7. Sixty-Ninth Regiment Armory

The 69th Regiment Armory is still used today for military functions

Completed in 1906, the landmark Beaux Arts style armory stands at 68 Lexington Avenue between East Twenty-Fifth and Twenty-Sixth streets. This is the home of the fabled “Fighting Sixty-Ninth” that earned glory in the Civil War as an Irish-American unit. In World War I, the Army converted the National Guard soldiers into the 165th Infantry Regiment. Its two most famous members were Father Francis Duffy, their chaplain, and Sergeant Joyce Kilmer, the poet.

The 165th were members of the Forty-Second Division, the Rainbows, which lost almost three thousand men, killed in action or dead from wounds. Almost twelve thousand more came home wounded. Today the armory is not a museum; it still serves a military function and has a members only hidden bar. Members have deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq from here.