It goes without saying that Broadway on the Upper West Side is a commercial street, a cacophonic corridor of delis, shoe stores, locksmiths and coffee shops. But what is now a retail strip began with quite different aspirations, as a boulevard of residential refinement, which in the early 1900s certainly meant no stores. Big chain stores and huge garish signage overtook this once domestic idyll after World War I, but in the last two decades the Age of Preservation has brought commerce to heel.

Some idea of the Victorian-era horror of a commercial presence in the residence of the well-to-do is apparent in the architect Henry J. Hardenbergh’s reaction to an erroneous report of tradesmen’s vehicles in the courtyard of his Dakota. In 1891, clearly in a temper, he wrote the American Architect and Building News to say that “a grocer’s wagon has never been seen within the quiet precincts of this courtyard, and an ice cart would cause as much consternation to the aristocratic tenants as a streetcar trundled into the space.”

This was no trivial matter; commerce must not jeopardize the sanctity of the home. Indeed, Hardenbergh gave tradesmen’s wagons an underground entrance, directly to the basement.