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I hope you'll pardon my bad voice today it has been my custom occasionally on these morning talks to call your attention to a less well known parts of the city it passed by commercial section of Manhattan which has significance to architects and historians as well as the planners who call it the valley lies between the two high ranges of tall buildings downtown uptown and to New Yorkers interested in how the city was built the old buildings that survive he has just qualities that make for permanency but the world the word old he's a comparative one historians classify a building in New York as old when it was built before the Civil War real estate investors noted as old by the time it is stood less than a generation thirty years most in Europe an old house is one that they'd SPAC the Middle Ages while in Denver a cent with Cisco anything is old that survives from before one thousand nine hundred New York architecture buffs call oh any of our buildings and it's assessed fully survived since as late as the post Civil War construction boom that is why there seemed to be considerable interest these days on the part of architecture critics including the well known Mrs Huxtable in the type of commercial building that went up in New York in the sixty's and seventy's one eight hundred sixty S. and seventy's characterized by the cast iron front this was an ingenious an inexpensive way of creating an elaborate pseudo classical facade with decorations derived from the then fashionable French Empire style prefabricated on a mental cast iron curtain walls were applied over the store fronts over the street fronts of new commercial structures which were considered tall in those days when they rose to six seven or eight stories cast iron fronts we use on hotels department stores and office buildings in what we now call the valley. Which was then the popular retail side of the city it was long ago ceased to be fashionable now it is almost wholly wholesale business and manufacturing lofts although one hotel in the area actually continues to operate as such the Broadway Central the area runs along the spine of Broadway from Canal Street a twenty third in the number of cast iron fronts in this valley have been officially designated landmarks from the old want to make a storage Tenth Street up the twenty third Street cluster that the pop and stores of what they call the dry goods trade in that in those days on all constable Brooks Brothers Macy's Lord and Taylor were among those that have since moved further uptown another was stern Brothers which started in business here their first building a wide cast iron front on the south side of twenty third Street still stands long forgotten and dingy it is the original Stern Brothers building which I think dates from about eight hundred seventy five now occupied by a wholesale concern which is to been dramatically rejuvenated by its new owners with the code white paint making it stand out in all its original glory and marking it as a really striking example of a cast on front style which it is the owners were not of spruced up the outside and if the interior was not worth reusing to he just goes to show that a well constructed building of distinctive design can last in our city and be put to new and different economically profitable use a coat of paint on a cast iron front certainly calls attention to this particular phase of our architectural history for it was in its way as legitimate a style as the earlier Colonial which was an imitation of the English Georgian or of the Greek Revival a style which was an imitation of an imitation of something else. The American imitation and cast iron of the French Second Empire style is as valid as any other derivative sort of architecture which is copied in different materials for different uses from a foreign prototype as long as it is well done both well built and well designed it is worthy of our notice and admiration I congratulate the new owners the old Stern brothers twenty third Street store for having appreciated the value of the old cast iron front and by painting it white and for calling to New York's attention as the outstanding landmark It is this is Robert C. Weinberg critic at large in architecture and planning.