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.  

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 it 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.

The Lost Seamen's Bank for Savings - 74 Wall Street

 

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

In 1850, architect and engineer Robert G. Hatfield was commissioned to design the Sun Building in Baltimore.  To cast its iron facade, he turned to New York City inventor and architect James Bogardus, who patented his process that same year.  

Hatfield's engineering expertise would be seen in his structural design of the Grand Central Depot trail shed.  While he was working on that project, Robert Hatfield was hired to design a headquarters for the Seamen's Bank for Savings at 74 and 76 Wall Street.  On June 24, 1870 he filed plans for a "five-story and basement cast-iron front bank building."

The next day, The New York Times reported, "The structure will be of brick with iron fronts...The main, or banking-room, will be 58 feet by 40, and 30 feet in height."  The article explained that the upper floors would be leased as offices.

The Seamen's Bank for Savings was completed in December 1871 at a cost of $350,000 (about $9 million in 2024), according to the Record & Guide.  Hatfield's Second Empire design included squat, free-standing Corinthian columns at the basement (or street) level.  Steps led to the main entrance within a Corinthian portico on top of which were sculptured figures of a Native American and a sailor holding a shield with the bank's logo.  The fifth floor took the form of a steep mansard pierced by elaborate dormers.

The Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide called it, "the most striking and imposing object in that immediate neighborhood."  Inside, the double-height banking room had a "wide gallery running round the upper part," according to the Guide, under a vast glass dome.  The critic said the "solidity of construction" was to be expected of Hatfield, who was "universally recognized as among the foremost of our scientific and constructive architects."

"We wish we could speak as favorably of the exterior," said the article.  Hatfield's cast iron facade closely mimicked granite--too closely in the Record & Guide's opinion.

Indeed, so far in this case has the effort to imitate stone been carried, that in the seemingly large blocks of granite in the basement piers...they have actually imitated in iron the rusticated chisel-marks that are to be found on granite blocks!  This looks to us very much like caricaturing art.

The critic said the building's main fault was "of not boldly erecting an iron building as iron."

Seamen's Bank for Savings was founded on May 11, 1829 by a group of philanthropic New Yorkers with the purpose "to encourage thrift among sailors, stevedores, naval officers and officers of merchant ships," according to The New York Times.  Now, nearly half a century later, the superstitions of the seafaring depositors affected the building's address.  The New York Times explained decades later, on May 12, 1929:

When the present building was completed, the officers selected 76 Wall Street as the address of the new home for the bank.  Upon receipt of a letter from an "old salt" that 7 and 6 made 13, the officers changed the proposed address to 74 Wall Street.

Among the bank's long-term tenants were the offices of the American Seamen's Friend Society, which would remain for decades.  Other offices were leased mostly by attorneys and brokerage firms.

Broker Edward F. Hall's office was here in the summer of 1886 when he traveled to West Point to visit his nephew at the Military Academy.  Accompanying him was a friend, Mrs. Skerritt, and they took rooms at Craney's West Point Hotel.  On the night of July 13, 1886, Hall told Mrs. Skeritt that he would go swimming early in the morning and would meet her on the hotel piazza at 8:00 for breakfast.

When he did not show up, Mrs. Skeritt began asking around.  The head waiter remembered seeing him at around 6:30 that morning "as though going to the cadet bathing house," as reported by The Sun.  A search was made, but no trace of Hall could be found.  The quartermaster was notified and cadets and enlisted men were sent along the entire shore.  In the meantime, Hall's room was searched.  His valuables--wallet, watch and chain, and diamond pin--were there.  His clothes for the day were laid out on the bed.

Eventually, it was concluded that Hall had drowned, or "climbed up the mountain side to explore Crows' Nest or Storm King, and, meeting with a fall, had been so disabled as to be unable to move or shout for assistance."  As hope faded and a more intense search was being organized, Hall "made his appearance, walking southward, with a bath towel in his hand," oblivious to the turmoil he had caused.

The offices of W. Ropes & Co., commercial merchants, were here by 1889.  William Hall Ropes had been United States Consul at St. Petersburg, Russia, from 1850 to 1854.  Now W. Ropes & Co. was a major importer and exporter between the United States and Russia, as well as England.  Its St. Petersburg branch was "extensively engaged in the manufacture of products of Russian petroleum and also in the exportation of Russia Crash," according to New York 1894: Illustrated.    (Russia Crash was a handmade textile "made by peasants, in their homes.")

Mahlon B. Smith was a clerk with Seamen's Bank for Savings.  He was described by The Sun as "a highly respected citizen of Hackensack" and "an elderly man with a short cropped gray beard."  His daughter, Aimee, was the organist and Sunday school teacher at the Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church there.

On the morning of March 8, 1897, Aimee Smith took the ferry to New York City with the wife of the church's pastor.  They parted ways in the city, with Aimee intending to take a train to Morristown for a week.  She was to open a millinery store there with a Miss McVey.  It was the last anyone saw of Aimee Smith.

Later that morning, a Mr. and Mrs. Everett checked into the Hotel Victor on Third Avenue near 24th Street.  Shortly afterward, Everett went to the office of Dr. N. H. Lewis on West 23rd Street, imploring him to see his sick wife.  The Sun reported, "He learned that the young woman was not 'Everett's' wife and said he did not care to attend such a case."  Everett, however, "pleaded with him so hard" that the doctor relented.  He found the woman "in a very weak state," said her trouble was "due to excitement and worry," and told the proprietor to call an ambulance.  "Then it was that 'Everett' disappeared," reported The Sun.  The young woman died in Bellevue Hospital.

At 8:00 the following morning, Mahlon B. Smith appeared at the morgue.  The Sun said, "He was in great distress of mind, for he had little doubt of the result of his errand.  When the body was uncovered he said huskily, 'It is my daughter Aimee.'"

Despite acquaintances in Hackensack saying that Aimee Smith was "an innocent little thing, morbidly conscientious and exact in her devotions and church duties," it seems that she was the victim of a botched abortion.

As the Seamen's Bank for Savings approached its centennial in 1925, plans were laid for replacing its building.  Robert G. Hatfield's cast iron structure was demolished to make way for the Benjamin Wistar Morris-designed skyscraper, which survives.

Stone magazine, January 1927 (copyright expired)

The Lost Astor Building - 10-12 Wall Street

 

from King's Photographic Views of New York, 1895 (copyright expired)

On January 15, 1881, the Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide commented that John Jacob Astor's recent purchase of 10 and 12 Wall Street showed "what heavy blocks of money are going in that direction [i.e., downtown]."  Astor had paid half a million dollars for the old buildings (about $15.4 million in 2024).  In a separate article, the Record & Guide noted, "The buildings will be torn down in May, when present leases expire and a grand office structure, 44x120, having probably eight or nine stories, will replace the present buildings."

But Astor temporarily put his plans on hold.  Perhaps reacting to his new tenants' entreaties, just over a week later the Record & Guide reported that he told them, "if they will remain on a four years' lease, he will not pull down the structures on the 1st of May."  The deal came with a price.  "Two tenants who now pay $4,500 each per annum have been raised to $10,000 each," said the article.

There would be no more reprieves.  In 1885, Astor demolished the vintage structures and hired Henry Jayneway Hardenbergh to design a replacement office building.  (Hardenbergh would work with Astor's son, William Waldorf Astor, in designing the Waldorf Hotel in 1893, and with William's cousin, John Jacob Astor IV, in 1897 in designing the Astoria Hotel next door.)

Hardenbergh blended Romanesque Revival and German Renaissance Revival styles.  The ground floor was faced in undressed "Scotch stone" with two polished gray granite pillars flanking the entrance.  The upper floors were clad in red brick and trimmed in terra cotta.  The midsection of Hardenbergh's tripartite design included four-story arches that embraced metal bays.  The top section took the form of a steep mansard fronted by a terra cotta encrusted gable flanked by dormers.

Although publications like Ernest Ingersoll's A Week in New York (a sort of guidebook), called the Astor Building "splendid," some architectural critics were less enthusiastic.  On February 5, 1887, the Record & Guide applauded Hardenbergh's merging of the first and second floors.  "The device is clever and effective, uniting the basement [i.e., ground floor] and marking it off from the superstructure, as could not have been done if it had consisted of two entirely separate stories."  But the critic felt that placing the central piers upon "dwarf columns" was "clearly a mistake."  He brutally opined, "The carving of the basement is feeble and ineffectual, and the bead and reel moulding at the intrados of the arches in the second story is really childish."  Overall, however, the article said the defects "are very pardonable, for they are defects in a generally successful and satisfactory piece of work."

Among the initial tenants was the banking and brokerage house of John H. Davis & Co., which moved into the Astor Building in November 1886.  The firm was founded in 1866 and for 17 years had operated from 17 Wall Street.  Bankers' Magazine noted, "This house has a wide reputation for honorable dealing...and both old friends and new will be pleased with the improved facilities now offered."  The firm would remain here for decades.

The Financial Review, 1888 (copyright expired)

Millionaire Calvin S. Brice ran his empire of railroads from his office here.  He owned ten railroads by the time he moved into the Astor Building.  He was, as well, involved in the National Telegraph Company and the Chase National Bank of New York.

Brice's office was the meeting place of the sub-Committee of the World's Fair Committee on Finance on October 17, 1889.  The other members were William Steinway, S. D. Babcock and Morris K. Jesup.  After the meeting, Brice told reporters the members would reconvene at his Fifth Avenue mansion that evening to finalize a complete report.  New York was competing with Chicago, St. Louis and Washington D.C. as the site of the proposed 1893 World's Fair.  No doubt very disappointing to Brice and his committee members, Chicago was awarded the honor.

Hardenbergh's rendering of the Astor Building.  Real Estate Record & Guide Office Building Supplement, June 25, 1898 (copyright expired)

William H. Roberts and Neil McCullum organized the Finance Trading Company in 1892 "and opened carpeted quarters in the Astor Building," as reported by The Sun.  At the time, "confidential clerks" were highly valued employees, today's equivalent of executive assistants.  The role was almost exclusively held by men.  The Finance Trading Company, however, "were extremely fortunate in selecting a confidential clerk.  They secured for that place a willowy woman, fair and young," said The Sun on August 26, 1892.

The newspaper reported that the previous day, the young woman "sat at the President's fine new roll-top desk, in the President's fine new swinging chair, and complacently told the stream of callers who asked for Mr. Roberts that the gentleman would not be in until to-morrow."  The reason that neither William Roberts nor Neil McCullum were in the office was because they had been arrested.  The previous day, The Evening World reported they were accused of running a "bogus bank" and having swindled their clients.

Along with the many bankers and brokers in the building, there were law firms.  Among them was Woodward & Mayer.  Partner J. M. Mayer graduated from Columbia Law School in 1886.  The Scroll commented on Mayer's dashing good looks in its December 1892 issue.  "He is the same man whose face every lady looking at the Atlanta and Burlington convention picks out and asks, 'Who's this?'"

J. M. Mayer was considered a heart-throb.  The Scroll, December 1892 (copyright expired)

Attorneys Thomas F. Gilroy, Jr. and Robert L. Wensley operated from the Astor Building in 1894 when Gilroy's engagement to socialite Natalie Hale was announced on November 22.  The engagement was notable not only because of Natalie's social position (The Evening World said she "comes from a family that has been prominent in society for two hundred years"), but because Gilroy's father was the Mayor of New York City.  The Evening World remarked, "The Mayor seemed pleased at his son's engagement."

Thomas F. Gilroy, Jr. The Evening World, November 23, 1894 (copyright expired)

Having the mayor as his father proved lucrative and eventually humiliating for Gilroy.  He was appointed City Chamberlain with an annual salary of $5,000 (about $165,000 today) and his firm received plum city commissions.

But on May 7, 1895, The Evening World reported that a meeting of the aldermen the previous day had resulted in "an attack upon Thomas F. Gilroy, Jr."  It was revealed that in January 1888 Gilroy and Wensley were commissioned by the Mayor's Office to compile city ordinances.  The firm received $5,100 and Gilroy was paid an additional $5,000 as counsel.  After seven years "during which the firm named was evidently hard at work," according to The Evening World, the report was submitted on May 6, 1895.

The Law Committee "finds that the compilation is practically worthless," reported the article, and stressed that the work could have been handled "by a subordinate in the offices of the counsel or under clerk of this Board."

John Jacob Astor III died in 1890.  The Astor Building was inherited by William Waldorf Astor.  After a vicious feud with his aunt Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, William relocated his family to England.  He continued, nevertheless, to manage his vast Manhattan properties.

On July 2, 1915, The New York Times reported that he had given his son, John Jacob Astor V, $7 million in Manhattan real estate, including the Astor Building.  The newspaper described the Astor Building as, "an old one...but it has always been kept in modern condition and is a popular office structure."

In February 1919, John Jacob Astor V hired architect Charles E. Birge to design a replacement structure.  He filed plans in February 1919 "for the erection of a thirty-two story structure on the site of the old building," according to the Record & Guide.  The cost was projected at $1.5 million (about $26.4 million today).

Instead, however, Astor sold the property to The Bankers' Trust Co.  "On the site of the newly acquired property the trust company will erect a thirty-two story addition to its present structure," said the Record & Guide.  Designed by Trowbridge & Livingston, the Bankers Trust Company Building survives.

photograph by ChrisRuvolo

The Lost Queen Insurance Building - 37-39 Wall Street

 

Real Estate Record & Guide "Office Building Supplement" June 25, 1898 (copyright expired)

The Queen Insurance Company was chartered in Liverpool, England in 1857.  It had a branch in London in 1877 when it broke ground for a New York office at 37-39 Wall Street.  The firm had commissioned Clinton & Pirsson (composed of Charles W. Clinton and James W. Pirrson) to design the New York headquarters.  It was the first commission of up-and-coming contractor David H. King, Jr., who would go on to erect iconic structures like the Statue of Liberty and the Washington Square Arch.

Clinton & Pirsson designed a striking six-story, Ruskinian Gothic structure faced in red brick.  The top floor took the form an elaborate mansard with a pyramid-capped tower with paired arches supported by polished granite columns, and a somewhat Egyptian-shaped gable fronted by an ornate dormer.

On May 16, 1878, The New York Times applauded, "One of the most attractive buildings in Wall-street, or in the City, for that matter, is the handsome ornamented structure just completed and in part occupied by the Queen Insurance Company...Built of brick, stone, and iron, it rises six stories above a basement, and is at once substantial and ornamental."  

The Record & Guide, on the same day, called the building "well deserving of special notice."  The article described the colorful materials in detail, saying the granite basement was "elaborately carved" and that the:

...first story windows are of polished red granite, supported by piers of Wyoming blue stone and columns of black granite with richly carved capitals and bases of Wyoming blue stone, over which an arch is extending, covering the windows of the first story front, composed again of Wyoming blue stone and New Jersey brown stone.

Inset into the tympanum of the arch over the entrance was a bronze bust of Queen Victoria.  The third through fifth floors were clad in red brick, which contrasted with the various colored stone.  "The openings are arched with alternate brown and gray stone, and the jambs are finished with black and red polished granite," reported The New York Times.  "The facade is elaborately carved."

The Queen Insurance Company offices occupied the bottom two floors as well as the top floor.  Its offices were finished in mahogany, while the upper floors were done in maple and cherry.  "The first story hall including the first flight of stairs, are wainscoted with two and three different kinds of foreign and domestic marble," said the Record & Guide.  The New York Times described the fireplace in the Queen Insurance Company's Director's Room saying, "The mantel is an art study."

The top floor was used partly for document files.  There were also the Queen Insurance executives' dining room, and an apartment for the janitor and his family.  The New York Times commented, "From the dining-room, a superb view is obtained of the City and Bay."

The Record & Guide assured that the building was fireproof, and even the stairs were of iron.  But, said the article, "in such a building very little use is made of the stairs, one of Otis's finest elevators has been provided; with a handsomely ornamented car."  It ended its article saying, "The architects may well be proud of the work they have placed before the business community of New York."

An advertisement in The Evening Post in November 1880 listed the Queen Insurance Company's United States assets at $1,635,027 (about $50.3 million in 2024).  The firm leased offices on the third through fifth floors to various tenants, like the banking firm of Kelley & Little; the Commercial Union Insurance Company; and law offices, like those of Hathaway & Montgomery.

The cover of a brochure featured a depiction of the building.  from the collection of the New York Public Library.

Working for the Queen Insurance Company in 1887 was W. B. Schuyler.  The Sun described him as "about 28 years old, well built, and of a fine appearance."  Schuyler got into some sort of trouble in the early part of 1887--serious enough to make him desperate.  At 1:00 on the morning of March 4, Schuyler (who lived on Lexington Avenue) checked into the Harlem Hotel on Third Avenue at 115th Street with no bags.  He did not go to work that day, but remained in the room.  The Sun reported, "The maid heard him snoring, and gave up trying to wake him."

The next day, when she knocked on the door there was no answer.  She informed the proprietor, who used his pass key.  Schuyler was dead on the bed.  On the table were two one-ounce vials labelled laudanum, an opiate popular at the time with those intending to kill themselves.  A unsent letter was found addressed to Horace Maillard, which said he was in trouble, "but hoped to pull through," according to The Sun.

Three months after that tragedy, on June 18, 1887, the Record & Guide reported that the Queen Insurance Company had sold its building to the Metropolitan Trust Company for $450,000 (just under $15 million today).  

When the Metropolitan Trust Company was formed in 1881, "it occupied a single room at 41 Pine street, with a force of four people," according to Trust Companies in July 1921.  Within only five months its growth forced it to move to larger quarters, and in 1884 had to move again, to 35 Wall Street, next door to the Queens Insurance Company.

Although the Metropolitan Trust Company purchased 37-39 Wall Street in June 1887, the Queen Insurance Company did not vacate for nearly a year.  And the timing could not have been worse for the new owners.  Trust Companies recalled, "During the great blizzard of 1888, the company transferred its business to its own building next door, at 37-39 Wall street."

As its predecessor had done, the Metropolitan Trust Company leased offices in the building.  Among the tenants in the 1890s were attorney Henry Daily, Jr., and the newly formed Corporation Trust Company, incorporated in 1893. 

from the collection of the Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archive of the Art Institute Chicago.

On June 17, 1905, the Record & Guide printed a one-line article saying that the Metropolitan Trust Company had sold its building to William H. Chesebrough.  The New York Times was more detailed, saying that the price was said to have been about $1,000,000," and that the true purchasers were "probably...Charles W. Morse and his associates."  The article noted that the building, "is not likely to be disturbed for the present, but with the control of this property, it is pointed out, Mr. Morse and his associates will be in a position to erect at any time a new building."

Less than a year later, on May 20, 1906, the New-York Tribune reported that 37-39 Wall Street and its neighbor at 41 and 43 Wall Street were "being torn down to make way for a new twenty-five story skyscraper."  Francis Kimball's 37 Wall Street, completed the following year, survives.

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The Lost Bank of New York Building -- 48 Wall Street at William

from the collection of the Library of Congress

In 1783 the war with Britain was over, but financial conditions for the fledgling United States were nearly chaotic.  Continental currency, which had become worthless, ceased to circulate.  While the Government authorized paper currency, states issued bills of their own.  

The need for standards and organization was crucial.  An editorial appeared in the New-York Packet on February 12, 1784 proposing the establishment of the Bank of the State of New York, and laying out the advantages of such an institution.  With a slightly different name, the Bank of New York would be headed by a governor and six directors, who served without compensation until the bank was stable enough to pay its first dividend.

The constitution of the Bank of New York was written in March 1784 by Alexander Hamilton.  The institution's first home was in the magnificent William Walton mansion on St. George's Square (later Franklin Square).  The directors rented the house until 1787, when the bank moved to 11 Hanover Square.  By 1796 it required a larger facility, and in November the directors purchased the house of William Constable at the corner of Wall and William Streets.

The 1797 building sat within an elegant residential neighborhood.  To the rear, on William Street, can be seen a portion of the Phillips mansion, and to the right is General John Lamb's residence.  from the collection of the New York Public Library.

The cornerstone of the new building was laid on June 22, 1796 and the bank opened in its new home the following year, in April.  For six decades the palatial structure served the bank.  But, according to bank historian Henry Williams Domett in 1884, "The need of better accommodation for the business of the bank had long been felt, and in 1856 a committee had been appointed to procure plans for a new building."

The architectural firm of Vaux and Withers was commissioned to replace the old structure with a modern building.  The bank temporarily moved to rented space at William Street and Exchange Place, and the old building demolished.  The cornerstone was laid on September 10, 1856 and construction was completed in March 1858 at a cost of $173,400--more than $5.6 million in today's money.

Henry Williams Domett wrote:

The structure was described at the time as 'built in the Italian style, of Little Falls brown stone and Philadelphia brick.  The banking-room is fifty-eight feet long, thirty-five feet wide, and twenty-six feet high, occupying two stories in the central and rear part of the building.  The ceiling and walls, and the whole fitting-up of the interior compare favorably with the elegance of the exterior, and the room is lighted on the east side, where it adjoins the present American Exchange Bank, by glazed panels in the ceiling.

The original Vaux & Withers structure was four stories tall.  image from Martha J. Lamb's Wall Street in History, 1883 (copyright expired)

The New York Times gave the building a mixed review.  An article on March 26, 1858 said, "The style shows great invention latent in the architect, and though it is most elaborately ugly in its details, the general effect is by no means unpleasant."  As unhappy as the critic was of the exterior, he was impressed with the interior.  He called the banking room "a beautiful apartment...lined with Caen stone, and finished with dark oak," and said, "The best taste has been exhibited throughout in the fittings up and in the smaller offices."  The article noted that the marble cornerstone from the 1798 building was inserted into one wall.

The Bank of New York was in its new home only three years before civil war broke out in the South.  On April 28, 1861, just two weeks after the first shot was fired upon Fort Sumter, the bank's president, A. P. Halsey approved a loan of $50,000 to the United States Government "for equipping volunteers."  The amount would top $1.5 million today.

In the summer of 1863 an Irish cleaning woman, Honora Barry, visited the offices of three separate brokers on Chatham Street.  She had $300 in bank notes--more than $6,300 today--and she most likely thought that by dividing it into smaller amounts  she would draw less attention.  She was wrong.  On August 5, The New York Times reported that she had been arrested "on a charge of stealing a package of bank bills" from the Bank of New York.  The article said, "The woman was employed in taking care of the premises at No. 48 Wall-street, and states that she found the money in the cellar."

The Bank of New York continued to grow, and in 1879 the firm of Vaux & Radford was called in to enlarge it.  The renovations, which cost the equivalent of $1.5 million today, resulted in two extra floors, one in the form of a fashionable mansard crowned with lacy iron cresting.  A safe deposit vault was installed in the basement, the outer door of which weighed three tons.

from A History of the Bank of New York, 1784-1884, by Henry Williams Domett, 1884 (copyright expired)

Extra space in the upper floors was leased as office space.  Among the residents in 1885 were attorney George B. Newell, and architect Thomas Stent.

It appeared in the summer of 1908 that the vintage building was doomed.  On August 1 the Real Estate Record & Guide reported that Clinton & Russell had been commissioned to design "a high office building to be at least twenty stories" on the site.  But the idea stalled and, instead, in July 1913 architects Marc Eidlitz & Son made "general alterations."

from Old Buildings of New York City, 1907 (copyright expired)

Nine years later, on June 20, 1922, The New York Times reported on the merger of the Bank of New York and the New York Life Insurance & Trust Company, "two of the oldest financial institutions of the United States."  The article noted that "for the immediate future," the business of the two institutions would be conducted from their present locations.

The "immediate future" was short lived, at least for the venerable Bank of New York building.  In November 1922 the architectural firm of Clinton & Russell was hired to design a replacement skyscraper for the Bank of New York and Trust Company on the site.   But, as had been the case in 1908, the firm would be disappointed.  The commission was given, instead, to architect Benjamin Wistar Morris.  The new 32-story bank building was completed in 1929.

Benjamin Wistar Morris's office released this rendering in 1928.

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The Lost 1827 Merchants' Exchange Building - Wall Street near Exchange Street

 

The frame buildling next to the Merchants' Exchange belonged to Jacobus Roosevelt in 1735.  It was one of the oldest buildings on Wall Street.  from Early new York Houses 1750 - 1900, (copyright expired)

In 1900 historian William S. Pelletreau wrote, "In the early days of New York, there stood at the foot of Broad street, a large building with its lower story entirely open to the weather.  This was the 'Exchange' of that day, and the street adjoining took the name of 'Exchange street.'"  The Exchange was an important center of business.  Merchants held meetings, transacted business, and auctioned properties and goods within its walls.

In 1824 a group of prominent businessmen organized the Merchants' Exchange Company and laid plans for a substantial new structure.  Thomas Buchanan had purchased what was then 37 through 41 Wall Street, between Hanover and William Streets, in 1809.  On June 1, 1824 his heirs sold that 112-foot-wide property to the new organization.  With the site secured, the Merchants' Exchange Company commissioned one of the most esteemed architects of the day, Alexander Jackson Davis, to design a magnificent edifice.

Alexander Jackson Davis's watercolor rendering of the facade survives.  from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Davis's plans were completed that summer.  On August 21, an notice the New-York Evening Post announced:

Sealed proposals will be received at No. 45 Wall street...for the delivery of marble for the Merchant's Exchange.  It is expected that the proposals will be accompanied with specimens of the marble to be furnished...Plans of the building may be seen and specifications of the marble to be furnished may be hand, and any further information obtains on application to H. I. Wyckoff, Chairman of the Building Committee.

The great expense of the structure seems to have caused debate within the Merchants' Exchange Company.  An announcement in The Evening Post a month later noted in part, "As it is in contemplation to substitute Brown Free Stone in place of marble, except for the flagging in the portico and basement, estimates are required for that artical [sic] to be of the best quality."

Four columns upheld the rotunda, as seen in Alexander Jackson Davis's first floor plan.  The architect's own office sat directly off the entrance, to the right.  from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In the end marble won out.  Davis's awe-inspiring Merchants' Exchange Building opened on May 1, 1827.  William S. Pelletreau would call it "by far the most important business building in the city."  A broad staircase rose from the sidewalk to the portico.  Patently Davis, it was recessed into the structure, its two-story Ionic columns flush with the façade.  An imposing cupula and spire capped the interior rotunda, where a bronze status of Alexander Hamilton stood.

The Merchants' Exchange Building held meeting rooms, auction rooms, and offices.  The flurry of activity within the building was evidenced on January 12, 1829, when seven different announcements for real estate auctions to be held on a single day appeared in the New-York Evening Post. 

Various tenants occupied the office spaces.  Decades later, in 1908, The Architectural Record recalled, "In 1829, 'A. J. Davis, Ithiel Town and Thompson,' had their offices in the building and were noteworthy as the only firm of architects in New York."  Also occupying space in the building were several insurance companies.  

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

As the city prospered and expanded, fire became a significant concern for insurance firms.  While the city erected additional watch towers, there remained the problem of enough available water to fight large fires.  On the night of December 14, 1835, two large fires broke out, destroying 13 buildings.  They left the city's fire cisterns nearly empty.

Two nights later a gas pipe, ignited by a coal stove, exploded in a five-story warehouse on Merchant Street (today's Beaver Street) and Hanover Street.  The resultant blaze was fanned and spread by gale force winds.  The inferno became so massive the glow could be seen 80 miles away in Philadelphia.

Newspapers reported the temperature at 17 degrees below zero.  The East River and the Hudson River were frozen over, forcing fire fighters to drill holes in the thick ice to access water.   A detachment of marines from the Navy Yard was brought in to dynamite buildings, in hopes of stopping the spread of fire.

As the fire raged, architect Nicolino Calyo sketched the scene for this painting.  The dome and cupola of the Merchants' Exchange had already collapsed.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The following day the fire still roared out of control.  At 2:30 on the afternoon of December 17,  Samuel Swartwout, Collector of the City of New York, wrote a startling letter to a member of the Senate Ways and Means Committee.  It began:

Dear Sir--Last night, between eight and nine o'clock, a fire broke out near the Merchants' Exchange, and is still raging most violently...By this disastrous visitation, between four and five hundred buildings have been destroyed, and goods and other effects, to the amount of fifteen to twenty millions of dollars.  This calamity falls principally upon the heavy importing merchants; and they must unquestionably become greatly embarrassed, and many of them ruined.

The magnificent Merchants' Exchange Building was gutted.  On December 18, The Evening Post reported, "The lower part of this city is thronged this morning by thousands of men, women and children eager to view the scene of destruction.  Hughes' fine statue of Alexander Hamilton is among the valuable articles buried deep beneath the ruins of the Exchange."  (The statue, sadly, could not be salvaged.)

from the collection of the New York Public Library

The importance of the Merchants' Exchange was evident when, that same day while the ruins were still smoking, the Board of Assistants resolved, "that the north-western Chamber of the city Hall, known as the Superiour Court Room, be placed at the disposal of the city for their use as a Merchants' Exchange Room."

Isaiah Rogers's design included a cast iron dome.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

Within months, architect Isaiah Rogers was at work on plans for a splendid replacement on the site.  His Greek Revival Merchants' Exchange Building survives at 55 Wall Street, albeit altered.

photo via realtor.com

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