Trinity Court Building

Trinity Court Building refers to a succession of structures located at 70, 74, and 76 Trinity Place in Lower Manhattan, New York City, between Rector and Albany Streets.^[1]

Original building

The earliest building to carry the name was built in 1879 for the Western Union Telegraph Company. It had six stories, 5,000 square feet of space, stores on the ground floor, and commercial lofts in the rest. The structure was not squared, having elevation widths of 104.4 (frontage), 42.4, 108.9, and 52 feet.^[2]

Western Union sold it in 1888. The building was the focus of a complex tort in the 1890s over property value loss due to the operation of the Manhattan Elevated Railroad in front of it. The builder (Western Union) and the defendant (railway) were both controlled by the same group of investors, who were asserted to be in collusion against buyer Augustus D. Shepard to nullify any damages collected.^[3][4] Mutual Life Assurance foreclosed on the building in 1914, and auctioned it to Alliance Realty, who sold it in 1919 to Frazar & Co, about whom it was speculated that they would replace it with a new skyscraper.^[5]

Second building

The old building was torn down in 1926 to make way for a 24 story skyscraper of 125,000 square feet.^[6] It was completed in 1927.^[1] One of the earliest tenants of the new building was a company managing miniature golf courses and a golf school.^[7]

Not long after its completion, the Irving Trust Company began started construction on a new building at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway, visible from the Trinity Court Building. The builder commissioned a time study of the construction process. Eight images from that study have been preserved at the Canadian Centre for Architecture.^[8]

The building was demolished in 2015.

Building under construction

Trinity Church owns the site, and had its offices and pre-school in the 1927 building. In 2015, the church faced of choice of a $33 million renovation to bring it up to code, or to replace it with a new building at a cost of about $35 million. The vestry decided on the latter course, and tore it down. A new building will have an address of 68-74 Trinity Place. Originally, 310,000 square feet of primarily luxury condominiums with a modern glass facade was planned. Due to community opposition the plans were changed, with a smaller commercial building incorporating community-friendly uses. The new design also uses bronzed aluminum to better fit in with the church and the preserved footbridge form the previous building, and incorporates stained glass and terra cotta embellishments salvaged form the 1927 edifice. Completion is estimated in 2019.^[9][10]

References