This month in real estate history

1971: City proposes Madison Avenue pedestrian mall
City officials unveiled a plan 37 years ago this month to convert Madison Avenue between 42nd and 57th streets into a pedestrian mall in the face of fierce opposition from business groups such as the Fifth Avenue Association and the Real Estate Board of New York.

The Office of Midtown Planning and Development’s controversial proposal called for limiting vehicular traffic to buses and emergency vehicles on the 13-block stretch while widening the sidewalks, adding trees and encouraging sidewalk cafés. Officials said it would cost about $3.7 million and improve retail business and real estate values along the pedestrian mall.

However, business groups said the plan would hurt sales along Madison and Fifth avenues. An overwhelming majority of members of the Fifth Avenue Association opposed the plan, the group said, as did the Real Estate Board of New York. Herbert McIntosh, vice president and general superintendent of Brooks Brothers on Madison Avenue and 44th Street, told the New York Times, “Why does the city feel it has to make it harder for our customers to get here?”

Mayor John Lindsay’s administration developed the concept to cut down on traffic and air pollution in order to meet federal environmental regulations. A State Supreme Court judge ruled in March 1973 against the mayor, stating that an alteration so significant had to be made by the Board of Estimate, which opposed the plan. An appeals court upheld that decision two months later, effectively killing the mall idea.

1947: Pact to freeze wages for union construction workers
Union building trades contractors and workers agreed to a temporary wage freeze to provide price stability for massive postwar construction projects, 61 years ago this month. The pact negotiated in December between the Building Trades Employers Association and the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York covered 70 percent of the 250,000 construction workers in the city. By March the following year, when the agreement was signed, nearly all unionized workers were covered.

Unions and contractors estimated there would be about $3 billion in public and private development, but city officials said rising wages made it difficult to propose accurate bids. Mayor William O’Dwyer said contractors were inflating budgets to protect themselves against steep wage increases in public projects.

“The purpose of the agreement is to bring about stabilization of building costs so that the billions of dollars of building work can be carried forward,” Theodore Kheel, director of the city’s Division of Labor Relations, said, the New York Times reported.

Contractors said projects were being held up because companies and their investors were not confident they could build at the price quoted. Under the deal, most wages would rise by 5 percent but would remain frozen until July 1949, with the contract set to expire a year later. A replacement, three-year contract was signed in June 1950.

1890: First building taller than Trinity Church opens
The headquarters for Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper, the New York World, opened 118 years ago this month, the first building in the city whose height exceeded the spire of Trinity Church.

The height and the number of stories of the World Building, which was also known as the Pulitzer Building, are in dispute, with the recorded height ranging from 309 to 348 feet. It had at least 16 stories, historians said. The 284-foot-tall Trinity Church at 100 Broadway at Wall Street had been the highest structure since its dedication in 1846.

The World Building was the tallest structure in New York City until the Manhattan Life Insurance Building was built in 1894, at 348 feet. That record was beat in 1899 by the 391-foot-tall Park Row Building.

The World Building, at the corner of Park Row and Franklin Street, was one of three newspaper buildings fronting City Hall Park, including the 13-story Times Building on Park Row at Spruce Street, and the 10-story Mail and Express Building on Broadway at Fulton Street.

The World Building was demolished in 1955 to make way for an expanded approach to the Brooklyn Bridge.

Compiled by Adam Pincus