Footloose: A Virtual Walk Through the 1980s Upper East Side

In the ‘80s, 25 East 61st St. was home to B. Harris & Sons, jeweler to the stars!
25 East 61st street is the rear extension of 673 Madison Avenue, an Italianate brownstone built in 1871 by architect John G. Prague as part of a project for the developer John McCool which included a row of 5 brownstones on Madison Avenue, and 17 houses on 61st street.
B. Harris & Sons was a family-owned, fine-jewelry business established in New York City in 1898 by B. Harris, a Russian immigrant who had been an artisan to Czar Alexander III.
Having pilfered a precious stone from the royal workbench to pay for passage out of Russia, Harris and his wife fled the empire, walking across an ice bridge to Finland. The Harrises arrived in New York via London, and by 1926, B. Harris & Sons became the first retail jewelry store on West 47th Street.
Harris’s sons Charles and Nathan shepherd the store to East 61st st., where it became one of the city’s leading jewelers (The July 12, 1976 issue of New York Magazine lists clients including Gloria Steinem, Helen Hays, Richard Rodgers and Marion Javits.)
B. Harris and sons closed in 1991, when Nathan Harris retired.
Interestingly, 25 East 61st Street is currently home to the estate jewelers Stephen P. Kahan & Son.

FRIENDS of the Upper East Side Historic Districts was founded in 1982 to preserve and celebrate the architectural legacy, livability, and sense of place of the Upper East Side. But what did the Upper East Side look like in the 1980s, when FRIENDS appeared on the scene? In honor of Jane’s Walk 2021, we are thrilled to debut our collection of local architectural photography from that decade and share highlights from our 80s archive, documenting the buildings and streetscapes of the Upper East Side. Through the work of dedicated organizations like FRIENDS, much of the Upper East Side is protected within historic districts, or as individual landmarks. But, landmark designation does not create stasis in our communities, nor would we want it to. Scroll through the following 10-stop tour to see how much our landmarked neighborhoods have changed since the 1980s!