The Lost United States Trust Building - 45 Wall Street

 

Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide, June 25, 1898 (copyright expired)

On January 21, 1888, the Record & Guide reported that the United States Trust Co. had purchased the Phoenix Bank building at 45 Wall Street and paid an extra $100,000 "to get immediate possession."  The institution had acquired the adjoining building at 47 Wall Street a year earlier.  The amount paid for the two properties, plus the extra $100,000, would equal $27.3 million in 2024.  The article said, "They will erect a new office building in the spring."

A week later the journal reported, "It is rumored that Architect Gibson, of Albany, will be the architect for the United States Trust Co.'s building on Wall street."  Born in England, the 34-year-old Robert W. Gibson had become a U.S. citizen the previous year.  He had recently designed the Episcopal Cathedral of All Saints in Albany, the first portion of which was just being completed.  Erastus Corning, one of the United States Trust Co.'s founders, had provided the land for the cathedral, and it was possibly he who recommended Gibson for the United States Trust Co. building.

The United States Trust Co. was incorporated in 1853.  The country's first trust company, it was founded by some of America's wealthiest men, including (in addition to Erastus Corning), Marshall Field and Peter Cooper.  Its first president was Joseph Lawrence and its vice-president was John Aikman Stewart.

The commission was apparently sufficient to prompt Robert Wilson Gibson to relocate.  The Record & Guide reported on March 10, 1888, "Architect R. W. Gibson of Albany, has opened offices in the Potter building.  It will be remembered that Mr. Gibson received the commission for the new building on Wall street for the United States Trust Company."

  

Gibs0n turned from the cathedral's Gothic Revival style to Romanesque Revival for the U.S. Trust Co. headquarters.  The nine stories of granite and brownstone recalled Medieval architecture in its numerous arcades, clustered columns and intricate carvings.  

On December 22, 1888, as construction neared completion, the Record & Guide said, "The building now erecting in Wall street for the use of this corporation is at least impossible to ignore."  The critic was displeased that Gibson, and indeed the architects of all Wall Street structures, were not attempting to harmonize, but were competing for attention.  "There was been money enough spent in the structures erected along that thoroughfare within the past ten years to make it one of the finest streets in the world.  That object has not been obtained."

The journal accused Gibson of not merely following the Romanesque styling of Henry Hobson Richardson, but of stealing particular design details.  "As we shall see," said the article, "the present building is indebted to him [i.e., Richardson] for its features and for most of its detail, as well as for the choice of materials."  The Guide said the arched main entrance, "is reproduced from the entrance arches of Mr. Richardson's Harvard Law School," adding, "The intermediate and terminal piers that bound the other two bays reproduce another of Mr. Richardson's mistakes of design, however, he never committed [it] on so large a scale or so persistently as it is here repeated."

Saying that the treatment of the upper floors were borrowed from Richardson's City Hall in Albany, the journal continued in its brutal review.  "The attempted vigor of the treatment here becomes rudeness, and in the rough brown stone panels that divide the included stories, framed in moulded granite, degenerates into slovenliness."  In short, the critic concluded, "the front is a compilation from the works of Mr. Richardson," and said, "it has no character, unless obstreperousness may be so considered."

(Despite the savage review, Robert W. Gibson went on to a successful career, designing churches and residences, including the sublime Morton Plant mansion on Fifth Avenue.)

The tenants of the U.S. Trust Co. building were, mostly, attorneys, brokers, and real estate firms.  Among the earliest were Dix & Phyfe, bankers and brokers; and Naylor & Co., iron and steel brokers.

Dix & Phyfe was formed in 1866 by John J. Phyfe and Alfred P. Dix.  John P. Hollingshead had been the firm's confidential clerk and bookkeeper for years when the firm moved in.  In 1891, he traveled to California "for his health," according to The New York Times, leaving his assistant, Oscar Creamer, in charge.  The Evening Post described Creamer as, "only nineteen years old," and The New York Times said he "came to them as an office boy in knickers."  The teen, hired in 1886, had proved himself to be trustworthy.

About a year after Hollingshead had gone West, Creamer disappeared.  On March 28, 1892, John J. Phyfe asked for the ledger and cash book.  The Evening Post reported that he, "discovered that the books were in confusion.  Erasures had been made and pages cut out, and, while it was apparent that the firm had been robbed in was difficult to say how much money had been taken."

Creamer had "two confederates" in the crime, William E. Carpenter and Oscar Bjorkman, alias James L. White.  Carpenter was quickly arrested and confessed.  He was charged with stealing $52,100 (about $1.8 million today).  On April 7, The Evening World reported, "Creamer and White are believed to have sailed on the tramp steamer Oakdale on Saturday for Copenhagen."

Happily for Dix & Phyfe, Creamer and White had taken only about $5,000 of the massive defalcation.  Of the rest, all but about $1,000 was discovered in the cellar of the Brooklyn house of a friend of Carpenter.  Creamer and White did not get far.  On June 29, 1892, The Evening Post reported that they had been arrested a week earlier and were awaiting trial.

Naylor & Co. were victims of a nearly identical crime two years later.  On September 26, 1894, The Evening World reported that Charles H. Voges, a cashier, had pleaded guilty to embezzling $20,000 from the firm.  The amount would equal about $731,000 today.

A tenant not involved in law or finance was the Worcester Cycle Mfg. Co., whose offices were here in 1896.  The firm manufactured the Boy and Birdie Special bicycles, described in an advertisement as "mechanical wonders of the World."

In 1897, the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell was here.  The partners handled highly visible cases, like the suit of Josie MacDonald that year against Dr. Nelson T. Shields.  She sought damages for permanent disfigurement due to overexposure to x-rays.  The New York Journal and Advertiser reported on August 8, "Five weeks ago Miss MacDonald was a woman of striking beauty.  She had a wealth of black, wavy hair, a beautiful fresh complexion and merry, snapping dark eyes.  Now she is a disfigured, suffering woman.  For five long weeks she has been in torture."

Dix & Phyfe still occupied its offices here when John J. Phyfe died of Bright's Disease in Palm Beach, Florida in March 1901.  Another of the original tenants, Naylor & Co., was also in the building and would remain at least through 1913.

American Architect & Building News, April 19, 1890 (copyright expired)

The banking firm of Rhoades & Co. was here at the time.  Among its employees was George W. Jameson.  The unmarried man, who lived with his sickly mother on West End Avenue, was apparently deeply troubled.  On the morning of February 16, 1914, he was seen far uptown on the express platform of the 181st Street station.  The Sun remarked, "No one seems to know just what he was doing in the station at 181st Street."  Witnesses said that he was seen "pacing up and down at the north end of the station."  As the train pulled in, he jumped to the tracks.  "Four cars passed over his body," said the article.

Astoundingly, John Aikman Stewart, one of the United States Trust Company's founders in 1853, was still coming into the office three days a week in 1921.  Called by The Evening World, "the patriarch of American bankers," the newspaper said on July 12, "At 10:35 sharp, Mr. Stewart's limousine rolled up to the curb in front of the trust company's office and Mr. Stewart, without assistance, alighted and entered the banking office, where Vice President Kingsley immediately presented him with the mail and accumulated memoranda awaiting his attention."  When the reporter approached him with questions about his upcoming 99th birthday, Stewart snapped, "Too busy to talk for publication."

The following year, on September 2, 1922, The Evening Post published a photo of Stewart at his desk here, noting he "was one hundred years old last Saturday."  Four years later, on December 17, 1926, The Washington D.C. Evening Star reported, "John Aikman Stewart, 104 years old, Wall Street financier and once Assistant Secretary of the United States Treasury died at his home today of pneumonia."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

At the time of Stewart's death, the United States Trust Company's assets were more than $1 billion, more than any other trust institution in the country.  Its sturdy, stone headquarters, once brutally panned by one architectural critic, survived until 1959, to be replaced by a 21-story building.