Cocoa Exchange Condominium

 condominium, NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, 1904_construction, movie / film / TV location, historic landmark, Renaissance Revival (architecture)

1 Wall Street Court is a 205-foot, 15-story Renaissance-revival residential building completed in 1904 for the Century Realty Co. Designed by Clinton & Russell as a speculative office building known as the Beaver Building, also known as the New York Cocoa Exchange.

The plan of the building is flatiron and it is tucked away in one of Lower Manhattan’s nicer crannies just a few feet south of Wall Street. The design has the tripartite arrangement of base-shaft-capital common to many of New York’s early skyscrapers, with a 3-story granite and limestone base, a midsection faced in brick laid in bands of tan and buff shades, and a 3-story capital richly ornamented with glazed terra cotta in shades of green, cream, and russet, incorporating both classically derived and abstract geometric motifs.

The two almost identical facades join in an unusual rounded corner. The main entrance is set in the rounded corner, where it is framed by pilasters supporting an entablature reading "THE NEW YORK COCOA EXCHANGE." This entrance is reached by a high stoop with flaring cheek walls. An entrance on Beaver Street includes a segmental pediment adorned with two sculpted beavers. Beaver heads worked into the lower portion of stone cartouches also adorn a dentiled cornice above the 2nd floor. The windows of the double-height first story and mezzanine retain their original metal colonnettes and spandrel panels. Another dentiled cornice sets off the base from the mid-section.

Above the shaft, the top three floors, with their polychromatic teraa-cotta tiles, have paired windows with double-story neo-classical, bossed window surrounds and recessed spandrel panels with rosettes; flanked by vertical panels having rondels, squares, and rams' heads; and a band below the cornice with a continuous swag and rondels.

Alterations from the 1980s include the installation of large metal lighting fixtures on first story; the painting of the masonry of the base; the replacement of basement windows with ornamental panels and filling in of areaways; basement entrance alterations, including signage and railings for the basement restaurant; new corner entrance doors, transom, and stoop railings.

The building was the headquarters from 1904 until 1921 of the Munson Steamship Co.; the company owned the building from 1919 to 1937. From 1931 to 1972, one of the building's primary tenants was the New York Cocoa Exchange, the world's first and foremost cocoa futures market, amidst the United States' emergence as the world's largest cocoa consumer. The building at 1 Wall Street Court was converted to 126 residential condominiums by a group called Cocoa Partners in 2006. The basement is occupied by by Haru Sushi.

streeteasy.com/building/cocoa-exchange
hdc.org/buildings/beaver-building/
s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/1942.pdf
hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.c041991202?urlappend=%3Bseq=542...
digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-d8fb-a3d9-e0...