Category: Beaux-Arts

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 eight-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 terracotta,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

That 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 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.

Gallery

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. ↩︎

The Bowery Savings Bank is a significant early work in the Beaux-Arts style, credited to Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White.

Following their monumental buildings of classical inspiration for the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, the firm entirely embraced Roman and Renaissance influences in their designs, ushering in the Beaux-Arts movement that dominated American architecture for decades.

Location of Bowery Savings Bank

By the time of White’s death in 1906, the firm’s work had become increasingly derivative and dreary, but this structure was designed early enough to retain some of their initial flair for quirkiness and originality: the front doors set slightly off-center within a recessed arch, for instance.

Built in the shape of an “L” and composed of granite and Indiana limestone, the Bowery Savings Bank has two entrances, neither of which resembles the other—a larger side entrance on Grand Street, and the smaller, more interesting Bowery side.

It appears the building was largely designed by Edward P. York, then White’s assistant, who also supervised its construction. York would later become a founding partner in the architectural firm of York & Sawyer.⁷

Ever the playboy, in the mid-to-late 1890s, White increasingly delegated his work to his employees while indulging in a lavish lifestyle of excess and consumption—it didn’t end well for him.

Gallery

Elevations and Sections⁸

Interior⁹

References

1. A Monograph of the Work of McKim, Mead & White 1879-1915, Volume 1. New York: The Architectural Book Publishing Co. (1915). ↩︎
2. “The Bowery Savings Bank’s New Building.” New-York Daily Tribune, February 14, 1893, p. 11. ↩︎
3. “Another Handsome Bank Building.” New-York Daily Tribune, February 15, 1893, p. 3. ↩︎
4. “Financial Announcements.” The New-York Times, June 24, 1894, p. 14. ↩︎
5. “Bowery Bank’s New Building.” The World (New York), June 27, 1894, p. 6. ↩︎
6. “Bowery Savings Opens New Home”. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (New York), June 22, 1923, p. 22. ↩︎
7. Bowery Savings Bank Building – Landmarks Preservation Commission ↩︎
8. A Monograph of the Work of McKim, Mead & White 1879-1915, Volume 1. New York: The Architectural Book Publishing Co. (1915). ↩︎
9. ibid. ↩︎