The 1886 Potter Building -- Park Row and Beekman Street

photo by paperboy1005--notfortourists.com

At around 10:00 on the night of January 31, 1882, the editor of the New York Observer, Samuel Irenaeus Prime, and his son Wendell, the associate-editor, were at work in the Potter Building (also known as the World Building) at 37 Park Row.  Somewhere in the building that was mainly occupied by printing firms and newspaper companies, a fire broke out.  Fueled by flammable liquids like ink and printing press grease, the conflagration quickly spread.  Prime and his son escaped down the stairs while Presbyterian minister Charles Augustus Stoddard, who also worked at the newspaper, rushed to secure records and close the safe.

Trapped, Stoddard inched his way along the Observer sign on the outside wall to an adjoining building.  Two other men dropped from a signboard at the fourth story and were caught by firefighters.  But before the fire was extinguished, twelve people were dead and the building gutted at a cost of $400,000.

The flames had engulfed the structure so quickly that the Fireman’s Herald wrote that it, “made itself notorious the country over for burning up in the shortest time on record.”  Its wealthy owner, Orlando Bronson Potter, was called before a grand jury.

Potter immediately set out to rebuild.  He commissioned architect Norris Garshom Starkweather (whose offices had been in the burnt-out building) to design its replacement.  Within two weeks of the fire, Potter announced he would build the largest office building in New York and that it would be “absolutely fireproof inside as well as outside.”

Estimated to cost $700,000, it would be constructed of “the best bricks, pressed bricks, terra cotta, and iron,” according to The New York Times.  “The roof and floor beams will be of rolled iron, and all floors, except the basement, will be laid on iron girders.”

Ground was broken in April 1883 for the eleven-story building.  For the first time in New York, the hidden structural steel was fireproofed by ornate terra cotta.  The Fireman’s Herald praised the effort, saying, “the new structure will be famous as the result of much thought and many experiments in order to put up an ideal fireproof building, and it will endure for ages.”

Construction was not without its problems, however.

In 1884, with construction well underway, the provider of the pig iron, Hugh W. Adams & Co., went bankrupt.  “The failure is the result of the individual embarrassment of Mr. Adams in undertaking to carry out the iron work for the new potter Building,” reported The New York Times.  That same year, the bricklayers’ union struck, and a year later the painters and carpenters working on the building went on strike, further slowing progress.

By the middle of 1885, the cost of construction had risen to $1.2 million–an astronomical amount at the time.  Finally, in June 1886, the building was complete.

Street car tracks run down the middle of the streets and horse-drawn drays line Park Row near the newly-completed Potter Building -- photo NYPL Collection

Starkweather had stressed the verticality of his design, resulting in a structure that soars skyward.  He married Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, Renaissance Revival and Greek Revival styles, resulting in what the AIA Guide to New York City would a century later dub an “elaborately ornate confection in cast and pressed terra cotta.”

The Potter Building in 1895 - King's Photographic Views of New York

In 1899, the History of Architecture and the Building Trades of Greater New York disagreed somewhat, saying that “as a design [it] is unusual and perhaps excessive in detail, but has great interest in the disposition of its masses.”

The Press occupied the first floor in 1895 -- King's Photographic Views of New Yor

Sitting at the corner of Park Row and Beekman Street, the Potter Building anchored Newspaper Row.  Its location, convenient to City Hall, made it a favorite site for the offices of the city newspapers.  The New York Observer immediately moved back in, along with other newspapers including the Republican Party’s favorite The Press.  There were 200 offices in the building.  Tenants not associated with journalism included the Otis Elevator headquarters, the printing paper manufacturer Adams & Bishop Co., The American Art Papers, and the New York Architectural Terra Cotta Company.

"Newspaper Row" in 1936 with the Potter Building at far right -- photo NYPL Collection

Orlando Potter, who was not only active in real estate but a well-known politician, occupied offices in the new building until his sudden death in 1894.  Potter’s real estate holdings alone were estimated at about $6 million, yet he left no will nor instructions on how to distribute his wealth.

In April of 1929, A. M. Bing & Co. purchased the building.  It was taken over in foreclosure by the Seamen’s Bank for Savings in 1941 for $500,000.  A year after the Federal Public Housing Authority leased one-and-a-half floors in 1944, a syndicate headed by Borrok, Steingart Borrok bought the building for $775,000.

In the socially-turbulent 1960s, the Potter Building was home to the Congress of Racial Equality.

A century after the Potter Building became a major part of Newspaper Row, a two-year conversion to residential use was begun in 1979.

photo streeteasy.com

Today Orlando Potter’s ground-breaking fireproof structure is a striking fixture in the City Hall neighborhood.  Born of a disastrous conflagration that resulted in the rewriting of fire laws for new construction, it is the first product of those regulations.

In designating it a landmark, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission praised “some of the handsomest brickwork in New York City” and gratefully noted, “its original design is nearly intact.”