Postcard Thursday: The Evolution of the Metropolitan Museum

We recently added this early 20th-century view of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to our collection. This photo highlights two major additions to the museum's original floorplan: the 1888 Theodore Weston wing (in red at the back) and the Richard Morris Hunt Fifth Avenue entrance (in limestone at the front).

The Weston facade is often mistaken for the original entrance to the building. However, as the photo (below) shows, the squat 1880 Vaux and Mould building that was the original museum had a rather quaint staircase leading up to its main entrance, which in those days faced into Central Park.

courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Pieces of this Vaux and Mould building are still visible inside today's museum. The Central Park facade seen here in the left side of the photo is now where the Lehman Wing begins. The Weston addition was designed to harmonize with Vaux and Mould's work. You can judge for yourself by visiting the European Sculpture Court, where Weston's south facade is entirely preserved.

courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hunt's 1902 addition shifted the museum's entrance to Fifth Avenue. Notice in the postcard the blocks of stone atop the colonnade that spans the facade. Those were destined to become large statues that were never carved and the rough-hewn limestone blocks still sit there, unfinished, to this day. Also notice that at the far left of the postcard is Cleopatra's Needle, which was erected in 1881, and has recently been restored.

To see how the museum has grown over the past 135 years, the Met has put together this terrific 38-second video:

(Can't see the video embedded above? Go to http://youtu.be/7oJrJJoTSaI.)

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Explore more NYC history in

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

If you haven't had a chance to pick up a copy of Footprints yet,

you can order it from your favorite online retailers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) or

from independent bookstores across the country.

And, of course, Inside the Apple is available at fine bookstores everywhere.

Should Tavern on the Green Be a "Casual" Restaurant?

As reported recently by DNAinfo, the Parks Department is on the verge of soliciting proposals for a new concessionaire to run the storied restaurant in the Central Park, Tavern on the Green (after an aborted attempt two years ago to install new management).

However, a number of attendees at the recent Community Board 8 meeting objected to the park's idea that the new Tavern be a "high quality casual restaurant." The problematic word in the Parks Department's presentation was "casual," which has led some to think that the new Tavern might not be fancy enough. (Or, as Gothamist succinctly put it: "NYers Worry an Olive Garden-Type Restaurant Will Open at Tavern on the Green.")

But how fancy should Tavern on the Green actually be? When the restaurant was created by Robert Moses in 1934, he promised that it would be a place where "the general public can get what it wants."

Through the early 1930s, the upscale restaurant in the park was called the Casino (where Rumsey Playfield now stands), which Moses wanted to tear down. As we write in Inside the Apple:

Moses had two primary objections to the Casino: one was that it that it catered to the city’s wealthy residents at the expense of the majority of park users. (In an era when a cup of coffee at a Horn and Hardart Automat cost a nickel, the Casino charged 40 cents.) Secondly—and perhaps more importantly—the Casino had been a favorite haunt of disgraced Mayor Jimmy Walker.... To remove the Casino, Moses needed to find an alternate spot for an eatery. And, since public sentiment opposed building anything new in the park, Moses instead came up with a clever plan to convert the 1870 sheepfold at 65th Street (constructed by Jacob Wrey Mould) into a “popular-priced” restaurant.

Scores of workers from the Civil Works Administration began converting the old sheepfold into the restaurant in February 1934. (In true Moses fashion, the conversion was well underway before the city announced what it was doing.) As the New York Times reported, the new Tavern on the Green promised "reasonably priced table d'hote luncheon and dinner and a la carte service within reach of the average purse. There will be no cover charge. A sandwich and a glass of beer will be served at a reasonable price if a more elaborate meal is not wanted."

Though it took some time for Tavern to figure out its pricing, the restaurant soon settled on a price-fixed dinner of $1.50--not the cheapest meal in town in 1934, but well within reach of many middle-class New Yorkers. The question now is whether or not the new Tavern on the Green will return to Moses's populist roots or be more like the glitzy tourist attraction of the 1970s and 80s presided over by the late Warner LeRoy. Stay tuned.....

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Read more about New York's Robert Moses and Tavern on the Green in
Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York

Tavern on the Green to Get New Management

New York's Department of Parks has announced that next year Dean J. Poll, who currently holds the license to operate the Boathouse in Central Park, will also take over the management of Tavern on the Green.

Among the changes Poll will implement is a thinning of the landscaping at the rear of the building to open up the vistas toward Sheep Meadow. What many people don't realize is that throughout most of the park's life, Sheep Meadow's official name was "the Green." Thus, when the restaurant first opened in 1934, it made sense that it was Tavern on the Green. (Perhaps techinally in should have been Tavern near the Green, since it is cut off from its namesake by the wide swath of the ring road.)

The Green came to be nicknamed Sheep Meadow because from 1864 to 1934 it housed a flock of pedigree Southdown and Dorset sheep. The removal of the sheep in 1934 is a story we tell in Inside the Apple. There are many plausible reasons why the sheep may have left, but certainly the main one is that the Parks Department (in the person of Robert Moses) had its eye on their sheepfold, an elaborate 1870 structure designed by Jacob Wrey Mould. As soon as the sheep were out, their barn was tranformed into Tavern on the Green.

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