Park Avenue Armory (Seventh Regiment Armory)
643 Park Avenue | also 898 Lexington Avenue, 890 Lexington Avenue, 103 East 66th Street | Upper East Side | built 1879
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1879
President Hayes opens a fair that raises $140,550 to finish the armory
President Rutherford B. Hayes opened the New Armory Fair on November 17, 1879, the first day the public was admitted to the building. The fair raised $140,550, which paid to finish the armory and decorate its ornate interiors. Work on the decoration continued through the end of that year.
“Visitors were first allowed into the armory on November 17, 1879, when U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes opened the New Armory Fair.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1880
The Seventh Regiment finishes a privately funded armory on Park Avenue
When the city refused to pay, the Seventh Regiment of the New York State Militia raised the money itself, and the armory designed by Charles W. Clinton went up from 1877 to 1880 at a cost of $589,438.91. Its 200-by-300-foot drill hall was one of the city's largest column-free indoor spaces, and Louis Comfort Tiffany and Stanford White designed its Veterans Room.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1881
The Veterans Room opens as an early work of Tiffany's Associated Artists
The first-floor Veterans Room opened in 1881 as an early Aesthetic Movement interior by Associated Artists, a partnership of Louis Comfort Tiffany, Candace Wheeler, Samuel Colman and Stanford White. The New York Times hailed the new room that year as undoubtedly the most magnificent of its kind in the country. In 1992 the Landmarks Commission designated it, with several other rooms by the same team, an interior landmark.
Source: traditionalbuilding.com
- 1900
The National Indoor Tennis Championships begin on the drill floor
The National Indoor Tennis Championships were held on the armory's drill floor from 1900 to 1963, except during the World War II years. Another long-running tenant was the Knickerbocker Greys, a junior cadet corps for schoolboys, founded in 1881, which has drilled in the armory since 1902.
- 1937
Archibald MacLeish's radio play The Fall of the City is broadcast live from the armory
The 1937 live broadcast of Archibald MacLeish's radio play The Fall of the City took place at the armory. The building's huge spaces were often transformed for events, and for the regiment's annual autumn ball the interiors were elaborately rethemed to places as varied as Egypt, Mars and the Swiss Alps.
“The 1937 live broadcast of the radio play The Fall of the City by Archibald MacLeish took place at the armory…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1954
The Seventh Regiment gives a ball for Britain's Queen Mother
On the night of November 1, 1954, the regiment gave a ball at the armory in honor of the British Queen Mother. The unit, nicknamed the silk stocking regiment, was one of the city's most socially distinguished militia organizations, and its interior quarters reflect the taste of a very affluent National Guard outfit.
“On the night of November 1, 1954, the Regiment entertained the British Queen Mother at a ball in her honor at the Armory.”
- 1967
The city designates the Seventh Regiment Armory a landmark
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the armory's exterior a city landmark on June 9, 1967, and it became a National Historic Landmark in 1986. Its period rooms, including those by Tiffany, White and the Herter Brothers, were designated interior landmarks on July 19, 1994.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1971
Louis Armstrong lies in state at the armory as tens of thousands pass through
After Louis Armstrong's death in 1971, his body lay in state at the Seventh Regiment Armory for two days, giving fans a chance to pay their last respects. Tens of thousands of people from around the world filed through. During those days his widow Lucille welcomed relatives to New York, including his second wife, Lil Hardin Armstrong, and his sister Beatrice, known as Mama Lucy.
- 1981
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis helps defeat a plan to build a tower over the armory
In January 1981, state officials began studying a proposal, first floated by developers in 1979, to erect a residential tower above the armory. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Representative Mario Biaggi led the opposition that helped kill the plan that March.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1983
A shelter for homeless men opens at the armory
As National Guard use of the armory declined, the state opened a shelter for homeless men on the armory's third and fifth floors in January 1983. City officials switched it to a women's shelter in mid-1985, citing a lack of beds for homeless women.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2000
A newly formed conservancy is awarded control of the deteriorating armory
After the World Monuments Fund listed the armory among the world's 100 most endangered sites in 1999, a newly formed conservancy led by Wade Thompson, Elihu Rose and Rebecca Robertson was awarded control of the armory in November 2000. The group later signed a 99-year lease and took over the building in 2006 to restore it for public arts programming.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2007
The armory stages its first performance-art piece, a choreographed motorcycle show
The Park Avenue Armory Conservancy began hosting art exhibitions and performances in 2007, and the venue's first performance-art piece that year was a motorcycle performance choreographed by Aaron Young. The first work the conservancy itself commissioned followed in 2009, by Ernesto Neto. The conservancy also raised drill hall rental rates for fairs to about $30,000 a day.
“The venue's first performance art piece was a 2007 motorcycle performance choreographed by Aaron Young…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2016
An $8.9 million restoration returns the Veterans Room to its original luster
A design team commissioned in 2014 took on an $8.9 million restoration of the Veterans Room. The two-year project, completed in March 2016, brought back the delicate luster that the Tiffany-era interior had lost over time.
Source: traditionalbuilding.com
Further reading
- Park Avenue ArmoryWikipedia
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