West:
115 (block): The
U.S. Realty Building,
like the Trinity Building across Thames Street,
is a widely admired 1906 Gothic design by Francis H. Kimball; a
catwalk connects the two.
This was earlier the site of the City
Hotel, an early example of the modern
hotel, built 1794. The most fashionable hotel of its day,
a ball was held there on
February 22, 1819, honoring Gen. Andrew Jackson.
John Lansing Jr., a retired New York Supreme Court
chief justice who represented the state at the
Constitutional Convention, left the hotel on
December 12, 1829 and was never seen again.
In 1835, the hotel displayed "a grand moving
panorama of the Moon," depicting lunar life as
described in the New York Sun's Moon hoax.
A dinner was held here for Charles Dickens on
February 18, 1842, with Washington Irving as
toastmaster. The hotel was torn down in 1850.
Before the hotel, the mansion of Etienne
De Lancey stood here, built c. 1700, home to
perhaps the richest family in colonial New York. It became
the Province Arms Tavern (later known as the
City Arms, Burns' Coffee House and the State Arms), where on October
31, 1765, the Sons of Liberty met to plan
resistance to the Stamp Act. On May 5, 1789,
George Washington's inaugural ball was held here,
with John Adams, James Madison, Alexander
Hamilton and John Hancock in attendance. Thomas Jefferson lived here
in 1790 when he moved to New York as the first U.S. secretary of state.
|
111 (corner): Before the present
Trinity Building was built in 1906,
an 1852 building of the same name stood on the
site. The five-story structure was an early
prototype of the office building, and was designed by
Trinity architect Richard Upjohn, who had his offices in it.
This was earlier the address of Elam Bliss'
bookstore, which in 1831 published Edgar Allan
Poe's third volume of poetry—prompting Poe's
first visit to the city.
The current building is home to WOR Radio,
as well as the offices of
Rabinowitz, Boudin et al,
a law firm that has defended Alger Hiss, Paul Robeson,
Benjamin Spock, Daniel Ellsberg, Jimmy Hoffa, Castro,
Khomeini, Khadafy, Noriega, the Church of Scientology,
Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Norman Mailer and Isaac Asimov.
A burial ground dating back to 1681, before Trinity was
built, this cemetery was decreed off limits
to blacks when the church took it over, resulting
in the creation of the African Burial Ground. Among
the most noted residents on the north side of the church are
Declaration of Independence signer
Francis Lewis,
Treasury Secretary and NYU founder
Albert Gallatin,
steamboat pioneer Robert Fulton,
William Bradford, publisher of New York's
first newspaper (whose headstone
has a typo), and
seduction victim
Charlotte Stanley, who inspired a wildly popular novel. (Her grave bears the name of
her fictional counterpart, Charlotte Temple.)
Here also is the Martyr's Monument,
dedicated to the patriots
who died in British prisons during the
Revolution. ''It is stated that this was erected
by Trinity Corporation to prevent
the city from cutting Pine Street through the
graveyard, there being some law on the
State's statute books to prevent the removal
or injury of any public monument for
purposes of highway improvement.'' — A Historical Tour of...Broadway
There is a prominent statue here of John Watts,
a relatively obscure politician—he was speaker of
the New York State Assembly from 1791-93, and
was later a U.S. congressmember and a Westchester
County judge.
Established by a grant from England's King William III
in 1697, after the Anglican church became the
official church of New York, the church's first building lasted from 1698
until it burned down in 1776. It was replaced by
1790, but the new structure was unsound and had to
be demolished in 1839. The
current edifice was
completed in 1846, an early Gothic revival building
designed by
Richard Upjohn.
The bronze doors are a 1890s memorial
to John Jacob Astor III and were designed by
Richard Morris Hunt, with sculptural work on
the central doors by Karl Bitter. The All
Saints Chapel was added by 1913.
A 1705 grant from Queen Anne gave Trinity
all the land west of Broadway from Fulton
to what is now Christopher Street; the church
continues to be a major Manhattan landowner.
It also was given the right to all shipwrecks
and beached whales.
Trinity Churchyard
Buried on the south side of the church are
Constitution framer
Alexander Hamilton,
diarist
George Templeton Strong and
War of 1812 hero
Capt. James Lawrence
(''Don't give up the ship!''), et al.
|
W <===
RECTOR ST
Starting on July 10, 1924, Broadway had the world's
first synchronized traffic signals, with operators in towers
coordinating light changes from this intersection to 85th Street.
|
71 (corner): Empire Apartments were the
Empire Building, built in 1895 by Francis Kimball
and serving as the headquarters of U.S. Steel
from 1901-76. An earlier building of the same name
housed the office of financier
Russell Sage,
who was almost killed by a suicide bomber on
December 4, 1891; Sage threw his secretary at the
dynamite-wielding assailant to protect himself.
From 1809-46 this was the site of Grace Church,
opened after a split in the Trinity congregation.
In 1710 a Lutheran church was built here by German
exiles from the Palatinate; it burned down in the fire of
1776.
65: This
Beaux-Arts structure by Renwick Aspinwall and Tucker
was the American Express Company Building,
that company's headquarters from 1917 until 1975. Now the
Standard & Poors Building.
61 (corner): The Adams Building,
built in 1914, is featured in Berenice Abbott's
photo Canyon. The most
prominent boardinghouse of the 1830s, that of
''Aunt'' Margaret Mann, was at this address.
|
|
|
East:
Corner: This was
the site of the National Hotel, where in 1826
a chess-playing automaton known as The Turk
made its American debut. It turned out to have
a dwarf hidden inside.
120 (block): The
Equitable Building,
built in 1915 to replace an earlier Equitable
Life headquarters that had burned down, managed
to fit 1,200,000 feet
of floor space on a one-acre
lot—a density so great that zoning laws were
changed in 1916 to require setbacks. During World War I,
master spy Sidney Reilly—an inspiration for James Bond—had an office here, from which he sold arms to both Germany and Czarist Russia.
The
old Equitable Building, erected in 1870, had
the U.S. Weather Bureau's station on its roof.
110: At this defunct address was the
Tremont Temperance House, a hotel.
|
|
108: The Manhattan Life Insurance Co.
was founded at this address in 1850.
104: The Chase National Bank was founded
here in 1863 by 75-year-old banker and journalist
John Thompson.
Thompson named the bank in honor of the late
Salmon P. Chase, who in addition to being Supreme Court chief
justice was responsible for reorganizing the national banking system
as Lincoln's treasury secretary (earning him a place
on the $10,000 bill).
100 (corner): The 1895
American Surety
Building was designed by Bruce Price, a 21-story
neo-classical structure that was greatly influential on early skyscraper
design. (It led the trend of trying to make skyscrapers
resemble classical columns.)
This was the first New York City
building with ''a complete steel frame supporting
both the interior and the exterior masonry,'' and one of
the first large buildings to be supported by cassions.
It features classical sculptures by John Massey Rhind
at the third story.
The building was expanded in 1920-22, and renovated
in 1973-76 to serve as the Bank of Tokyo's U.S.
headquarters.
Dean and Deluca has a cafe here,
and there's a Borders bookstore.
Corner (2 Wall): Banco Portugues do Atlantico
|
Block (1 Wall St):
This landmark was put up in 1929-32 for
the Irving Trust Co., a company formed in
1851 and named for author Washington Irving
simply because his was a prestigious name
at the time. (Coincidentally, the building
occupies the lot where Irving had his law
office at 3 Wall Street.) Ralph Walker's blueprint is
considered a masterpiece of Art Deco skyscraper
design; the lobby in particular is praised.
The
Bank of New York acquired Irving Trust
in 1988, and moved its headquarters here by 1998.
BONY, New York's oldest bank, was founded in 1784
under the guidance of Alexander Hamilton, who
was soon arranging loans from the bank to the
new U.S. government as Washington's treasury
secretary. The Bank's was the first corporate stock
to be traded on the New York Stock Exchange in 1792.
It helped finance the Erie Canal and the New York
subway system. It merged with New York Life in 1922.
This building served as the Manhattan City Bank
in Ghostbusters, which gave the heroes a loan
to set up their paranormal small business.
64-68: This was the address of
the Manhattan Life Building, the world's tallest
building (at 348 feet) from 1894 until 1899, when
it was surpassed by the Park Row Building.
Demolished 1930.
At the southern end of this block
was the North American Building (1907).
|
|
