The early architecture of New Amsterdam was wholly utilitarian. Within the stockade enclosure of the fort the most conspicuous building was a church of substantial masonry, but of the severe simplicity characteristic of the Calvinist faith. The Governor's house, a barracks, a storehouse, and a jail were the other chief buildings. The Governor's house was of good size and built of Dutch brick. There were two windmills to the west of the fort in 1639, one a sawmill and the other a gristmill. The church had been erected in 1642, but gave way to the march of progress in 1693. 

A description of the buildings erected during the administration of Outer Van Twiller is contained in the deposition of Gillis Pietersen van der Gouw, master carpenter. With the exception of the Governor's house there were no important residences on Manhattan Island under Dutch rule. Most of the burghers were content with houses costing not more than $125 to erect and of which the rental averaged $25 per annum. Later, as the colony prospered more pretentious private residences were built, of which the only remaining example was erected during the British rule, the old Lefferts House at 563 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, which dates from 1750.

The royal archives in The Hague contain water color drawings of New Amsterdam's first buildings, with a manuscript table of contents, but no text. Master carpenters and builders might easily have erected these structures without recourse to the professional aid of the architect. Among the most conspicuously beautiful structures of the early British period was the home built for himself in 1758 by Roger Morris, a British officer, whose property was confiscated during the Revolution. For a time this was Washington's headquarters and later it became the property of Madam Jumel, who married Aaron Burr when he was in his seventy-eighth year. As the Jumel Mansion it was maintained in 1927 as a public museum.

One of the oldest of New York's churches is St. Paul's Chapel, at Broadway and Vesey streets, in which George Washington had a pew. It was designed by McBean, a Scotchman, then residing in New Brunswick,New Jersey, and supposed to have been the associate or pupil of Gibbs, in London, because of the similarity of their effects. Richard Upjohn was the architect of the Trinity Church of today, at the head of Wall Street. Philip Hooker was the early architect of Union College building and Albany Academy.

Federal Hall, one of the most important of early public buildings, stood on the site of the present United States Sub-Treasury. Among the most important of the early residences, none of which have survived, were the homes of Governor Clinton, on Pearl Street, the Van Ness house at Bleecker and Cherry streets, the Rutgers home on Cherry Street, and the Walton mansion on Franklin Square. Leopold Eidlitz, who designed St. George's Church, was associated with Richard Hunt in plans for the Capitol at Albany. Neither was involved in the scandals which arose as millions were sunk in this building by contractors, and Mr.. Hunt proved to be among the most useful of the early generation of New York architects in training his successors.

New York's City Hall, the most chaste and lovely of surviving buildings of an official character of the earlier period of New York's history, was the design of John McComb, born in New York City in 1763. He was also the architect of St. John's Church, and of other public buildings.

It may be frankly admitted that in matters of architecture, New York and the rest of America as well, lagged far behind the other arts in development. Perhaps this was fortunate, for with the exception of the buildings already named and Fraunce's Tavern nothing remains of the city's earlier buildings calculated to inspire regret that practically all have vanished. With the increasingly cosmopolitan character of the city it was to be expected that the character of the buildings erected would reflect foreign influences, and be influenced by events in the Old World.

It was not until the period of Stanford White, son of that Richard White whose name appears in the chapters on journalism and literature, that the designs for private residences and public buildings showed the influences of the best in modern European architecture. He and the group contemporaneous with him, mostly Beaux Arts men, brought to New York's buildings a beauty and a dignity worthy of America's greatest city.

The long and narrow form of the Island of Manhattan brought about the creation of the only distinctive element in American architecture. Congestion of population and increasing land values, made it necessary that buildings should be expanded upward, since no other expansion was possible. The firm foundation afforded by the solid rock of Manhattan Island made possible the earliest tall buildings with the aid of structural iron and thus began the development of the modern sky scraper. As early as 1848-49 John Bogardus planned a cast iron building which was erected on Centre Street. Cast iron pillars and a cast iron facade were features of the building erected a decade later by Messrs. Harper Brothers on Franklin Square for their publishing business. 

In the Harper building the cantilever system was employed for the support of cement floors, the entire structural material being iron rather than wood; but the sky scraper, of which the Pulitzer Building on Park Row is the first example, was still many years in the future. This building was designed by George B. Post, a Beaux Arts man, who had also designed the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Cornelius Vanderbilt house on Fifth Avenue, the Huntington house opposite it, and many other notable public and private buildings. The World Building with its golden dome is still a landmark, but it was speedily dwarfed in its noble height of twenty-two stories by the Park Row Building, twenty-nine stories, which remained until the erection of the Singer Building, the tallest building in America.

The Singer Building's forty-one stories with a total height of 612 feet was eclipsed by the Woolworth Building with sixty stories and a total height of 702 feet, the tallest edifice in the world in 1927, for the Eiffel Tower, which rises 1,000 feet, is a structure rather than a building. The architect of the Woolworth Building is Cass Gilbert, one of the founders of the Architectural League of New York, and its president in 1913-14,, and president in 1908-09 of the American Institute of Architects, and a member of the American Institute of Arts and Letters, and its president in 1919. Mr. Gilbert is also responsible for the New York Custom House, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Building, Washington, the capitols at Little Rock and St. Paul, the libraries in St. Louis and Detroit, and many other notable structures.

From the first this American school has recognized the value of beauty. The Woolworth tower, that of the American Radiator Company, on Fortieth Street, and of the Metropolitan Building on Madison second Street, are striking examples of the varied possibilities afforded in making the sky scraper a thing of beauty. With the advent of the sky scraper came modifications in the building codes to assure better lighting, and thus the pyramidal effect of the step-backs required after a certain number of stories has been attained, has been forced upon the architects, who gladly availed themselves of a new opportunity for decorative effect such as had not previously been obtained except in the power of the Bankers' Trust Company Building. The newest of the gigantic business buildings in Manhattan Island, and one of the largest of them all was the Graybar Building for which the architects were Sloan & Robertson.

With building permits exceeding a billion dollars yearly, and such masterpieces as Stanford White's Madison Square Garden being torn down for replacement by edifices affording greater financial returns, it is obvious that architects in the metropolis have been reaping a harvest for some years, and that their services will be in no less demand for some years to come. To list all of them and their achievements being out of the question, it will be possible only to name a few of the more notable, not already mentioned, and their works.

Among the pioneers in designing high grade apartment houses, the Navarro Flats and the Spanish Flats being examples, were the firm of Hubert Parsons & Company. Of the many public buildings erected from the designs of Ernest Flagg, St. Luke's Hospital, and the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington are most noteworthy. W. A. Potter is represented by the Union Theological Seminary, the Teachers' College, and many buildings of equal artistry if less importance. John M. Carrere and Thomas Hastings designed the New York Central Public Library, Fifth Avenue, the National Academy of Design, and the Ponce de Leon and Alcazar hotels in St. Augustine, Florida. 

The first work on the Cathedral of St. John the Divine was done by George L. Heins and C. Grant LaFarge, and their work, begun in 1891, was continued by Mr. LaFarge until the completion of the choir, in 1911, and since then the work has been continued by Cram and Ferguson. Warren and Wetmore, of which Whitney C. Warren is the senior member is responsible not only for the Grand Central Station, but for the Biltmore and Commodore hotels. McKim, Meade & White, of which Stanford White was a member, designed the Pennsylvania Terminal, and in addition to buildings already named, the University Club, the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Club, the Yosemite Apartments, the Judson Memorial, and the Washington Arch.; Herts and Tallant specialized in theatres, erecting such well known playhouses as the New Amsterdam, Lyceum, Brooklyn Academy, and others.