This month in real estate history

This month in real estate history

From left: The Pussycat theater in Times Square, An early example of reinforced concrete,  The Hotel Pennsylvania
From left: The Pussycat theater in Times Square, An early example of reinforced concrete, The Hotel Pennsylvania

1976: City launches Midtown Enforcement Project

With an eye to cleaning up Times Square, a section of Manhattan’s central business district which was plagued by massage parlors and prostitution, the city began the Midtown Enforcement Project 39 years ago this month.

Then-mayor Abraham Beame tapped a former police inspector to lead a team of inspectors from the departments of Buildings, Health and Fire, as well as several attorneys. The new agency used regulations from those departments as leverage to remove illicit activities.

Explaining the need for the group, Beame said, “Pornography shops, massage parlors, prostitution and other undesirable things… have an economically dampening effect on the legitimate business activities in the Midtown area,” according to reporting in the New York Times.

Although it took about a decade, the city pushed most of the sex industry out of Times Square, which is today one of Manhattan’s most valuable retail zones.

Yet the new agency had a rocky start. In one setback, in December 1976, the Manhattan District Attorney refused to press charges against the owners of Tina’s Leisure Spa at 301 West 48th Street, because the task force had hired private investigators who in turn paid money for illegal sex acts. The DA called that tactic “offensive” to law enforcement standards.

The practice of hiring private investigators to pay for sex was so controversial that the agency almost lost its funding over it.

Still, the enforcement project continued. In the 1980s, it was renamed the Office of Midtown Enforcement, and in 2006, Mayor Michael Bloomberg expanded its geographic scope with the creation of a new unit to replace it, the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement.

1950: First NYC concrete building demolished

The first building in the city constructed using the then-revolutionary process of reinforced concrete was demolished 65 years ago this month.

Workers using a wrecking ball brought down the half-century old, five-story building located at 415 East 31st Street “quite easily.”

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The building was razed to make way for what was then called the New York University-Bellevue Medical Center.

Today, reinforced concrete is a common building technique, but at the turn of the century, structures were supported either by load-bearing walls or by an interior skeleton, typically of steel or wood.

Builder Guy Waite, an early proponent of the concept of reinforced concrete, constructed the 31st Street building in 1900 to show the city’s Department of Buildings that the technique could work. Waite built approximately 60 reinforced concrete buildings on the East Coast before his death in 1943.

1919: Hotel Pennsylvania, world’s largest, opens

The largest hotel in the world at the time, the Hotel Pennsylvania, opened its doors 96 years ago this month.

The structure at 401 Seventh Avenue, between 32nd and 33rd streets, boasted 2,200 rooms, several hundred more than the nearest rival.

The Pennsylvania Railroad company erected the 22-story building. It was across the street from the Beaux-Arts-style Pennsylvania Station, which the railroad completed in 1910.

The renowned architecture firm McKim, Mead & White designed both buildings.

It remained the largest hotel in the city until the 2,500-room New Yorker Hotel opened its doors in late 1929 two blocks away at 481 Eighth Avenue.

Following renovations over the years, the number of rooms at the Hotel Pennsylvania was reduced, and today the building has about 1,700.

Vornado Realty Trust purchased the building, also known by the address 15 Penn Plaza, in 1997, and has on-and-off plans to raze it and construct a large office tower.