1913 -- Grand Central Terminal opens at midnight on February 2nd.  The beaux-arts facade at 42nd Street, is designed by Whitney Wetmore of the architectural firm of Warren & Wetmore, as a triumphal triple archway, and faces south to provide a dramatic approach from Park Avenue.  Above the entrance sculptures of of Greek mythological figures surround a clock with a diameter of 13 feet.  The interior of the terminal is truly palatial, with images of the constellations painted within the capacioust vaults high above the floors.  With such vastness and two levels and 67 tracks, Grand Central terminal can accomodate up  to 70,000 rail commuters per hour. Also in this year,  Woolworth building is completed at 233 Broadway and Park Place, across from City Hall.  Designed by Cass Gilbert in an eclectic Gothic Style, it rises to a height of 792 stories some 60 stories
above ground, without setback, and in 1913 immediately claimed the distinction of being the tallest building in the world.  The lobby of  the Woolworth Building, one of the most richly adorned interior spaces in the world, is decorated  Ravenna mosaics in gold, blue and red, and sculpted caricatures of Frank Woolworth himself counting coins andCass Gilbert with a model of the building in his hand.  So inspiring is the sight of this mighty skyscraper in 1913, that a visiting dignitary refers to it as "A Cathedral of Commerce."  In addition, in this year,  the General Post Office Building opens at 34th Street and Eighth Avenue.  Designed in Classic Revival style and built of granite by the firm of McKim, Mead and White,  a monumental staircase  the buildings facade which is punctuated by 20 columns.   Finally, the year 1913 brings monumental invvovationos to show
business and to sports. .  The Palace Theater opens at 47th Street and Broadway; and the Regent theater, the world's first movie palace, which emulate the palace of the Doge of Venice, and seats 1800 patrons opens at what is now Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and 116th Street.  In May of this year, too,  Actors' Equity Association is established, a union dedicated to improving the wages and working conditions of actors and stage managers who work in legitimate theater.   The most  memorable event in baseball for 1913 is the opening of Ebbet's Field Ballpark on April 9, 1913, the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was to be the site of 8 World Series, before the Park closed in September 1957 and the team of talented ball
players moved to Los Angeles.
 

                  Might be able to put an article in here about Mckim, Mead, etc.

1914 -- Another skyscraper is completed reaches up into the New York City skies with the opening of the Municipal Building at the intersection of Chambers and Centre Streets.  This building, too, is designed by McKim, Mead and White, and as with the General Post Office,  they choose a classical style.  The building basically consists of a 25-story block, surmounted by a "wedding cake" tower, a symbol of the  thousands of matrimonial ceremonies that have take place in this building over the years.  Also notable in New York City in the year 1914, are a number of financial  events.  Merrill Lynch and Company is established by Charles E. Merrill and Edmund Lynch.    The  New York Stock Exchange shuts its doors on July 31st and remains closed for a period of 6 months, as a result of World War I.  And the Federal Reserve Bank of New York opens on November 16 in temporary quarters at 62 Cedar Street.  One of a dozen federal reserve banks in the new federal banking
system, the New York Federal Reserve bank is given the difficult task of  bringing under the system's sway
a group of private bankers in the East who largely control the country's finances.

1915 -- The City raises a new official flag and seal (actually the original British seal) , commemorating  the 250th anniversary of the assumption of municipal control by the English.  Designed by Paul Manship, this flag also honors the Dutch with its blue, white and orange background.  Also in this year, the Equitable Building opens at 120 Broadway,  replacing the former home-office building (d. 1870) which was destroyed by fire 3 years earlier.  Designed by Ernest R. Graham, it rises 40 stories tall and its bulk consumes an entire City block.  It is huge, but after all intended to serve the Equitable Assurance Society,  the then-largest insurer in the world.  Nevertheless the new Equitable  Building not only takes away a huge piece of the sky from others businesses in the area,  but also obstructs the daylight and blocks the circulation of fresh air throughout  the proximity.  The Equitable Building thus stirs up a protest which,  in turn, spurs the City to issue its first  zoning laws --the setback laws.  Just one year these laws were supplemented with the first zoning ordinance in the United States, the so-called Zoning Resolution which regulated both the size and, importantly, the use of buildings,  thereby limiting commercial and industrial intrusions into residential areas.   In addition, on May 7, 1915, the RMS Lusitania, a 785-foot Cunard liner sailing under British registration and carrying guns and ammunition for the Allies, is unexpectedly attacked and sunk by a German submarine off the coast Ireland.  Some 1, 143 persons are lost, including 114  American Citizens.  On May1st, the day  the Lusitania embarked, the German Imperial Embassy  warned  Americans  passengers, in messages that appeared in New York City newspapers, of the dangers involved in sailing on vessels operated by  Great Britain or her allies.

1916 -- St. Thomas's Episcopal Church is consecrated on Fifth Avenue at 1 West  53rd Street.  An earlier church building stood on this site to accommodate the parish which was formed in 1823,  but this building was destroyed by fire in 1905. The present building, designed in a French Gothic Revival style and built with Kentucky limestone, was fashioned the firm of Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson.  Not until three years later did the church  open up its affiliated, and now world-renowned  St. Thomas Choir School for boys.   St. Thomas Episcopal Church features an extraordinary music program, led by J. Wiley Hitchcock,  including a chime of 21 bells in its  great tower.   In 1991, a statue of Our Lady of Fifth Avenue was dedicated at  St. Thomas in a joint service by many of the City's church leaders.   Also, in this year, as war raged abroad, the battleship Arizona
was commissioned at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

1917 -- Shortly after the United States enters World War I.,  the 27th Division of the National Guard marches down 5th Avenue, becoming the first New York regiment to join the affray.   Soldiers are stationed on every pier, and a steel net is stretched across the Verrazano narrows to prevent German U-boats from entering the Upper Bay.   In the Bronx,  the Kingsbridge Armory (originally the Eighth Coastal Artillery Armory) is completed at 29 West Kingsbridge Rd., between Jerome and Reservoir Avenues.  Designed by Pilcher & Tachau, it is a 20th century fortress with a vaulted ceiling that rises to about 100 feet.  It has been called the largest armory in the world, and it was originally intended to be used, among other things,  as a bulwark against the possibility of civil insurrection.  Also in 1917, The Masses folds after after notables on its staff are charged with sedition and then acquitted.  A socialist, muckraking newsaper, edited by Max Eastman and published monthly, The Masses is remembered for its advocacy of class warfare, opposition to the World War and the accounts it presented by John Reed from the Western Front.  In addition in 1917,  the massive, steel-arch  Hell Gate Bridge is dedicated on March 10, spanning Hell Gate Channel between Ward's Island and Queens.

1918 -- The Bronx International Exposition of Science, Arts and Industries opens on May 30.  Originally planned as a World's Fair,  it was scaled to down to the dimensions of a fair on account of  the continuing War.  Also in this year, daily mail flights between New York and Washington, D.C. establish  U.S. airmail as a regular postal service. This year, too, is remembered for a virulent influenza that attacked the City and swept away 12,000 New Yorkers.  In addition, one of the worst accidents in NYC subway history occurred on November 1st, at Malbone Street (subsequently renamed Empire Boulevard) in Brooklyn, when a BRT  (Brooklyn Rapid Transit) train derailed, killing 102 subway riders and injuring another 250.  The most notable day in this year, however, is November 11, on which date the Germans signed an Armistice ending the great War.  New Yorkers celebrated on City streets for the second time, as the signing of the Armistice had mistakenly been reported by the United Press 4 days earlier.  A temporary Triumphal Arch is erected on Fifth Avenue and 24th Street to welcome returning troops, but many never came home.  Of some 42,000,000 men mobilized by the Allies, 5 million were fatally lost, including some 51,000 Americans.  It is estimated, moreover,  that more than half of the Allies' total combatants were injured, and Americans casualties occurred in a similar proportion.  Virtually a whole generation was annihilated on the Western Front.

1919 -- Regiment after regiment of WW I veterans returns, and the City welcomes "Johnny" home.    Roseland Ballroom opens on January 1,  at 1658 Broadway near 53rd; it's safer more elegant than other City dance halls where one can buy a dance for a time.  National radio broadcasts from Roseland make the famous, and the Ballroom  becames a venue for several memorable jazz bands.  Also in this year The New School for Social Research is founded as a private college, at 66 West 12th Street in Greenwich Village, as an unconventional alternative to academic authoritarianism.  It became a viable institution when Alvin Johnson, a Columbia University trained economist  took  over the reins in 1922, and its faculty included among others Wesley Mitchell, Thorstein Veblen, Horace Kallen, Charles A. Beard and James Harvey.  In addition, in this year, Joseph Medill Patterson  Illustrated Daily (to become the Daily News within the first year of its operations), becomes New York City's  first tabloid newspaper, presenting its first edition on the City's kiosks and newsstands on June 26.  Modeled on a similar London tabloid and aiming at a mass audience, by 1924 the Daily News increases its circulation to some 750,000 copies daily and added a Sunday edition.  It's hallmark was sensationalism, with a focus on  local news. The original  Headquarters for the Daily News was situated at 25 City Hall Place, but after a couple years the growing tabloid moved into new headquarters at 25 Park Place.   In 1919, as well, St. Bartholomew's Church at 109 East 50th St. was built.   Stanford A White designed the church in a Byzantine style,  with the  Romanesque portal that once greeted the congregation at old St. Bartholomew's  at 24th Street and Madison Avenue.

1920 -- The New York Yankees acquire Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox on January 5th.  The "Babe," then just 24 years old, costs the Yankees  somewhat less than half a million dollars, but he smacks 54 home runs  and bats .376 in his first year.  Due to Ruth's stellar performance and the management of Miller Huggins, the Yankees (who were still playing at the Polo Grounds) become the first baseball club ever to attract more than a million fans in a single season.  They won their first American Leauge pennant the  following year; and they won their first World Series in 1923, the same year that Yankee Stadium opened.  Also noteworthy in 1920 were  events relating to Coney Island:   the Wonder Wheel, designed by James Hermann, opened on  May 30th;   Nathan's Famous on Surf and Stilwell Avenues, run  by Nathan Handwerker, a former employee of Charles Feltman, opened during the Summer with a nickle menu that included hot dogs, hamburgers and beer;  and a  subway line opened that offered a nickle ride directly from Manhattan to Coney Island.   In this year, too, the 19th amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives women the right to vote.  But the 18th amendment causes a bigger row because it makes illegal the manufacture, sale and transport of all alcoholic beverages -- incepting an era of Prohibition.  Mayor Fiorello H. Laguardia criticizes prohibition as being being discriminatory against immigrants and workers and plainly unenforceable.  New Yorkers, moreover,  shared their Mayor's antipathy for this legislation, and the City became a leading source of demand for illegal alcohol.   It has been estimated that some 32,000 speakeasies arose to satisfy the City's enormous thirst for alcohol during the Prohibition era, more than double the number of legal saloons in the prior decade.  Finally, the year 1920, was punctuated with the huge explosion of a bomb parked in a horse-driven wagon by the curbside at J.P. Morgan and Company on Broad and Wall Streets.   The bomb killed some 30 people and brought business  at J.P. Morgan and trading at the Stock Market to a grinding halt.  Presumably the incident was instigated by an anarchist, but the truth is that the crime
has never been solved.