American Surety Building
The American Surety Building is an office building and early skyscraper at Pine Street and Broadway in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City, across from Trinity Church. The building was designed in a Neo-Renaissance style by Bruce Price with a later expansion by Herman Lee Meader. It is tall, with either 23 or 26 stories. It was one of Manhattan's first buildings with steel framing and curtain wall construction.
The American Surety Building contains a facade of Maine granite. Its articulation consists of three horizontal sections similar to the components of a column, namely a base, shaft, and capital, making the American Surety Building one of the earliest New York City skyscrapers to feature such a layout. The facade contains several ornamental features, including sculptural elements designed by J. Massey Rhind. In addition, the American Surety Building uses an interior skeleton of structural steel, as well as a cantilevered steel structure for its foundations.
The building was erected between 1894 and 1896 as a 21-story structure, which was the second tallest building in New York City when completed. Between 1920 and 1922, an annex was built to designs by Meader, increasing the floor area and adding two stories to the building. A later tenant, the Bank of Tokyo, hired Kajima International to restore the lower 13 stories between 1973 and 1975. The American Surety Building was made a New York City designated landmark in 1995.
Site
The American Surety Building is located in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, adjacent to Broadway to the west and Pine Street to the north, with Wall Street less than a block to the south. The building is adjacent to Trinity Church, Trinity's churchyard, and the Trinity and United States Realty Buildings to the west; the Equitable Building to the north; 14 Wall Street to the east; and 1 Wall Street to the south. Entrances to the New York City Subway's Wall Street station, served by the, are adjacent to the building.The lot covers about, and measures on Pine Street and on Broadway. None of the sides are parallel. The original lot, prior to the building's 1920–1922 expansion, measured.
Architecture
The American Surety Building is either 23 or 26 stories tall, with a height of. It was designed by Bruce Price in the Neo-Renaissance style. Upon completion, the American Surety Building was 21 stories tall with a height of either. This made it New York City's second tallest building, behind the now-demolished Manhattan Life Insurance Building one block south, which stood at.At the time of the American Surety Building's development in the 1890s, new buildings in New York City were starting to use steel frames, and caisson foundation technology was still relatively new. The American Surety Building was the first New York City skyscraper to use a full steel skeleton. The American Surety Building was also one of the earliest buildings on street corners whose articulation consisted of three horizontal sections similar to the components of a column. The design inspired those of other "tower" skyscrapers in the United States during the early 20th century.
Facade
The facade consists of Maine granite with a 3-story base, a 12-story shaft, and a 6-story capital, with two transitional stories at the 4th and 15th floors. A two-story penthouse is set back above the 21st floor. The Broadway and Pine Street elevations were both seven bays wide before an expansion in 1920–1922 brought the building to 11 bays on both sides. Price said that he wanted to "design a monumental structure", and as such he intended the facade to resemble "a campanile with four pilaster faces, the seven flutes represented by seven rows of windows". The windows on upper stories were originally progressively recessed by per story, so that the 20th floor windows were recessed by ; this allowed sunlight to illuminate the upper stories while utilizing entasis for architectural effect. These windows were subsequently replaced with sash windows. Unlike previous buildings such as the Park Row Building, which typically only had one decorated facade, the American Surety Building had all of its facades decorated.The main entrance is located on Broadway and consists of a two-story Ionic-style colonnade supporting a seven-bay-wide portico; this portico was five bays wide prior to the expansion. The third-story windows above the portico are flanked by six classical figures designed by J. Massey Rhind. Two more figures, in the same style as Rhind's originals, were added in the expansion. At the top of the colonnade is an elaborate frieze. The Broadway facade also has an entrance to the upper floors at its southern end. On Pine Street, the lowest two stories are supported by two-story piers above a granite water table, supporting an entablature that wraps around from Broadway. There is a service entrance on the east end of the Pine Street facade, and the third-story windows on this facade have projecting window surrounds with connecting spandrel panels. An entablature runs above the third story on Pine Street and Broadway.
The facades of the intermediate stories contain slightly projecting horizontal bands. A band course runs above the fourth story on the Broadway and Pine Street facades. There are sculptures extending across the 14th and 15th stories, connecting the intermediate floors to the transitional 15th story. The top six stories were treated as a "cap" with Corinthian style pilasters forming a colonnade; a parapet between the 20th and 21st stories with gilded metal; and a large projecting stone cornice atop the 21st floor. The original gilded parapet and the sculptures were removed in the 1920–1922 expansion, and a cornice with anthemia was installed atop the two-story penthouse. The southern elevation of the 20th and 21st floors, from Price's original design, remains partially visible from the street.
Foundation
Contractor Charles Sooysmith designed the foundation, which was a mix of grillage and caissons. Sooysmith was among the first builders to use pneumatic caissons for foundations, having used them in other projects such as the Manhattan Life Insurance Building. The caissons were sunken to stone beds between deep, where the layer of bedrock was situated. Each caisson was tall and made of steel plates. A steel shaft with a cross section of rose from each of the caissons, and was topped by a cylinder of in diameter by tall. The underlying ground was drawn out from the caissons, and then filled with concrete. Thirteen brick piers were subsequently built around the caisson shafts.The building's internal steel structure is cantilevered over the foundation piers due to the presence of other structures nearby when the American Surety Building was erected. The internal structure was designed to be completely separate from the surrounding buildings, and thus party walls could not be used. A steel plate was placed atop the masonry tips of each pier. A grillage of transversely laid I-beams was installed above the plates. Deep plate girders were placed over the grillages, and the cantilevers extended outward from these girders to the edge of the building footprint, where they supported the columns of the superstructure. At the time of the American Surety Building's construction, there was already discussion on building a subway line under Broadway, and a building representative said in 1897 that the foundation was designed "with a view of withstanding the effect" of a subway tunnel.
Features
Structural features
Thirty-two structural columns were used in the building, which each carry between. The building utilized portal wind bracing, which could sustain winds of at least ; this was demonstrated during January 1896, when the building was subjected to that wind speed with minimal evidence of oscillation. Exposed steel beams were covered with fireproof tile, while the floor arches were made of firebrick. The floors themselves were made of brick arches, concrete and ash aggregate, and steel joints, covered with a marble finish.The northern and western elevations were curtain walls, as were the eastern and southern elevations above the eighth story. Between the first and eighth stories, the eastern and southern walls were load-bearing brick walls. The southern brick wall was thick to prevent fire from spreading to the Schermerhorn Building to the south. At the time of the building's construction, the thickness of a curtain wall was limited to, imposing a force of on the foundation. If the walls had been load-bearing, then they would have needed to be thick, imposing a force of on the foundation. Due to the use of non-load-bearing curtain walls, an additional of usable space was provided in the width of each bay, resulting in a profit of $2,000 per year from the rental of the additional space. Foundation costs were also reduced, although the use of a steel frame canceled out some of the cost savings, since steel was slightly costlier than masonry. The usage of both curtain and bearing walls was not common at the time of the building's construction.
Interior
The American Surety Building had more than 400 rooms upon completion, accessed by six elevators and a spiral staircase. The elevators moved at, which was then considered very rapid. There were two water tanks, one each on the 10th and 21st floors, which had a cumulative capacity of and supplied water to fire hoses on each floor. The 21st floor was used solely as a utility floor. The 10th-floor tank was used to reduce the maximum water pressure in the American Surety Building's pipes.When the building was expanded in 1920, a two-story penthouse was added, with of restaurant space on each floor. The rental space on the 1st through 7th floors was expanded from, and above the 7th floor, the rental space was expanded to. The expanded building had ten elevators clustered on the north side of the building, as well as two staircases at the northwest and southeast corners.
The lobby has a black-and-gold coffered ceiling with a baby-centaur frieze. The ground level contains a large open arcade with ceilings. There was previously a banking room at street level, which contained a gold-leaf ceiling supported by four marble pillars. This banking room was removed in a 1970s renovation and replaced with the open arcade.