Columbus Circle, Aerial Photo

Photograph shows Columbus Circle, looking south from Central Park, about 1920. Intersection of 59th Street, Broadway and 8th Avenue, Upper West Side. The Maine Monument stands at Merchant’s Gate. Aerial photo from Fairchild Aerial Camera Corporation. Source: The New York Public Library.

The empty ground floor, between Broadway and 8th Avenue is the site of the 1775 Broadway office building (renamed 3 Columbus Circle by 2008). The first three stories were built in 1923 and the top 23 stories were added in 1927–1928.

The 25-story Fisk Building on the south side of 57th from Broadway to Eighth Avenue, completed in 1921.

As part of the original plan for Central Park, designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed traffic circles for both southern corners of Central Park, which were major entrances. On October 12, 1892, the Columbus Monument was installed in the center of the western circle, to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in America.