The Lost Boreel Building - 113-119 Broadway

 

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

Born in 1813, Sarah Astor was the daughter of John Jacob and Sarah Cox Todd Astor.  When she married Robert Boreel in 1842, her father transferred title to the former City Hotel (by then being used as an office building) on the western blockfront of Broadway between Thames and Cedar Streets.  

Purchased by John Jacob Astor in 1828, the City Hotel had operated since 1794.  Old New York Yesterday & Today, 1922, (copyright expired)

More than three decades later, on July 13, 1878, the Real Estate Record & Guide reported that Stephen Decatur Hatch had filed plans for a seven-story "brick and iron office building" on the site for Sarah Boreel.  Hatch projected the cost of construction at $270,000 (about $8.5 million in 2024).

An article in The American Architect and Building News on January 4, 1879 discussed the effect of elevators on Manhattan buildings, saying, "with the general use of elevators people would be just as willing to have offices in the seventh or eighth story as in the first."  As an example, it pointed to the Boreel Building "in the process of construction."  It said, "This has a high basement, high enough for handsome offices, a lofty first story suitable for a bank or insurance company, and five stories above that.  It is a large building, and will use four elevators."

Construction was completed in May 1879.  Stephen Decatur Hatch's neo-Grec structure sat on rusticated stone piers.  Its stone-framed Broadway entrance extended into the second floor.  The central bay was topped with a prominent pediment.  Faced in red brick and trimmed in stone, it was the largest office building in New York and, according to William Harrison Bayles in his 1915 Old Taverns of New York, "was considered the finest building devoted to office purposes in the city."  

The four Otis elevators rose within an open atrium lighted by a glass skylight.  On November 2, 1889, Building described, "three floors with galleries surrounding an open court, upon three sides of which offices are located, which are reached by an elevator, as well as by stairways."

Visitors peer over the railings into the atrium.  (original source unknown)

While attorneys and other professionals leased space in the Boreel Building, it quickly became known as the center of Manhattan's mining stock brokers.  Only a year after the building opened, however, things looked bad for them.  On August 2, 1880, The Sun reported,

The mining business seems to be gone, so far as New York is concerned.  The "Regulation hat" has departed from among us.  The halls of the Boreel building are as empty as those of Tara.  The cheery voice of the honest miner is no longer heard asking the elevator boy to let him out at "bed rock," as he facetiously called the ground floor.

The crisis resulted in those "honest" mining brokers in the Boreel Building being replaced by frauds.  As an example, on July 23, 1881, The Record & Guide pointed to "the most unfortunate operator that ever came to New York," George Roberts.  Having made a fortune in California, Roberts sought to enlarge it here.  "But Mr. Roberts, in coming to New York, found himself a lamb among the wolves," said the article.  It listed several transactions in which Roberts had been fleeced, adding, "And now it is understood the the same swindling scoundrels who have treated Mr. Roberts so badly with Huskill, Freeland, Chrysolite, Little Chief, Robinson, Iron Silver and the State Line Mines, are trying to get him into a Mexican mining scheme."

Illustrated New York City and Surroundings, 1889 (copyright expired)

The following year, on May 27, 1882, the Real Estate Record reported on the lawsuit of an investor named Badeau's against several Boreel Building brokers.  He claimed he had been swindled in a deal involving two mines, the Washington and the Bradshaw.  The Real Estate Record agreed, saying, "The $600,000 extracted from mining people by that deal was as clear a steal as any pickpocketing operation ever performed."  The article declared, "They are held responsible, and very justly, and if the $600,000 can be recovered, it will do much to help depopulating the Boreel building of the mining swindlers who are now, it is said, making it their headquarters."

And, indeed, before long most of the mining brokers were gone, replaced by insurance and real estate offices.  The 1887 How to Know New York City advised that the Boreel Building was "filled with offices, largely of famous and powerful insurance companies."

In 1885, rentable, fireproof vaults were installed in the basement of the building.  On October 10, the Record & Guide explained they could be rented for from $15 to $75 per year.  "The smallest of these are 5x6 and 8 feet high, and are especially suitable for family silver, gold plate, books, papers and articles of a bulky nature...The burglar alarm system is used whereby no door can be opened without immediate detection."

By 1888, New Yorkers' confidence in elevators was well established.  Emphasizing elevator safety, on June 20, The Evening World commented, "Patrick Phillips, Eddie Clarkson, John Trainor and Eddie Kasteen take hundreds of lawyers and railroad men up and down in the Boreel Building elevators every day, and have never had an accident."

Sarah Boreel died in 1895 and six years later her estate sold the Boreel Building to the Central Realty Bond and Trust Co. "for a price said to be not far from $2,225,000," as reported by the Real Estate Record & Guide on February 23, 1901.  (That figure would translate to about $82.3 million today.)  In a separate article, the journal predicted, "No doubt some time within the next few years the Boreel Building, itself only a little over twenty years ago one of the best of its kind, will be superseded by a building over twenty stories high."

Indeed, the following year, on May 3, 1902, the Record & Guide reported that the George A. Fuller Construction Co. had purchased the property.  The firm "will improve the site with a 25-story office building, which it is estimated will cost $2,500,000," said the article.  The secretary of the Fuller firm told the Record & Guide, "that operation is two years off."

At the time of the sale, the Boreel Building (right) was separated from the Trinity Building by narrow Thames Street.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

In the meantime, a month after that article, the Record & Guide noted that well-known architect Henry Ives Cobb had moved his practice from Washington D. C. and "has leased a large suite of offices on the top of the Boreel Building."

But the inevitable came to pass in 1905.  On March 25 the Record & Guide reported, "The old Boreel Building...has begun to yield to the wreckers' axes, and though partly occupied and not apparent from Broadway, still in the rear it may be seen that the partitions and inside walls are being torn out."

Nine months later, the publication headlined an article, "Farewell to the Boreel Building" and said, "in a few days the last of the debris will have been carted away."  The journalist recalled, 

The Boreel was one of the first of the type of really large fireproof office buildings in the city, and one of the first of those whose construction was influenced by the perfecting of passenger elevators.

The Boreel Building was replaced by the 1907 United States Realty Building, designed by Francis H. Kimball.

from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

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