The Lost Mail and Express Building - 203 Broadway

The Mail and Express Building towered over the corner buildings.  Real Estate Record & Guide, June 25, 1898 (copyright expired)

The Real Estate Record & Guide reported on February 15, 1890 that Carrère & Hastings was designing an L-shaped, eight-story office building at 203 Broadway and 164-168 Fulton Street.  The owner was millionaire banker and attorney Elliott Fitch Shepard whose wife, Margaret Louisa Vanderbilt, was the daughter of multi-millionaire William Henry Vanderbilt.  The article noted, "The publication and business offices of the Mail and Express will be on the lower floor...The site will be cleared for the new building in May next."

The Mail and Express was founded in 1867 as the New York Evening Mail.   Owner Cyrus West Field acquired the New York Evening Express in 1879, renaming the newspaper the Mail and Express.  Elliott F. Shepard purchased it from Field in 1888 for $425,000 (equal to about $14 million in 2024).

 

For the newspaper's headquarters, Carrère & Hastings used an iron skeleton, allowing the outer walls to be only 16-inches thick.  By the time ground was broken, the height had changed to nine stories.  As the foundation was being excavated, the architectural critic of Harper's Weekly commented on the plans in the October 11, 1890 issue.  Interestingly, he noted that the Broadway facade was "planned largely in accordance with the suggestions of Colonel Shepard, and will have some features peculiar to itself."  One of the "peculiar" features was the inclusion of Shepard's monogram.

On one side of the large circular window in the second story is the legend "A.D. 1890," and on the other side the letters "E.F.S."  Across the front, on one cornice, are carved "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," and "E. Pluribus Unum," and in the cornice of the other stories are worked the coats of arms of the States of the Union.

The critic called the architecture, "of the Italian Renaissance style."  And while the Fulton Street elevation was, for the most part, Renaissance Revival, the Broadway front was what today would be termed Beaux Arts.

Unfortunately, the Broadway subway was being excavated at the same time.  On July 4, 1891, Architecture and Building wrote, "Probably but few of our citizens are not seriously incommoded by the tearing up of Broadway...Still we cannot but sympathize with Architect John M. Carrère, who has found the work on the new Mail and Express building seriously impeded from the fact that the contractors now at work on the cable railroad or other works have torn up the street and built plank bridges, which are hardly strong enough to carry any heavy traffic, so that when a truck with material drives up it is unsafe for this truck to pass over or to stand on this bridge in order to have this material delivered." 

Despite the setbacks, the building was completed in 1892.  Barr Ferree, writing in Stone magazine, said Thomas Hastings was the lead architect.  He attributed the stark difference in the appearance of the two facades to the demands of Elliot F. Shepard.  The "richness" of the Broadway elevation, he explained, "was demanded by the gentlemen for whom the building was erected, and his architects, therefore, had no other choice than to follow his directions."

The two disparate facades annoyed the critic of The Engineering Magazine.  In June 1896, he wrote that the criticism of the building "has been based on the highly-enriched and narrow Broadway front."  On the other hand, he said, "the larger front on Fulton street is conceded to be one of the most notable successes in commercial architecture."

The Beaux Arts Broadway facade was contrasted with the more sedate Fulton Street side in Harper's Weekly on October 11, 1890 (copyright expired)

The up-to-the-date building was equipped with its own "electric and steam plant" in the cellar, and was supplied with Croton water.  Of the four elevators in the building, one was dedicated to Mail and Express employees.  The hallways throughout the building were wainscoted with marble.

The newspaper would occupy the first floor "and will be elegantly fitted up," said Harper's Weekly.  Included was a "commodious waiting-room for newsboys" outfitted with a drinking fountain.  Facing Broadway on the second floor were the private offices of Elliot Shepard.  

The eighth and ninth floors held the newspaper's editorial, composing and stereotyping departments, and the individual editors' offices.  The reporters and editors worked from the eighth floor, where a dedicated room held "all the bells, speaking-tubes, telephones, and the like."  There was also a library on that floor.  The composing room took up most of the top floor, partially illuminated by vast skylights.  "On the very top of the Broadway wing, where its odors cannot interfere with any one's olfactory sensibilities, is to be a kitchen, and under it, on the ninth floor, a restaurant, especially for the employés of the paper."  Elliot Shepard's private dining room was also on that floor.

Harper's Weekly pointed out a singular detail:

One of the noteworthy features of the building is to be the photograph-room, situated alongside the kitchen, at the very top of the building.  Here distinguished visitors may be captured by the camera, and their likenesses printed in the paper while they wait.

Although the building would fill, mostly, with attorneys and brokers, one of the first was unique.  The Bureau of Subscription for the World's Columbian Exposition operated from Room 304 in 1892.  On November 26, an advertisement in The New York Times announced that New Yorkers could obtain a "World's Fair Souvenir Coin For A Dollar" here.

French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi visited New York City in 1893.  The height of the skyscraper created the perfect vantage point to view his Liberty Enlightening the World, commonly known as the Statue of Liberty.  On September 5, the New-York Tribune wrote, "M. Bartholdi took his first view of the statue yesterday from the top of 'The Mall and Express' building.  He was greatly pleased with the view of the bay and the position of honor and prominence which the Statue of Liberty occupies."

In 1894, the Ottoman Empire began a sweeping massacre of Armenians.  Regardless of age or sex, thousands of innocents were brutally butchered.  Before tapering off in 1897, an estimated 300,000 Armenians were slaughtered in what would be known as the Hamidian massacres.  New Yorkers responded and in 1895 the offices of the Armenian Relief Association opened here.  On the night of November 21, what The Sun said would be "one of the largest gatherings held in this country for protest against the Turkish atrocities" was held in Chickering Hall.  In reporting on the meeting, the newspaper said, "the names of well-known business men and clergymen who have taken up the cause of Armenia are pouring into the office of the association in the Mall and Express building."

Two months later, the association issued a bulletin "with the hope of arousing American sympathy," according to The New York Times on January 17, 1896.  It included a desperate cable from London from a missionary that said:

Armenia is at her last gasp.  The work of extermination continues.  The number of people massacred reaches 100,000, and half a million survivors have taken refuge in the forests and mountains, where they are feeding on herbs and roots.  Hunger and cold have begun to make great ravages among them.  In the name of humanity and Christianity, save us!

The Excise Board was faced with a puzzling predicament in March 1896.  Because the top floor restaurant served alcohol, it fell into the category of a saloon.  By law, no saloon could operated within 200 feet of a house of worship.  Directly across Fulton Street was St. Paul's Chapel.  On March 1, The Journal explained, "The question is raised as to how the 200-foot limit shall be measured...Shall the measurement be made as the snail crawls or as the swallow flies?"  It appears that the serving of wine with lunch was allowed to continue.

Both elevations can be seen in this 1902 photograph by Irving Underhill.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Elliot Fitch Shepard died on March 24, 1893.  The Mail and Express Building was inherited by his wife.  And so, when Susan Brady fell into the sidewalk coal hole on December 12, 1896, she sued Margaret Louisa Vanderbilt Shepard personally for $20,000 damages.  The weighty amount would translate to about $758,000 today.  It is unclear how the case was settled.

The "fireproof" quality of the building was first tested on January 23, 1901.  At 4:00 in the morning, John Hunt, a watchman, discovered fire on the ground floor.  He and the building's engineer went to the seventh floor, where the family of janitor James Draper lived.  The Evening World reported, "Mrs. Draper and her three children were seized with panic, but the janitor ordered them back to bed."

"'This is a fire-proof building,' he said, 'The fire will not burn beyond one floor.'"

As it turned out, Draper was correct.  The New-York Tribune reported, "The flames are said to have originated in the fileroom of 'The Mail and Express.'"  The burning paper created dense smoke that caused firefighters "great difficulty in getting at the fire."  

James Draper had an opinion as to the cause, telling reporters, "the building is infested with rats, which may have caused the fire by gnawing matches."  The fire was extinguished after doing only about $1,500 in damage.

The fireproof qualities would be put to the test again three years later.  On December 11, 1904, a phone call from Police Headquarters notified the New York City News Association on the second floor that the fire department was on the way.  That the building was on fire was news to the person who answered the phone.  It had broken out in the seventh-floor offices of advertising agent J. M. Pearsall.  The New York Times reported, "The firemen kept the flames right there and the big water tower out in Broadway didn't have to lend a hand."  The article added, A dozen compositors who were at work in the offices of The Evening Mall scurried out to the street when the engines arrived.  They soon went back again, however."

On February 5, 1916, the Record & Guide reported that the American Telephone & Telegraph Company had purchased the Mail and Express Building from the Shepard Estate.  The journal said acquisition was to "protect the light and air of the new twenty-eight-story" Western Union building the buyers had just completed.  The Evening Post was not so sure.  On the same day, the newspaper opined, "as the telegraph and telephone business is growing in leaps and bounds, the acquisition was doubtless made primarily to provide room for extending the recently completed skyscraper."

Indeed, the Mail and Express Building was soon razed for an seamless extension of the Western Union Building, designed by William W. Bosworth.

The corner addition on the site of the Mail and Express Building, completed in 1922, it nearly seamless.  photo by Jim Henderson