70 Pine Street
70 Pine Street is a 67-story, residential skyscraper in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York, U.S. Designed by the architectural firm of Clinton & Russell, Holton & George in the Art Deco style, 70 Pine Street was constructed between 1930 and 1932 as an office building. The structure was originally named for the energy conglomerate Cities Service Company, its first tenant. Upon its completion, it was Lower Manhattan's tallest building and, until 1969, the world's third-tallest building.
The building occupies a trapezoidal lot on Pearl Street between Pine and Cedar Streets. It features a brick, limestone, and gneiss facade with numerous setbacks. The building contains an extensive program of ornamentation, including depictions of the Cities Service Company's triangular logo and solar motifs. The interior has an Art Deco lobby and escalators at the lower stories, as well as double-deck elevators linking the floors. A three-story penthouse, intended for Cities Service's founder, Henry Latham Doherty, was instead used as a public observatory.
Construction was funded through a public offering of company shares, rather than a mortgage loan. Despite having been built during the Great Depression, the building was profitable enough to break even by 1936, and ninety percent of its space was occupied five years later. The American International Group bought the building in 1976, and it was acquired by another firm in 2009 after AIG went bankrupt. The building and its first-floor interior were designated as official New York City landmarks in June 2011. The structure was converted to residential use in 2016.
Site
70 Pine Street is in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. It sits on a land lot bounded by Pine Street to the south, Pearl Street to the east, and Cedar Street to the north. The roughly trapezoidal site covers, measuring on Pine and Cedar Streets by on Pearl Street. The terrain slopes downward to the east, toward Pearl Street, so that there is an upper lobby and a lower lobby. Neighboring buildings include 56 Pine Street and the Down Town Association building to the northwest; 90–94 Maiden Lane to the north; 48 Wall Street to the southwest; and 60 Wall Street to the south.Architecture
70 Pine Street is a 67-story building rising. The roof is above ground, while the top story is high. The skyscraper has a Gothic-like, spire-topped appearance. The architectural firm Clinton & Russell, Holton & George designed 70 Pine Street in the Art Deco style; the structure was the last large commission by these architects. Of that firm's principals, Thomas J. George was likely the most involved with the design. James Stewart & Company was the general contractor, Taylor Fichter Steel Construction was the structural engineer, and John M. Parrish was the project's general superintendent.The building was constructed as part of an ongoing skyscraper race in New York City, which resulted in the city having the world's tallest building from 1908 to 1974. When completed, 70 Pine Street was the third-tallest building in the world, after the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building in Midtown Manhattan, holding that rank until 1969. The building surpassed the Manhattan Company's building at 40 Wall Street by to be Lower Manhattan's tallest building.
Form
70 Pine Street features numerous setbacks on its exterior. Though setbacks in New York City skyscrapers were mandated by the 1916 Zoning Resolution in order to allow light and air to reach the streets below, they later became a defining feature of the Art Deco style. To maximize rentable space while complying with the 1916 Zoning Resolution, the setbacks were placed at regular intervals, with the tops of each setback forming a diagonal line. The setbacks on the north–south and east–west elevations alternate.The building's 11th through 31st floors gradually step back from the base. The building's shaft begins above the 32nd floor and rises to the 54th or 56th floor, where the corners of the shaft taper off. The intermediate levels contain smaller setbacks, which were used as private terraces for the offices on the respective floors. There were multiple setbacks on each side, so the upper floors contained up to 20 sides. The top stories are one-fourth the size of the lowest stories.
Above the 67th-floor observation deck is the building's spire, which rises and weighs. It is composed of a glass lantern rising and topped by a stainless steel pinnacle extending another. The author Dirk Stichweh characterized the spire as giving the impression of a mountain peak covered with snow. The spire had a beacon, which the publicist Edwin C. Hill described as being "visible for 200 miles at sea and inland", though the beacon could actually be seen only from away. W. Parker Chase, writing in 1932, characterized the spire as being "almost sensational in its 'differentness.
Facade
The entrance portals and lower-story windows are lavishly decorated. The lower stories of the facade are covered with Indiana limestone, placed above a water table of Minnesota granite. Red-and-black Morton Gneiss wraps the ground floor. The upper stories are clad with four shades of buff-colored brick, which darken toward the building's peak. A parapet with a limestone coping surrounds each coping. An extensive lighting system, consisting of 400-watt lamps, highlights the building's features at night. The presence of the lamps was influenced by Cities Service's role as an energy provider. An early publicist for 70 Pine Street said that Cities Service founder Henry Latham Doherty was personally involved in the structure's design and that "he insisted on dignity with beauty, to the absolute avoidance of the garish, the flamboyant, and the over colorful." Doherty wanted the building to appear "exclusive, rich, yet simple and even a little severe".70 Pine Street was one of the first buildings to use aluminum extensively on its facade. Cliff Parkhurst of the Parkhurst Organization designed the aluminum ornamentation of 70 Pine Street. These ornamental features include reliefs above each set of entrance doors, spandrels with sharp arrises above the lower-story windows, and a ventilation grille on Cedar Street. The reliefs above the doors are designed with motifs of butterflies and sunflowers, which appear as an abstract pattern from a distance. In addition, there were 6,000 windows, ten million bricks, of marble, and of steel used in 70 Pine Street's construction. The black and pink marble in the building was transported from Minnesota and Tennessee.
Entrances
70 Pine Street has five entrances. Four primary entrances, two on Pine Street and two on Cedar Street, all lead to the main lobby. Another entrance on Pearl Street, which was formerly located under the Third Avenue elevated line, has a simpler design and leads to a lobby on the lower level. All of the streets adjoining the building are narrower than the typical street in Manhattan: Pine Street is wide, while Cedar Street is wide. Because of the slope of the terrain, the western entrances are at the same level as the street, and the eastern entrances are accessed by short flights of steps rising from the street. All four entrances are designed with Art Deco patterns.The eastern entrances on Pine and Cedar Streets are near the centers of these elevations; they consist of large four-story portals with stepped arches. Each arch is divided by a limestone pillar that contains a freestanding limestone relief of 70 Pine Street. The design of these pillars, each tall, may have been influenced by Rene Paul Chambellan. Architectural critic Robert A. M. Stern wrote that 70 Pine Street's reliefs "surveyed the crowds of workers as a carved Madonna would bless the pilgrims of a Gothic cathedral." There were three metal doors on either side of the pillars. Above the doors are four tiers of sash windows; the lowest such tier was originally composed of glass louvers, which reduced wind pressure when the doors were being opened, but these were later replaced with glass panes. Along the interior reveals of both portal arches are reliefs containing the triangular logo of Cities Service. Inside each entrance were staircases leading to the upper and lower lobbies.
The western entrances on Pine and Cedar Streets are near the western end of the building and are two stories tall. Each portal contains two sets of revolving doors.
Interior
At the time of 70 Pine Street's construction, developers had to consider skyscrapers' profitability in relation to their height. 70 Pine Street was intended to accommodate between 7,000 and 8,000 employees, more than nearly every other skyscraper at the time. The interior spaces were therefore designed with high capacity in mind. The building contains of interior space. When it opened, there was of gross floor area, of which was available for lease. Offices were arranged in a "U" shape, wrapping around the mechanical core on the north, east, and south. The northern and southern elevations of the facade are staggered because of the setbacks, maximizing natural light in each office.Lobby
The first-floor lobby is designed in the Art Deco style and is arranged into six hallways. Two of the hallways are long, traveling north to south between the pairs of entrances on Pine and Cedar Streets, while three other hallways are long and travel west to east; there is also a wide central hall. The passages are wide, with the widest section of the lobby near Pine Street, where there is an information booth. The lobby is oriented slightly west, away from the elevated lines that formerly overshadowed Pearl Street, so that the westerly entrances could be located at ground level and so that the skybridge to 60 Wall Street would be possible. The layout of the lobby allowed visitors to pass from Pine to Cedar Street.Inside each entrance are retail spaces that face the first-floor lobby. Four storefronts were located on the southern portion of the lobby. A 2015 New York Times article noted that, until the early 2000s, these retail spaces contained such stores as "a drugstore, a bookstore, a tobacconist and a telegraph office". There are stairs on the southern portion of the lobby near Pine Street, as well as at the eastern portion near Pearl Street; these stairs ascend to the second floor and descend to the basement lobby. There were also escalators between every level from the basement to the sixth floor, near the western entrance on Pine Street.
The basement lobby is a simpler version of the first-floor lobby, serving mainly as a boarding area for the lower decks of 70 Pine Street's [|former double-deck elevators]. The upper decks of these elevators were served from the main lobby; the elevators are arranged along the central hall and the northernmost east–west corridor. The elevator doors are designed with Native American motifs, such as zigzags and sunbursts, along with the Cities Service logo. The elevator frames themselves contain stepped arches. One critic said the use of separate elevator lobbies would "cut the possibility of elevator flirtations exactly in half".
The lobby is decorated with marble walls, plaster ceilings, and aluminum grilles. Despite Doherty's desire for "dignity with beauty", the lobby is highly ornamented with multicolored marbles from Europe, including Roman and golden travertine, Belgian Black, Belgian Grand Antique, Champville, Levanto, and Tinos marbles. The walls are mostly yellow marble, divided by vertical piers of dark-red marble, while the white and pink marble floor panels are arranged in a checkerboard pattern. Large, jagged corbels surround the white plaster ceiling, which has colorful relief bands, which emanate from elements such as the lighting fixtures. Cliff Parkhurst furnished the elaborate metalwork in the lobby. A writer for The New York Times compared the building's lobby to "something Bernini would have designed if he'd lived to see the Jazz Age."