decrepit-telephone:

A. T. Stewart & Co. (John Kellum, 1862-1870) Southeastern corner of Broadway and Tenth Street, NYC. Stereoview by Anthony, ca 1868.

A. T. Stewart had already once built an enormous department store at 280 Broadway, just north of City Hall, in the 1840s - a building that would become known as The Marble Palace. Following the northward march of the fashionable neighborhoods of the city, Stewart decamped The Marble Palace and moved uptown in 1862, building a new cast-iron department store that would come to be considered the southern anchor of Ladies’ Mile. Starting from the southeastern corner of Broadway and Tenth, Stewart expanded his store southward and eastward. By 1870, the buildings seen to the right of the store would be swallowed up by a final addition to the store, allowing it to encompass the whole block from Tenth to Ninth Streets, and Broadway to Fourth Avenue.

While The Marble Palace has survived to this day - now known as the Sun Building - the cast-iron store burned in a spectacular fire in 1956.

Reblogging myself to keep up the Ladies’ Mile thing we’ve got going here.