housed in the COURT SQUARE BUILDING at 2 Lafayette Street, a commercial office building.