New York World Building
The New York World Building was a building in the Civic Center of Manhattan in New York City, along Park Row between Frankfort Street and the Brooklyn Bridge. Part of Lower Manhattan's former "Newspaper Row", it was designed by George B. Post in the Renaissance Revival style, serving as the headquarters of the New York World after its completion in 1890. The New York World Building was the tallest building in New York City upon completion, becoming the first to overtop Trinity Church, and was by some accounts the world's tallest building.
The World Building contained a facade made of sandstone, brick, terracotta, and masonry. Its interior structure included brick interior walls, concrete floors, and an internal superstructure made of iron. There were twelve full stories, two basements, and a six-story dome at the top of the building. The pinnacle above the dome reached. When the building was in use, the World primarily used the dome, ground floor, and basements, while the other stories were rented to tenants. The World Building's design generally received mixed reviews, with criticism focusing mostly on its immense scale.
The World owner Joseph Pulitzer started planning for a new World headquarters in the late 1880s, and he hired Post following an architectural design competition. Construction took place from October 1889 to December 1890. Following the World subsequent success, Horace Trumbauer designed a thirteen-story annex for the World Building, which was erected between 1907 and 1908. When the World closed in 1931, the building was used as headquarters of The Journal of Commerce. The World Building was demolished between 1955 and 1956 to make room for an expanded entrance ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge. A large stained glass window and the building's cornerstone were preserved by the Columbia University School of Journalism.
Site
The New York World Building was at 53–63 Park Row, at the northeast corner with Frankfort Street, in the Civic Center of Manhattan, across from New York City Hall. The building initially occupied a roughly parallelogram-shaped land lot with frontage of on Park Row to the northwest and on Frankfort Street to the south. It abutted the Brooklyn Bridge to the north and other buildings to the east; the lot originally had a cut-out on the northeastern corner so that the Brooklyn Bridge side was shorter than the Frankfort Street side. Immediately to the south of the site was the New York Tribune Building. Frankfort Street sloped downward away from Park Row so that while the basement was one level below Park Row, it was only a few steps below grade at the eastern end of the Frankfort Street frontage.After an annex eastward to North William Street was completed in 1908, the building took up the entire city block and had a frontage of along North William Street. The expanded building had of frontage on Frankfort Street. The annex covered a lot of, giving the building a total lot area of.
Prior to the World Building's development, the building was the site of French's Hotel. The hotel had been developed after the lots were acquired by one John Simpson in 1848. The World owner and the building's developer, Joseph Pulitzer, had been thrown out of the same hotel during the American Civil War; at the time, he was a recent Hungarian immigrant who had volunteered to serve in the Union Army's cavalry.
Architecture
The original portion of the New York World Building was completed in 1890 and designed by George B. Post in the Renaissance Revival style with some Venetian Renaissance detail. The World Building was also known as the Pulitzer Building, after Joseph Pulitzer. Multiple contractors provided the material for the structure. The World Building consisted of a "tower" with twelve full stories, topped by a six-story dome. This count excluded a mezzanine above the first story but included a viewing gallery in the dome. Including the mezzanine and a penthouse above the twelfth story of the tower, the latter of which was at the same height as the dome's first level, the tower had fourteen stories.When the building opened in 1890, the World Building's dome had a height of and a spire of, though this calculation was measured from the eastern end of the Frankfort Street frontage, rather than from the main frontage on Park Row. The flat roof was above sidewalk level. The World Building was New York City's tallest building when opened, becoming the first to rise higher than Trinity Church's spire. By some accounts, it was also the world's tallest building, when the spire was counted.
The actual number of stories in the World Building was disputed. The World described the building as having 26 stories, counting the tower as fourteen stories and including two subsurface levels, three mezzanines, and an observatory over the dome. However, scholars described the building as having only 16 or 18 stories, excluding mezzanines, below-ground levels, and levels that could not be fully occupied. Contemporary media characterized the structure as an 18-story building, while Emporis and SkyscraperPage, two websites that collect data on buildings, listed the building as having 20 stories.
A thirteen-story annex to William Street, completed in 1908, was designed by Horace Trumbauer in the same style as Post's design. This annex replaced a two-story addition to the original World Building on Frankfort Street.
Facade
Park Row
The main elevation on Park Row was clad with red sandstone below the tenth story, and buff brick and terracotta above. At the base, the columns were made of red granite, while the spandrel panels between each story were gray granite. The Park Row elevation contained five bays, of which the three center bays formed a slightly projecting pavilion with a triple-height entrance arch at the base. There were two small circular windows in the spandrels of the arch, and a frieze with the words and a cornice above the arch. On the 3rd story, the three central windows were flanked by four ornamental bronze female torch-bearers carved by Karl Bitter, which represented the arts.Pedestals flanked the center bays on the 4th story. The 5th through 10th stories of the center bays were divided horizontally into three sets of double-height arches, each supported by four pairs of columns. At the 11th story, four pairs of square piers divided each bay. Four black copper caryatids by Bitter, representing human races, flanked the 12th-story windows. A cornice and balustrade ran above the 12th story, with a pediment above the center bays, as well as a terracotta panel containing the carved monogram and the date "1889". The outer bays of the Park Row elevation had double-height arched windows above the mezzanine and 3rd story, and square windows above. All of the bays had arched windows on the 12th story.
Other facades
Between the Park Row and Frankfort Street elevations was a rounded corner that spanned from the first to tenth stories. The corner entrance contained a double-height arch flanked by female figures depicting justice and truth. As in the center bays on Park Row, there were three sets of double-height arches between the fifth and tenth stories. A balustrade ran above the tenth story of the rounded corner, and the 11th and 12th stories were recessed from that corner, with a convex wall running perpendicularly from both Park Row and Frankfort Street.On Frankfort Street, the facade was clad with red sandstone below the 3rd story, and buff brick and terracotta above. The North William Street facade was similar to that of the original building but had granite facing on the 1st story and brick with terracotta above.
Features
There were eighteen lifts in the building, including passenger and freight elevators. The elevators were made of iron and encased in glazed brick walls. Four hydraulic elevators served passengers; three were for the use of the office tenants below the 12th floor, while the fourth was a circular elevator that ran to the dome and was used exclusively by the World staff. Two additional elevators were used by other employees. Nine other lifts were used to transport materials: one each for stereotype plates, rolls of paper, coal, copy, and restaurant use, and four to carry the stereotype plates and printed papers.The building was heated by a steam system throughout and contained 3,500 electric lights at its opening. The three boilers in the subbasement could generate a combined. In addition, there was a pneumatic tube system to transport items from the dome to the basement. A water storage tank with a capacity of was situated in the cellar, and fed water to a smaller tank at the rear of the roof.
There were of available floor space upon the building's opening, which was "practically doubled" with the completion in 1908 of the building's William Street annex. The hallways were tiled, while the entrances were finished in marble. The floors of the World Building's offices were made of Georgia pine upon a concrete base. Ash was used for woodwork finish, except in the publication office, where mahogany was used. The building contained a total of 250 units, of which 149 were rented to tenants and 79 were used by the World staff.
Structural features
The foundation of the World Building was excavated to a depth of, just above the water level; the underlying layer of bedrock was around deep. The foundation consisted of a "mat" of concrete, overlaid by a series of large stones that formed inverted arches between them. The brick and concrete foundation piers rested upon these arches, which in turn descended to the underlying gravel bed. Such construction was common among the city's large 19th-century buildings but had a tendency to break apart. Hard brick was used for the foundation walls up to the basement story, above which large granite blocks were placed in the wall. The foundation used of sand, plaster, lime, and cement.The World Building contained a hybrid cage-frame structure whose exterior walls were partially load-bearing. The exterior walls' thicknesses had been prescribed by city building codes of the time. They were generally thick at the base, with the thickest wall being thick at the base, but tapered to just below the dome. The exterior wall sections on Park Row and Frankfort Street were so large because they were not part of a single connected wall but instead consisted of several piers, which had to be thicker than continuous walls per city codes. Inside was a superstructure of wrought iron columns supporting steel girders, which collectively weighed over. The columns tapered upward, from at the base to at the top. Flat arches, made of hollow concrete blocks, were placed between the girders.
The dome's frame was designed as if it were a separate structure. The dome measured across at its base and measured from the main roof to the lantern. The dome consisted of a wrought-iron framing with double-diagonal bracing between every other pair of columns. The ribs supporting the dome were placed on top of iron columns that descended directly to the building's foundation without intersecting with the rest of the superstructure. The exterior of the dome was made of copper and contained cornices above the first and third stories of the dome. The fourth and fifth dome stories were divided by the ribs into twelve sections with small lunette windows on each story. At the top of the dome was a lantern surrounded by an observatory. Visitors could pay five cents to travel to the observatory.