The Lost Central Trust Company Building - 54 Wall Street

 

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

On January 28, 1886, the Prime, Ward, Sands & King Company building, erected in 1845, was purchased at auction by the Central Trust Company.  The building sat on the site of Nathaniel and Cornelia Prime's residence, built in 1798.  On February 6, 1886, the Record & Guide predicted, "It is probable that the present structure will be pulled down to make way for a building with hydraulic elevators, steam heaters and electric lights."

A reporter from the Record & Guide visited Central Trust on February 12.  While an officer told him, "We have not yet definitely decided what we shall do with the building," he admitted, "Indeed, the probability is that we shall tear down the present structure on the site and erect in its place a new and handsome office building, to cost several hundred thousand dollars."

The firm's indecision was short-lived.  On May 8, 1886, the journal reported that construction of the Central Trust Company's new nine-story building "of stone, brick, terra cotta and iron," was under way.  The $200,000 structure (equal to about $6.68 million in 2025) was designed by Charles W. Clinton.

Construction was completed the following summer.  The Record & Guide's critic was not impressed, saying, "The new building of the Central Trust Company, in Wall street, below William, is no great things architecturally, being merely a decorous and well-behaved piece of Renaissance."  Clinton banded the piers of the two-story base and the third floor with undressed granite.  The double-height, arched entrance was flanked by pilasters, the upper two-thirds of which were fluted.  They were echoed in the four-story pilasters at the fourth through seventh floors.

The squat piers that flanked the paired openings of the eighth floor were carved with medallions.  Here, the critic found something to praise--albeit tepidly.  "The detail is very well judged in scale, and though none of it is either original or exquisite, it emphasizes the character of the building as business."  The deeply-overhanging cornice above the eight floor made all but the tops of the arcaded windows of the ninth floor invisible from street level.

The Central Trust Company occupied the lower two floors and rented office space above.  The law offices of Wallace, Butler & Brown and Joline, Larkin & Rathbone were here in the early years of the 20th century.  

Irving Underhill photographed the building in 1896.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

Wallace, Butler & Brown's offices were the scene of drama on May 24, 1908.  The Greek steamer Cyclades was shipwrecked off the Bahamas on May 13 and sank the following day.  All 21 crew members and four passengers (two men and two women) escaped in lifeboats and rowed to Nassau.  They all arrived in New York City on the Vigilancia on May 24.  Members of Wallace, Butler & Brown, who represented the Marine Underwriters (the insurance company for the steamer's owner), and a throng of policemen and guards were waiting at the pier.  Journalists and the curious were kept back, and all of those who had been aboard the Cyclades were detained.

The New York Times reported, "A shipwrecked skipper and his crew and passengers were rounded up by detectives on their arrival yesterday and taken from a Brooklyn pier to the office of a law firm, in Wall Street, where an inquiry was begun to confirm or set at rest a suspicion that their craft had been deliberately scuttled."  Although it was a Sunday afternoon, the questioning started immediately.  A guard was posted at the street entrance.  The Times said, "The whole afternoon was taken up in examining the two women.  One of the detectives said it was possible that some arrests might be made."

John Berry was an office boy with Joline, Larkin & Rathbone until being fired early in 1910.  On the night of April 8 that year, he and another teen, Lawrence Bonnie, "neither of them vicious in appearance," according to The New York Times, broke into the building and stole $332 from a safe in the seventh-floor offices of Joline, Larkin & Rathbone.  Lieutenant Joseph Brown later said the boys "managed the robbery with the skill of veteran cracksmen."

At 8:30, a night guard, Frank Carmand, entered Mr. Joline's office during his rounds.  He later said, "I thought I heard breathing, and turned on the lights, but there was nobody in sight."  In searching the office, he opened a coat closet and struck a match.  He pulled out a boy.

"What are you doing in here?" he demanded.

"I am the new office boy and I was locked in."

Then Carmand saw a second boy in the closet and pulled him out.  He recognized him as John Berry.  "What are you doing here?  You've no right here.  Mr. Joline discharged you weeks ago."  As he started to the door with his captives, Bonnie pulled out a blackjack and struck Carmand over the head.  Before he lost consciousness, Carmand shouted for the other guard, Sidney Jones.

Jones told policemen he found Carmand "covered with blood" and saw two figures running up the stairway to the roof.  They beat him to the roof by a few minutes.  The teens attempted to get to the roof of an adjoining building more than three floors below.  Bonnie started down a drain pipe, but lost his grip,  "landing on his head and crushing in his skull," said The New York Times.  

Berry was more fortunate, successfully sliding down the drain pipe.  He paused to take the roll of bills they had stolen from his dying comrade's pocket, then entered the building through a skylight and hid in a janitor's closet.  Police found him sometime later.

E. Francis Hyde was an officer of the Central Trust Company in 1917 when he came to the defense of Edwin Craigg, a Pullman porter.  On March 11, Sophie d'Amour, a dressmaker, left a handbag on the train to Boston containing $5,320 (a significant $126,000 today).  Craigg, who lived on West 147th Street, his wife, and their boarder, Mary Forman, were arrested for "unlawfully retaining" the cash.

On March 27, 1917, The Evening World reported that Policeman Barry was the beat officer in their neighborhood.  The article said, "his curiosity was aroused by their lavish entertainment of the neighbors and the gay raiment in which they blossomed forth."  At their arraignment on March 26, E. Francis Hyde attempted to get Craigg's $5,000 bail reduced.  He told the magistrate that, "Craigg had been a porter on his private car on a trip of 17,000 miles throughout the United States and had not been dishonest to the extent of a penny though he had countless temptations."  His attempts were fruitless.

The following year, the Central Trust Company merged with the Union Trust Company.  In April 1918, the combined firms purchased 23-25 Beaver Street, described by the Record & Guide as "a modern, twelve-story office building."  No. 54 Wall Street was purchased by J. & W. Seligman, which moved into the building on May 1.

An interesting tenant in 1922 was attorney Clara M. Salem who, reported the New-York Tribune on September 25, "is really the founder of the Lonesome Club."  What can be seen as a 1920s precursor of Tinder, Salem explained, "One of the ideals of the club is to bring both sexes together.  Our object is not necessarily matrimony.  The club is for social purposes now.  Of course, if a romance should develop, it will be all right."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

As skyscrapers rose throughout the district, the Central Trust Company building managed to survive until a demolition permit was issued in 1974.