Western Union Telegraph Building
The Western Union Telegraph Building was a building at Dey Street and Broadway in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. The ten-story, structure was originally designed by George B. Post, with alterations by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh. It is considered one of the first skyscrapers in New York City.
Western Union decided to construct the building in 1872 after outgrowing a previous space at 145 Broadway. Post was selected as the winner of an architectural design competition, and the building was completed in February 1875. At the time of its completion, it was one of the tallest structures in New York City, behind only Trinity Church, the New York Tribune Building, and the Brooklyn Bridge towers. The original design contained eleven stories, including the ground story. It had a three-story mansard roof and a clock tower whose pinnacle gave the building its 230-foot height. The interior included executive offices, a large telegraph operating room, and office space that could be rented to other tenants.
The top five stories were destroyed by fire in 1890, although the superstructure of the ground story and the lowest five floors remained intact. Hardenbergh designed a four-story flat-roofed expansion to the structure, completed in 1891. AT&T, which acquired the Western Union Telegraph Building, decided to redevelop the site with a 29-story building at 195 Broadway, which was completed in 1916. The old Western Union Building was demolished between 1912 and 1914, although Western Union continued to occupy the replacement structure until 1930.
Site
The Western Union Building was at the northwestern corner of Broadway and Dey Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The building originally occupied along Broadway to the east and along Dey Street to the south. The rear boundary of the site, on the west, was slightly wider at about. The site initially took up five land lots in total: three on Broadway, each measuring, and two on Dey Street, each measuring. Dey Street sloped downward away from Broadway, so that while the basement was half a level below Broadway, it was at the same level as Dey Street at the western end of the site. When the Western Union Building was renovated in 1890, an additional lot on Dey Street was acquired for the expansion, measuring.Architecture
The Western Union Building was originally designed by architect George B. Post and opened as the headquarters of Western Union in 1875. The Western Union Building was designed in the Neo-Grec style with Beaux-Arts influences, although at the time of its construction, the style was characterized as French Renaissance. Numerous contractors provided material for the original building. After the structure was severely damaged in an 1890 fire, it was rebuilt in 1892 to designs by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh.The building was ten stories tall, rising to a height of at the tip of its clock tower. The height of the outer walls, below the mansard roof, was. The ground story was considered a fully raised basement, and the floor numbering started above the ground story. The clock tower made the Western Union Building one of the tallest structures in New York City, after Trinity Church, the New York Tribune Building, and the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge. At the time of the Western Union Building's completion, the city's tallest buildings were typically not taller than six stories, and church spires only rose to nine stories. This was attributed to the fact that the elevator was still a relatively new technology.
Facade
The articulation originally consisted of three horizontal sections similar to the components of a column. The granite blocks used in the structure came from Quincy, Massachusetts, and Richmond, Virginia, while the brick came from Baltimore. Above the base, the spandrels between the windows on each floor were recessed between the vertical piers, which separated the facades into bays. On the Broadway facade, the second and fifth piers from south were designed to be wider, thereby supporting the clock tower and mansard roof above. The ornamentation of the Western Union Building was generally not as prominent as its main structural features.The base of the Western Union Building, comprising the lowest three stories, was clad with rusticated blocks of granite. The main entrance was through a flight of stairs at the center of the Broadway facade, although there was also a direct entrance to the basement at the western end of the Dey Street facade. Two pairs of Quincy granite columns flanked the main entrance. A stone balcony above the main entrance carried bronze sculptures of Samuel Morse and Benjamin Franklin. The bronze sculptures may have been created by Launt Thompson, whom Post had recommended to Western Union. Quincy granite was also used for the pilasters that ran around the base.
The walls on the third through sixth floors consisted of alternating horizontal strips of Baltimore brick and Richmond granite. The facade of the shaft was visually distinct from that of the base, with materials that were less heavy, less expensive, and more uniform in pattern. The sixth story had low windows and a balcony with iron railings ran above it. The exterior walls of the seventh floor, at the level of the balcony, were designed to let light into that floor and reduce the load on the walls in the floors below.
The original roof was a three-story mansard roof, which contained the eighth through tenth stories. The mansard roof was constructed by J. B. and J. M. Cornell. The building was topped by a clock tower, which was one of the tallest structures in the city at its completion. The centers of the clock faces were above street level. Beginning in 1877, a time ball was dropped from the top of the building at exactly noon, triggered by a telegraph from the National Observatory in Washington, D.C. According to a Western Union publicity director, the clock and time ball were used by "people on ships, in New Jersey, on Long Island and far north on Manhattan Island". The time-ball system, invented by George May Phelps, was used as the initial reference for standard railway time starting in 1883; it also directly inspired One Times Square's New Year's Eve "ball drop", an annual event since 1907.
The sixth and seventh stories and the mansard roof burned in 1890. They were replaced with a four-story, flat-roofed expansion. The reconstructed upper floors were designed in a distinct style compared to the lowest five floors and the ground story. Unlike at the base and the shaft, the upper floors lacked any granite bands. There were semicircular arched windows above the sixth through eighth floors and smaller semicircular arched windows at the ninth floor. The time ball was placed in a cage atop the expansion, about above street level.
Features
The superstructure was mainly made of metal. The cylindrical columns, made of cast iron, supported floor beams that were deep. The building was advertised as fireproof, using only a minimal amount of wood. However, similar structures with iron columns had collapsed during the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, either because of extreme heat or when they were suddenly chilled by water from fire hoses. Nonetheless, the steel superstructure was left exposed in the Western Union Building and largely survived the 1890 fire. The mansard roof was constructed of iron beams, supported only along the outer walls, thereby reducing the number of columns needed for the seventh floor. The iron-truss beams that supported the top of the mansard roof were long.The floors consisted of brick arches between iron beams. The brick-arched floors were covered with Beton Coignet artificial stone tile, surrounded by a border of encaustic tile. The hallways were covered entirely in encaustic tiles. The Western Union Building also contained plaster-block wall partitions and plastered ceilings.
Interior
The Western Union Building served as a corporate headquarters, with clerical and operational departments. There were two basement levels. The first basement level contained the packing room of the supply department, where goods were assorted and items were packed, while the second basement contained the engine room. The ground story contained numerous departments. The treasurer's office had a separate entrance from Broadway and had a vault beneath the main entrance steps. Just inside the main door was a public passageway long and wide, which ran west-east parallel to Dey Street. On one side of the hall was a continuous mahogany counter for Western Union's cable, general message, city, and delivery departments. The hall connected to the elevator lobby and a ladies' waiting room. At the rear, or western, end of the ground story was the supply department and the office of the keeper of stores. The floor surface of the ground story was laid with encaustic tile in mosaic. The first and second floors were originally used as rental floors, while the third through fifth floors contained various offices.On the original sixth floor was the battery room, which contained the inbound and outbound telegraph wires and thousands of cells that generated power for the telegraphs. This story had a ceiling of and was lit by low windows. Wires ran into the battery room from the balcony surrounding the seventh floor. There were wardrobe rooms for operators on the sixth floor as well. The battery room had been moved to the second basement prior to the 1890 fire.
The original seventh floor, which contained the telegraph operating room, had dimensions of and a ceiling of. The seventh floor was largely free of obstructions, except for four iron columns on its eastern end, which supported the clock tower. It was also illuminated well, with more than forty windows on all sides in addition to gas lamps. There was a switchboard on the room's northern side, measuring long, wide, which carried three hundred telegraph wires in total. There were more than eighty mahogany operators' tables, each divided into four parts by glass partitions. The different genders worked in a separate part of the room and were separated by a partition measuring tall. The seventh-floor operating room had a ceiling fresco that depicted the sky.
The original eighth through tenth stories were used as employee rooms and storerooms. The eighth floor originally contained the bookkeeping department, operators' lunchrooms, the offices of the New York Associated Press, and a water tank with a capacity of. On the ninth floor were the kitchen, washing and drying rooms, refrigerators, and employee dining rooms. The tenth floor contained a message storeroom and another water tank. A flight of stairs ran from the tenth floor to the clock tower.
When the original sixth through tenth stories were destroyed in 1890, they were replaced with four flat-roofed stories. The new sixth floor was turned into offices, while the operating rooms were split between the new seventh and eighth stories. The replacement operating rooms measured and were lit by thirty-six large windows. The seventh story had a commercial news department as well. There were ten switchboards across the operating rooms. The new ninth story became a restaurant, kitchen, and servants' rooms.