Cable Building (1893) – New York

The Cable Building is one of my favorite New York structures, mostly because I have fond memories associated with it, including the quiet Thanksgiving morning when I took the picture shown above.

Completed around late 1893, this 8-story steel-framed building¹ includes a full basement and fronts on Broadway, Houston, and Mercer Streets on the border of Greenwich Village and NoHo.

The Cable Building was designed for the Broadway & Seventh Avenue Railway Company by Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White,² and is a very early example of the Beaux-Arts style.

The building’s exterior was originally faced with Indiana limestone on the first and second floors, and the upper floors are covered in yellow brick and striking ornamental terra cotta,³ topped by an elaborate copper cornice.

Each floor encompasses nearly 20,000 square feet⁴ and encircles a central light court of more than 3,000 square feet.^{5 6} At its opening, the building’s first floor was designated for retail use, with the top three floors designed for offices and the middle floors reserved for warehouse space.⁷

My favorite part of the exterior is the classically-inspired sculpture of two robed women guarding the portico on the east facade, designed by J. Massey Rhind.⁸

With that being said, the building’s overall design isn’t White’s best: the chamfered corners temper the appearance of bulkiness and provide interesting focal points, but the many large windows on every side of the structure clutter the composition, making it look messy and overwrought.

What makes the Cable Building impressive, however, is that it was designed to conceal a power plant for the street railway company, effectively creating “a building within a building”.⁹

Reaching 46 feet below the street surface,¹⁰ the building’s basement originally housed 550 tons of machinery that powered the company’s cable cars, including wheels measuring 32 feet in diameter and weighing 50 tons each.¹¹

The machinery has long since been removed, and today the Cable Building’s deep bowels house the Angelika Film Center, where there’s a chance you may find me some late evening, watching an indie flick as nearby subway trains rumble past.

References

1. “The Cable Building.” The New York Times, December 19, 1893, p. 9. ↩︎
2. Baker, Paul R. Stanny: The Gilded Life of Stanford White. New York: The Free Press (1989), pp. 213-14. ↩︎
3. “The Cable Building.” The New York Times, December 19, 1893, p. 9. ↩︎
4. ibid. ↩︎
5. ibid. ↩︎
6. “A Model Building.” The Independent (New York), February 1, 1894, p. 22. ↩︎
7. “The Cable Building.” The New York Times, December 19, 1893, p. 9. ↩︎
8. Looking Up: The Cable Building – Village Preservation ↩︎
9. “Motive Force Of The Cable Cars.” The Sun (New York), November 30, 1893, p. 7. ↩︎
10. “The Cable Building.” The New York Times, December 19, 1893, p. 9. ↩︎
11. “Motive Force Of The Cable Cars.” The Sun (New York), November 30, 1893, p. 7. ↩︎