Gillender Building
Encyclopedia
The Gillender Building was an early 20-story skyscraper
in the Financial District
of Manhattan
in New York City
. It stood on the northwest corner of Wall Street
and Nassau Street
, on a narrow strip of land along Nassau Street measuring only 26×73 feet (about 8×22 meters). At the time of its completion in 1897, the 273 feet (83 m) tall Gillender Building was, depending on ranking methods, the fourth or the eighth tallest structure in New York.
The Gillender Building was praised as an engineering novelty, and was quoted by some as "one of the wonders of the city". It attracted attention for a visible disproportion of height and footprint which commanded a relatively low rentable area, and was deemed economically obsolete from the start.
After thirteen years of uneventful existence, Gillender Building was sold in December 1909 for a record price of $822 per square foot of land, and was demolished in April–June 1910 to make way for the 41–storey Bankers Trust
tower at 14 Wall Street
. The New York Times
called demolition of the Gillender Building the first time when a modern skyscraper was torn down to be replaced with a taller and larger one. It briefly held the title of the tallest building ever demolished voluntarily.
's administration. Knight resold the land to Dongan, and Dongan resold it in 1689 to Abraham de Peyster
and Nicholas Bayard. Both de Peyster and Bayard served as Mayors of New York. The first known building on the site, a sugar house
, was built by Samuel Bayard. In 1718, most of the present-day block was sold to a church congregation, while the corner lot, cut into narrow strips, remained in possession of the de Peysters and the Bayards. In 1773, de Peyster sold the corner lot to the Verplanck family for less than $1,500; the Verplanck mansion later housed Wall Street banks.
The second New York City Hall
, erected in 1700 and torn down in 1816, stood on the site of present-day Federal Hall and occupied the eastern side of present-day Nassau Street, which, historically, curved around the City Hall. It was straightened up after the demolition of the second City Hall, but its early track was retained in the placement of the corner buildings (including the Gillender Building but not the 14 Wall Street) which were set back from the street, providing a wider than usual sidewalk. In 1816, the corner lot was owned by Charles Gardner, who sold the property in 1817 for $11,200; it was further resold in 1835 for $47,500 and in 1849 for $55,000. Charles Frederick Briggs
and Edgar Allan Poe
operated the offices of the Broadway Journal
on this site from 1844 until 1845. From 1849 until December 1909, the lot remained in the hands of a single family. Adjacent lots were owned by the Sampson family since 1840; in 1880, this property was developed into a seven-storey Stevens Building.
merchant Eccles Gillender (1810–1877). Mrs. Gillender hurried to build the new tower prior to the anticipated enactment of new, stricter building code
s, which explains the shortcomings of the Gillender Building (in fact, the regulations came into effect only in 1916). An alternative version presented by Joseph Korom attributes construction of the Gillender Building to Augustus Teophilus Gillender (born 1843), principal partner in a law firm.
The construction contract was awarded to Charles T. Willis Company; Hecla Iron Works, Atlas Cement Company and Okonite Company of Passaic were principal suppliers. The Gillender Building cost $500,000 to construct and attracted attention due to the disproportion of its height and footprint. The new structure occupied a narrow strip of land measuring 26×73 feet, or about 8×22 meters, ruling out efficient space plans. Quicksand
under the site required use of caisson
foundations; caissons consumed the underground space that could be otherwise used by bank vault
s or retail storage, further reducing the building's value. Its rentable area (30,000 square feet or 2,790 square meters) was on par with Manhattan
's 1897 average for pre-skyscraper buildings (26,300 square feet or 2,400 square meters) and lower than the area of adjacent six-storey Stevens Building. The disproportion was made more evident in 1903, when the new Hanover National Bank Building, built on the same Nassau Street block and being only marginally taller, dwarfed the slender Gillender Building.
Architecturally, the Gillender Building, designed by Charles I. Berg and Edward H. Clark, belonged to "a series of elegant towers in various classical
modes erected in New York in the 1890s" and is now considered "a notable example" of its period along with the Central Bank Building (William Birkmire, 1897, demolished) and the American Surety Building
(Bruce Price
, 1894–1896, extant). Structurally, it was based on fully wind-braced steel frame
with masonry infill. The main volume of the tower rose to 219 feet (66.8 m) without setbacks, with a three-storey cupola
crown reaching 273 feet (83.2 m). The New York Times
erroneously called Gillender the "highest office structure in the world", although the earlier Manhattan Life Insurance Building
(1894) was taller at 348 feet (106.1 m). Berg and Clerk followed the Italian rule of triple vertical partitioning: expensive decoration was limited to the three bottom floors (what the pedestrians see from the street) and the upper two floors and the crowning tower. Massive cornice
s above the second and third floors visually separated the lower levels from the clean wall surface stretching above up until the fourteenth floor; starting from the ninth floor, it gradually re-acquired ornaments and arched windows as if in anticipation of the ornate Italian Baroque
cupola above.
Advertised as fully fireproof
and as the most modern tower on the market, Gillender Building was occupied by financial firms through its short lifetime and was perceived as economically obsolete from the start. There were no notable incidents other than two lightning
strikes in its spire in July 1897 and May 1900; the latter "sent splinters flying in every direction" without casualties.
In 1909, the Financial District experienced a rapid series of land acquisitions by financial institutions. The Bankers Trust Company
joined the process after Bank of Montreal
, Fourth National Bank, and Germania Insurance acquired their properties on Wall and Nassau Streets. Bankers Trust, which was established in 1902, had been a tenant at Gillender Building for six years and their choice of site was motivated by its location near the New York Stock Exchange
. The company, with J. P. Morgan
on the board, grew rapidly and intended to land itself permanently in the "vortex of America's financial life".
In July 1909, Bankers Trust signed a long-term lease agreement with the Sampson family, owners of the Stevens Building; lease was preferred to purchase due to high price of Wall Street land. Located on the same Wall-Nassau block as the Gillender Building, the L-shaped, seven-storey Stevens Building wrapped around it and possessed far longer facades on both Wall and Nassau Streets. Initially, the press reported that Bankers Trust planned to build a 16-storey office building wrapping around the Gillender Building, with the two bottom floors outfitted to be "one of the finest banking rooms in the city". Later, it was disclosed that they had been negotiating purchase of Gillender Building since April 1909; the deal would have consolidated enough Wall Street land for a new tower with 94 feet (28.7 m) frontage facing Wall Street and 102 feet (31.1 m) on Nassau Street.
In December 1909, The New York Times
reported a new record set: The Manhattan Trust Company, a bank connected to Bankers Trust through common control by J. P. Morgan
, acquired the Gillender Building from Helen Gillender Asinari, paying approximately $1,500,000 for the property occupying 1825 square feet (169.5 m²), or $822 for a square foot of Manhattan land that was worth $55,000 sixty years earlier. Negotiations were in progress since April 1909 and the sale was virtually closed in November.
On January 2, 1910, the press reported that the Manhattan Trust has resold the building; Bankers Trust, the new owner, completed consolidation of a large corner property. By April 1910, the final cash price paid to Manhattan Trust was adjusted to $1,250,000; in exchange for the $250,000 difference, the Manhattan Trust retained long-term lease rights for the ground floor "and some other space in the building". This brought nominal cash price per foot on par or below the earlier record ($700 per square foot for a lot on the corner of Wall Street and Broadway
). Contemporaries agreed that the Manhattan Trust and Bankers Trust acted in accord and that the latter targeted Gillender Building from the start. Bankers Trust absorbed Manhattan Trust Company in February 1912.
The press anticipated the upcoming demolitionof the Gillender Building "as the first time when such a high-class office building representing the best type of fire-proof construction" would be torn down and "one of the largest building operations ever undertaken in New York". Bankers Trust publicized the drafts by Trowbridge & Livingston
to build a 39-storey tower that, when announced, would be New York's third tallest building after the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower
and the Singer Building
built in 1909 and 1908, respectively.
Demolition of the Stevens Building commenced in the beginning of April 1910. The contract to demolish the Gillender Building was awarded to Jacob Volk, known for his work on the McAdoo Tunnel, who himself claimed experience in demolishing 900 buildings. Initially, Volk subscribed to complete the job in 35 days and pay a $500 penalty for each day delayed; the schedule was later extended to 45 days. The building's tenants remained in the tower until the wrecking crews arrived on-site. Demolition commenced April 29, 1910, and was officially completed June 16, 1910, one day ahead of schedule. It cost Bankers Trust $50,000 plus $500 for advance completion; the contractor also received all the scrap valued at $25,000.
Demolition was preceded with erection of a massive timber canopy over the sidewalks and a wire mesh over the street to protect people from falling debris. Inside, elevator shafts were converted into garbage chutes for the torn partitions and exterior masonry scrap. By May 2, the top belvedere
was dismantled completely and most of the cupola masonrywas removed, exposing its steel skeleton. By the end of May, most of the Stevens Building was torn down; the Gillender Building's masonry walls were removed down to the seventh floor and steel skeleton was down to eleventh floor. By June 12, all that remained of Gillender Building was a single level of its steel frame visible above protective scaffoulding. In the following four days, the ground was completely cleared; work on its underground foundations commenced a month later. The granite
slabs from the Gillender Building were recycled into tombstones of the Green-Wood Cemetery
in Brooklyn
.
Of the 250 men involved in the demolition project, two Italian
workers were injured by falling girders, one of them died in the hospital.
The Bankers Trust Company Building, now known as 14 Wall Street
, was completed in 1912, then being the tallest banking building in the world. The bank occupied only the three lower floors; its main operations were housed elsewhere in less expensive offices. About 19 years later, Bankers Trust acquired and demolished the adjacent Hanover, Astor, and Pine Street Buildings, and replaced them with an annex to the original Bankers Trust Building, which was completed in 1933 and tripling its rentable area. Helen Gillender Asinari died a year earlier, in 1932.
's The Interpretation of Murder
, a 2006 novel reconstructing Sigmund Freud
's 1909 visit to New York. The narrator and Nora Acton (linked to Freud's case study of Dora) meet for the last time in the Gillender cupola, watch the New York skyline, well aware that the building will be soon torn down.
In M. K. Hobson
's Hotel Astarte, The Warlock "had his fingernails polished by a mute Chinese woman he kept in locked in a small room in his office on the top floor of the Gillender Building on Wall Street". The story is set in June 1910 and October 1929, when the Gillender Building had already been dismantled.
Skyscraper
A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building of many stories, often designed for office and commercial use. There is no official definition or height above which a building may be classified as a skyscraper...
in the Financial District
Financial District, Manhattan
The Financial District of New York City is a neighborhood on the southernmost section of the borough of Manhattan which comprises the offices and headquarters of many of the city's major financial institutions, including the New York Stock Exchange and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York...
of Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. It stood on the northwest corner of Wall Street
Wall Street
Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...
and Nassau Street
Nassau Street (Manhattan)
Nassau Street is a street in the Financial District of the New York City borough of Manhattan, located near Pace University and New York City Hall. It starts at Wall Street and runs north to Frankfort Street at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, lying one block east of Broadway and east of Park Row...
, on a narrow strip of land along Nassau Street measuring only 26×73 feet (about 8×22 meters). At the time of its completion in 1897, the 273 feet (83 m) tall Gillender Building was, depending on ranking methods, the fourth or the eighth tallest structure in New York.
The Gillender Building was praised as an engineering novelty, and was quoted by some as "one of the wonders of the city". It attracted attention for a visible disproportion of height and footprint which commanded a relatively low rentable area, and was deemed economically obsolete from the start.
After thirteen years of uneventful existence, Gillender Building was sold in December 1909 for a record price of $822 per square foot of land, and was demolished in April–June 1910 to make way for the 41–storey Bankers Trust
Bankers Trust
Bankers Trust was an historic American banking organization. The bank merged with Alex. Brown & Sons before being acquired by Deutsche Bank in 1998.-History:A consortium of banks created Bankers Trust to perform trust company services for their clients....
tower at 14 Wall Street
14 Wall Street
14 Wall Street, originally named the Bankers Trust Company Building, is a skyscraper on Wall Street in New York City, United States. It occupies the block along Nassau Street from Wall Street to Pine Street and is across from the New York Stock Exchange and Federal Hall...
. The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
called demolition of the Gillender Building the first time when a modern skyscraper was torn down to be replaced with a taller and larger one. It briefly held the title of the tallest building ever demolished voluntarily.
Site
In the 17th century, the site north from Wall Street was occupied by John Damen's farm; in 1685, Damen sold the land to captain John Knight, an officer of Thomas DonganThomas Dongan, 2nd Earl of Limerick
Thomas Donegan, 2nd Earl of Limerick was a member of Irish Parliament, Royalist military officer during the English Civil War, and governor of the Province of New York...
's administration. Knight resold the land to Dongan, and Dongan resold it in 1689 to Abraham de Peyster
Abraham de Peyster
Abraham de Peyster was Mayor of New York City from 1691 to 1694.-Life:De Peyster was born in New Amsterdam on July 8, 1657, to Johannes and Cornelia Lubberts de Peyster. He married his second cousin, Catharina de Peyster on April 5, 1684, while visiting Amsterdam.He was appointed mayor by...
and Nicholas Bayard. Both de Peyster and Bayard served as Mayors of New York. The first known building on the site, a sugar house
Sugar house
A sugar house, also known as sap house, sugar shack, sugar shanty or sugar cabin is a semi-commercial establishment, prominent mainly in Eastern Canada...
, was built by Samuel Bayard. In 1718, most of the present-day block was sold to a church congregation, while the corner lot, cut into narrow strips, remained in possession of the de Peysters and the Bayards. In 1773, de Peyster sold the corner lot to the Verplanck family for less than $1,500; the Verplanck mansion later housed Wall Street banks.
The second New York City Hall
New York City Hall
New York City Hall is located at the center of City Hall Park in the Civic Center area of Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA, between Broadway, Park Row, and Chambers Street. The building is the oldest City Hall in the United States that still houses its original governmental functions, such as...
, erected in 1700 and torn down in 1816, stood on the site of present-day Federal Hall and occupied the eastern side of present-day Nassau Street, which, historically, curved around the City Hall. It was straightened up after the demolition of the second City Hall, but its early track was retained in the placement of the corner buildings (including the Gillender Building but not the 14 Wall Street) which were set back from the street, providing a wider than usual sidewalk. In 1816, the corner lot was owned by Charles Gardner, who sold the property in 1817 for $11,200; it was further resold in 1835 for $47,500 and in 1849 for $55,000. Charles Frederick Briggs
Charles Frederick Briggs
Charles Frederick Briggs , also called C. F. Briggs, was an American journalist, author and editor, born in Nantucket, Massachusetts...
and Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
operated the offices of the Broadway Journal
Broadway Journal
The Broadway Journal was a short-lived New York City-based periodical founded by Charles Frederick Briggs and John Bisco in 1844. A year later, the publication was bought by Edgar Allan Poe, becoming the only magazine he ever owned, though it failed after only a few months under his...
on this site from 1844 until 1845. From 1849 until December 1909, the lot remained in the hands of a single family. Adjacent lots were owned by the Sampson family since 1840; in 1880, this property was developed into a seven-storey Stevens Building.
Construction
In 1896, Helen L. Gillender Asinari, owner of a 6-storey office building on the corner of Wall and Nassau decided to replace it with a 300 feet (91.4 m) tall tower, capitalizing on a tenfold increase in land value. The building was most likely named after Helen's father, millionaire tobaccoTobacco
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...
merchant Eccles Gillender (1810–1877). Mrs. Gillender hurried to build the new tower prior to the anticipated enactment of new, stricter building code
Building code
A building code, or building control, is a set of rules that specify the minimum acceptable level of safety for constructed objects such as buildings and nonbuilding structures. The main purpose of building codes are to protect public health, safety and general welfare as they relate to the...
s, which explains the shortcomings of the Gillender Building (in fact, the regulations came into effect only in 1916). An alternative version presented by Joseph Korom attributes construction of the Gillender Building to Augustus Teophilus Gillender (born 1843), principal partner in a law firm.
The construction contract was awarded to Charles T. Willis Company; Hecla Iron Works, Atlas Cement Company and Okonite Company of Passaic were principal suppliers. The Gillender Building cost $500,000 to construct and attracted attention due to the disproportion of its height and footprint. The new structure occupied a narrow strip of land measuring 26×73 feet, or about 8×22 meters, ruling out efficient space plans. Quicksand
Quicksand
Quicksand is a colloid hydrogel consisting of fine granular matter , clay, and water.Water circulation underground can focus in an area with the optimal mixture of fine sands and other materials such as clay. The water moves up and then down slowly in a convection-like manner throughout a column...
under the site required use of caisson
Deep foundation
A deep foundation is a type of foundation distinguished from shallow foundations by the depth they are embedded into the ground. There are many reasons a geotechnical engineer would recommend a deep foundation over a shallow foundation, but some of the common reasons are very large design loads, a...
foundations; caissons consumed the underground space that could be otherwise used by bank vault
Bank vault
A bank vault is a secure space where money, valuables, records, and documents can be stored. It is intended to protect their contents from theft, unauthorized use, fire, natural disasters, and other threats, just like a safe...
s or retail storage, further reducing the building's value. Its rentable area (30,000 square feet or 2,790 square meters) was on par with Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
's 1897 average for pre-skyscraper buildings (26,300 square feet or 2,400 square meters) and lower than the area of adjacent six-storey Stevens Building. The disproportion was made more evident in 1903, when the new Hanover National Bank Building, built on the same Nassau Street block and being only marginally taller, dwarfed the slender Gillender Building.
Architecturally, the Gillender Building, designed by Charles I. Berg and Edward H. Clark, belonged to "a series of elegant towers in various classical
Neoclassical architecture
Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing...
modes erected in New York in the 1890s" and is now considered "a notable example" of its period along with the Central Bank Building (William Birkmire, 1897, demolished) and the American Surety Building
American Surety Building
The American Surety Building is a historic skyscraper located at 100 Broadway, New York City, New York, opposite Trinity Church. It has been declared a landmark as one of Manhattan's most influential early skyscrapers....
(Bruce Price
Bruce Price
Bruce Price was the American architect of many of the Canadian Pacific Railway's Château-type stations and hotels...
, 1894–1896, extant). Structurally, it was based on fully wind-braced steel frame
Steel frame
Steel frame usually refers to a building technique with a "skeleton frame" of vertical steel columns and horizontal -beams, constructed in a rectangular grid to support the floors, roof and walls of a building which are all attached to the frame...
with masonry infill. The main volume of the tower rose to 219 feet (66.8 m) without setbacks, with a three-storey cupola
Cupola
In architecture, a cupola is a small, most-often dome-like, structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome....
crown reaching 273 feet (83.2 m). The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
erroneously called Gillender the "highest office structure in the world", although the earlier Manhattan Life Insurance Building
Manhattan Life Insurance Building
The Manhattan Life Insurance Building was a tower at 64-66 Broadway in New York City completed in 1894 to the designs of the architects of Kimball & Thompson and slightly extended north in 1904 making its new address 64-70 Broadway...
(1894) was taller at 348 feet (106.1 m). Berg and Clerk followed the Italian rule of triple vertical partitioning: expensive decoration was limited to the three bottom floors (what the pedestrians see from the street) and the upper two floors and the crowning tower. Massive cornice
Cornice
Cornice molding is generally any horizontal decorative molding that crowns any building or furniture element: the cornice over a door or window, for instance, or the cornice around the edge of a pedestal. A simple cornice may be formed just with a crown molding.The function of the projecting...
s above the second and third floors visually separated the lower levels from the clean wall surface stretching above up until the fourteenth floor; starting from the ninth floor, it gradually re-acquired ornaments and arched windows as if in anticipation of the ornate Italian Baroque
Italian Baroque
Italian Baroque is a term referring to a stylistic period in Italian history and art which spanned from the late 16th century to the early 18th century.-History:...
cupola above.
Advertised as fully fireproof
Fireproofing
Fireproofing, a passive fire protection measure, refers to the act of making materials or structures more resistant to fire, or to those materials themselves, or the act of applying such materials. Applying a certification listed fireproofing system to certain structures allows these to have a...
and as the most modern tower on the market, Gillender Building was occupied by financial firms through its short lifetime and was perceived as economically obsolete from the start. There were no notable incidents other than two lightning
Lightning
Lightning is an atmospheric electrostatic discharge accompanied by thunder, which typically occurs during thunderstorms, and sometimes during volcanic eruptions or dust storms...
strikes in its spire in July 1897 and May 1900; the latter "sent splinters flying in every direction" without casualties.
Takeover
Bankers Trust
Bankers Trust was an historic American banking organization. The bank merged with Alex. Brown & Sons before being acquired by Deutsche Bank in 1998.-History:A consortium of banks created Bankers Trust to perform trust company services for their clients....
joined the process after Bank of Montreal
Bank of Montreal
The Bank of Montreal , , or BMO Financial Group, is the fourth largest bank in Canada by deposits. The Bank of Montreal was founded on June 23, 1817 by John Richardson and eight merchants in a rented house in Montreal, Quebec. On May 19, 1817 the Articles of Association were adopted, making it...
, Fourth National Bank, and Germania Insurance acquired their properties on Wall and Nassau Streets. Bankers Trust, which was established in 1902, had been a tenant at Gillender Building for six years and their choice of site was motivated by its location near the New York Stock Exchange
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at 13.39 trillion as of Dec 2010...
. The company, with J. P. Morgan
J. P. Morgan
John Pierpont Morgan was an American financier, banker and art collector who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his time. In 1892 Morgan arranged the merger of Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form General Electric...
on the board, grew rapidly and intended to land itself permanently in the "vortex of America's financial life".
In July 1909, Bankers Trust signed a long-term lease agreement with the Sampson family, owners of the Stevens Building; lease was preferred to purchase due to high price of Wall Street land. Located on the same Wall-Nassau block as the Gillender Building, the L-shaped, seven-storey Stevens Building wrapped around it and possessed far longer facades on both Wall and Nassau Streets. Initially, the press reported that Bankers Trust planned to build a 16-storey office building wrapping around the Gillender Building, with the two bottom floors outfitted to be "one of the finest banking rooms in the city". Later, it was disclosed that they had been negotiating purchase of Gillender Building since April 1909; the deal would have consolidated enough Wall Street land for a new tower with 94 feet (28.7 m) frontage facing Wall Street and 102 feet (31.1 m) on Nassau Street.
In December 1909, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
reported a new record set: The Manhattan Trust Company, a bank connected to Bankers Trust through common control by J. P. Morgan
J. P. Morgan
John Pierpont Morgan was an American financier, banker and art collector who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his time. In 1892 Morgan arranged the merger of Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form General Electric...
, acquired the Gillender Building from Helen Gillender Asinari, paying approximately $1,500,000 for the property occupying 1825 square feet (169.5 m²), or $822 for a square foot of Manhattan land that was worth $55,000 sixty years earlier. Negotiations were in progress since April 1909 and the sale was virtually closed in November.
On January 2, 1910, the press reported that the Manhattan Trust has resold the building; Bankers Trust, the new owner, completed consolidation of a large corner property. By April 1910, the final cash price paid to Manhattan Trust was adjusted to $1,250,000; in exchange for the $250,000 difference, the Manhattan Trust retained long-term lease rights for the ground floor "and some other space in the building". This brought nominal cash price per foot on par or below the earlier record ($700 per square foot for a lot on the corner of Wall Street and Broadway
Broadway (New York City)
Broadway is a prominent avenue in New York City, United States, which runs through the full length of the borough of Manhattan and continues northward through the Bronx borough before terminating in Westchester County, New York. It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in the city, dating to...
). Contemporaries agreed that the Manhattan Trust and Bankers Trust acted in accord and that the latter targeted Gillender Building from the start. Bankers Trust absorbed Manhattan Trust Company in February 1912.
The press anticipated the upcoming demolitionof the Gillender Building "as the first time when such a high-class office building representing the best type of fire-proof construction" would be torn down and "one of the largest building operations ever undertaken in New York". Bankers Trust publicized the drafts by Trowbridge & Livingston
Trowbridge & Livingston
Trowbridge & Livingston was an architectural practice based in New York City in the early 20th century. The firm's partners were Samuel Beck Parkman Trowbridge and Goodhue Livingston ....
to build a 39-storey tower that, when announced, would be New York's third tallest building after the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower
The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, also known as the Metropolitan Life Tower or Met Life Tower, is a landmark skyscraper located on East 23rd Street between Madison Avenue and Park Avenue South, off of Madison Square Park. in the borough of Manhattan in New York City...
and the Singer Building
Singer Building
The Singer Building or Singer Tower at Liberty Street and Broadway in Manhattan, was a 47-story office building completed in 1908 as the headquarters of the Singer Manufacturing Company. It was demolished in 1968 and is now the site of 1 Liberty Plaza....
built in 1909 and 1908, respectively.
Demolition
Demolition was preceded with erection of a massive timber canopy over the sidewalks and a wire mesh over the street to protect people from falling debris. Inside, elevator shafts were converted into garbage chutes for the torn partitions and exterior masonry scrap. By May 2, the top belvedere
Belvedere (structure)
Belvedere is an architectural term adopted from Italian , which refers to any architectural structure sited to take advantage of such a view. A belvedere may be built in the upper part of a building so as to command a fine view...
was dismantled completely and most of the cupola masonrywas removed, exposing its steel skeleton. By the end of May, most of the Stevens Building was torn down; the Gillender Building's masonry walls were removed down to the seventh floor and steel skeleton was down to eleventh floor. By June 12, all that remained of Gillender Building was a single level of its steel frame visible above protective scaffoulding. In the following four days, the ground was completely cleared; work on its underground foundations commenced a month later. The granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
slabs from the Gillender Building were recycled into tombstones of the Green-Wood Cemetery
Green-Wood Cemetery
Green-Wood Cemetery was founded in 1838 as a rural cemetery in Brooklyn, Kings County , New York. It was granted National Historic Landmark status in 2006 by the U.S. Department of the Interior.-History:...
in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
.
Of the 250 men involved in the demolition project, two Italian
Italian American
An Italian American , is an American of Italian ancestry. The designation may also refer to someone possessing Italian and American dual citizenship...
workers were injured by falling girders, one of them died in the hospital.
The famous Gillender Building, which when erected twelve years ago on the northwest corner of Nassau and Wall Streets was called the tallest skyscraper in the world, its tower rising some 300 feet above the streets, has gone the way of other landmarks.
- The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, June 17, 1910
The Bankers Trust Company Building, now known as 14 Wall Street
14 Wall Street
14 Wall Street, originally named the Bankers Trust Company Building, is a skyscraper on Wall Street in New York City, United States. It occupies the block along Nassau Street from Wall Street to Pine Street and is across from the New York Stock Exchange and Federal Hall...
, was completed in 1912, then being the tallest banking building in the world. The bank occupied only the three lower floors; its main operations were housed elsewhere in less expensive offices. About 19 years later, Bankers Trust acquired and demolished the adjacent Hanover, Astor, and Pine Street Buildings, and replaced them with an annex to the original Bankers Trust Building, which was completed in 1933 and tripling its rentable area. Helen Gillender Asinari died a year earlier, in 1932.
In fiction
The Gillender Building is the site of a final scene in Jed RubenfeldJed Rubenfeld
Jed Rubenfeld is the Robert R. Slaughter Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He is an expert on constitutional law, privacy, and the First Amendment.-Biography:...
's The Interpretation of Murder
The Interpretation of Murder
The Interpretation of Murder, published in 2006, is Jed Rubenfeld's first novel. The book is written in the first person perspective of Dr. Stratham Younger, supposedly an American psychoanalyst...
, a 2006 novel reconstructing Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
's 1909 visit to New York. The narrator and Nora Acton (linked to Freud's case study of Dora) meet for the last time in the Gillender cupola, watch the New York skyline, well aware that the building will be soon torn down.
In M. K. Hobson
M. K. Hobson
M. K. Hobson is a speculative fiction and fantasy writer. In 2003 she was a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her debut novel The Native Star was nominated for the 2010 Nebula Award...
's Hotel Astarte, The Warlock "had his fingernails polished by a mute Chinese woman he kept in locked in a small room in his office on the top floor of the Gillender Building on Wall Street". The story is set in June 1910 and October 1929, when the Gillender Building had already been dismantled.