Park Row Building

The Park Row Building is located between Beekman and Ann Streets.[3] It has a frontage of 103 ft (31 m) on Park Row, 23 feet (7.0 m) on Ann Street and 48 feet (15 m) on Theater Alley. The base of the building covers a land area of approximately 15,000 square feet (1,400 m²).[4]

The building was designed by R. H. Robertson, a pioneer in steel skyscraper design, and engineered by the firm of Nathaniel Roberts.[5][6] It is 29 stories tall, with 26 full floors and a pair of three-story cupolas. The building contains about 8,000 short tons (7,100 long tons; 7,300 t) of steel and 12,000 short tons (11,000 long tons; 11,000 t) of other material, chiefly brick and terra cotta.[4] The foundation of the Park Row Building was made of 3,900 Georgia spruce piles driven into wet sand and topped by granite blocks. The total cost to build this early skyscraper was $2.4 million.[4] Though the two lowest floors were modified in 1930, the rest of the building remains unchanged.[7]

The symmetrical front facade is layered as it rises. The two 3-story towers are capped with copper-clad domes. There are four caryatids and 16 figures on the towers that are attributed to J. Massey Rhind, a sculptor. The design recalls the double-towered Baroque churches of Europe, and more explicitly echoes the architecture of the church of the Monastery of São Vicente da Fora of Lisbon.[8]

Seen in 1899

The building seen in context, 1901

One of the first structures to be called a skyscraper, the building was completed in 1899 after two years and nine months of construction,[9] one of several new office buildings located on what was known at the time as "Newspaper Row",[10] the center of the newspaper industry in New York City for 80 years beginning in the 1840s.[1] The builder was the Park Row Construction Company, whose legal counsel, William Mills Ivins – a prominent lawyer and former judge advocate general for New York State – purchased the necessary property in his own name before transferring it to the syndicate. For this reason the building was sometimes known as the Ivins Syndicate Building.[1] At 391 feet (119 m), it was the tallest commercial building in New York from 1899 until 1908, when it was surpassed by the Singer Building.[11]

The building offered 950 separate offices, each with a capacity of about 4 people. A rough estimate of 25,000 people were thought to have passed through the building each workday. Upon completion, approximately 4,000 people worked there.[11] By mid-1899, the building was owned by the investment banker and Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) subway sponsor August Belmont, Jr. under the name Park Row Realty Company. The first headquarters of the IRT subway were located in the building,[12] as was the first office of the newly minted Associated Press.[1]

On May 3, 1920 at 4:20 am, the defenestration of Andrea Salsedo occurred from the fourteenth floor of 15 Park Row. He was being held with Roberto Elia by the Justice Department in connection with a series of bombings that had occurred in New York City, Boston, Washington, DC, Philadelphia, Paterson, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. A leaflet entitled "Plain Words," signed by the "Anarchist Fighters," was found at the sites, and because of an aberrant "S" in the printing, the authorities tracked down the print shop where both Salsedo and Elia worked. They were held at 15 Park Row for 8 weeks with limited external communication. The night of May 3, Salsedo fell from the 14th floor: the anarchists claim he was thrown, the police claim he jumped.[13]

By 2000, plans were developed for a gut renovation of the entire structure. It included converting all floors above the 11th into 210 rental apartments, at a cost of over $30 million. All floors below the 11th were to remain commercial. By 2002, initial renovations and residential conversions were completed. Until 2014, the second through eighth floors were partially occupied by J&R Music World, Inc. Residential units currently occupy floors 3 to 26. The pair of apartments in the cupolas at the 28th through 30th floors have not been renovated.[14]

The overall public was impressed with the structure, many in awe of its height and mammoth proportions. With essentially no comparable structures against which to measure the building's strengths and weaknesses, the criticism from the architectural community was quite harsh. The New York Times quoted a critic, who in 1898 wrote in the Real Estate Record and Guide, "New York is the only city in which such a monster would be allowed to rear itself," and called the blank side walls "absolutely inexpressive and vacuous." In a 1908 article in The New York Times, a French architect, Augustin-Adolphe Rey, wrote that "one side of it is an entirely bare wall — what difference does it make how the other sides are treated?" Critic Jean Schopfer called the building "detestable".[15] The building did have admirers, including the photographers Alvin Langdon Coburn and Charles Sheeler. Sheeler included the building in the short documentary film he made with Paul Strand, Manhatta (1921).[1]

• Early skyscrapers
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Manhattan below 14th Street
• List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan below 14th Street

Notes

Citations

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Park Row Building.

• 15 Park Row's official site
• Skyscraper.org on the Park Row Building
• Park Row Building at Emporis
• "Park Row Building". SkyscraperPage.
• Park Row Building at Structurae