Title Page to Views of the Public Buildings in the City of New York (with The Rotunda, City Hall Park)

A.J. Davis here depicts the Rotunda in City Hall Park. From 1818 to 1870 this stood near the corner of Chambers and Cross (now Center) Streets in New York, facing the park. The brick structure was erected to house John Vanderlyn's "Panoramic View of the Palace and Gardens of Versailles" (MMA 52.184). Modeled on the Pantheon in Rome, the building measured 56 feet in diameter, had a central skylight, and was financed by donations from John Jacob Astor and others. The city leased the site to Vanderlyn for "a peppercorn a year" from March 1817 for nine years, then extended his lease through 1829.
When the building opened in 1818, Vanderlyn's painting was unfinished, so other panoramas were shown, including a "View of the City of Paris," by [Henry Aston?] Barker (October 1818), and "The Attack of the Allied Forces on Paris" (January 1819). Vanderlyn's work debuted in May 1820 but, when ticket sales failed to cover his financial outlay, it toured intermittently. Other panoramas brought in at such times included views of Athens (July 1825), Geneva (April 1829), and Mexico (March 1828), the latter painted by William Bullock and John and Robert Burford. After Vanderlyn's departure, the city continued the pattern by showing a panorama of Lima (November 1829) and Frederick Catherwood's panorama of the Eternal City (Rome) (July 1840). In 1845 they granted the space rent free to the New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts to display their collection of paintings; built around a core assembled by Lumen Reed these went to the New York Historical Society in 1848. At other times, the Rotunda served the city as a criminal court (October 1829), a court of sessions (March-May 1830), a marine court (January 1831), a "Sessions Hall" for city government (January 1831), a naturalization office (1834), and a post office (1837). In August 1848, the interior was refitted for city offices and, in 1870, the building demolished. Today, the site is marked by a bronze plaque.