The Sun Building (New York City, New York)

7-story Italian Renaissance-style office building completed in 1846 as a 4-story department store. Designed by Trench & Snook, it was originally the A.T. Stewart Department Store, the first of its kind. Almost immediately, Stewart's new marble palace became the favored store of New Yorkers and visitors alike. As first built the store occupied by southeast corner of the intersection of Broadway and Reade Street. Its main facade on Broadway was organized into three units, each three bays wide, and it was only four stories high. Stewart acquired the remaining property along Broadway in 1847 but did not begin construction until 1850. The design followed the original scheme of 3-bay units, and included a fifth floor which also extended to the original 4-story building. In 1852-53 Stewart extended the store once more along Chambers and Reade Streets. An important change in materials was made with the 1853 extension; cast-iron was substituted for marble at the ground floor, and on Reade Street, at both the basement and ground floor.

As the business expanded, Stewart had another building built at Astor Place in 1862, which became the largest store in the world. The marble palace here was then used only for the wholesale trade. After Stewart died in 1876, control of the building passed to Judge Henry Hilton, who removed the wholesale operations from the marble store, and for a while, it remained empty. In 1884, Hilton further expanded the building two units along Chambers and Reade Streets, added two floors and converted the interior to office space. The most famous tenant to occupy the building was the daily newspaper The Sun, which remained here from 1919 to 1952, giving it the name by which it remains known today. In 1970 the title was acquired by the City of New York and it is now used for municipal offices.

In 1995, the City utilized a unique public/private initiative to begin to restore the entire building. Since 280 Broadway is the only building in the DCAS portfolio that contained extensive retail areas on the street level and second floor, the City worked with a private developer to completely renovate the interior and to preserve the retail portions. The renovation was completed in 2002. Retail tenants had already moved into the first and second floors.

The Broadway facade was always intended as the main facade and designed accordingly, composed of five units, each three bays wide. The 2nd and 4th units project slightly forward from the other three. The ground floor has smooth pilasters set on plinths, paired at the ends of the central unit with freestanding columns which distinguish the entrance (the entire facade was originally lined with a colonnade of such columns. Both pilasters and columns have modified Corinthian capitals. Modern shop windows have been installed. The ground floor is surmounted by a continuous entablature with a simple dentiled cornice.

Above the ground floor the building rises for six marble-faced stories. Rising to the top of the 5th floor, each of the units is set off by quoins. The windows of each floor decrease in height with each successive story, up to the 5th floor. All the windows are square-headed and framed with architrave moldings which are eared at the 2nd floor. The 2nd-floor windows in the projecting units have balustrades at their bases and are crowned by pediments with human mask keystones. The windows in the flanking units have solid panels at their bases and are surmounted by cap cornices. A continuous band course extends across the facade at the height of the balustrades. Cap cornices also crown the 3rd & 4th-floor windows. These windows and those at the 5th floor have sills resting on small corbels, and string courses extend across the facade at sill level on the 3rd & 5th floors.

The 6th & 7th floors, added in 1884, are also clad in stone with square-headed windows, five in the flanking units and three in the projecting units, flanked by pilasters with Tuscan capitals at the 6th floor, and at the seventh, by pilasters with Scamozzi capital and embossed spandrels over the windows. A cornice surmounts the 6th floor. The building is crowned by balustrades alternating with paneled parapets above the projecting units.

The Chambers Street facade is now the most visible; it is organized into eight units. The first three extending eastward from Broadway were built in 1850, the next one in 1872 , the next two in 1852-53, and the easternmost two are from 1884. The 2nd, 5th, & 7th units are slightly projecting. As on the Broadway facade the ground floor of the Chambers facade was designed as a colonnade with marble columns flanking two entrances and marble pilasters flanking shop windows. The colonnade of the later sections was continued by cast-iron columns and pilasters. Only one of each of these survive, at the western edge of the 7th unit. Otherwise the ground floor has been completely modernized with new storefronts.

The ornamental and window details of the upper floors are like those on Broadway. The only difference comes at the roof line where the paneled parapet extends across all three eastern units, instead of having balustrades above the two non-projecting units.

The Reade Street facade, originally seen as a secondary facade, was also built in stages, and also contains eight units. The 5th & 7th are projecting. The ground floor treatment is somewhat more complicated than on the other two facades due to the downward slope of the street away from Broadway. The original section of the building contains large windows creative by 12 pilasters on plinths of differing heights. The tops of the basement windows are covered by metal grilles. In the units to the east of the original section the ground floor continues in a cast-iron storefront with fluted columns with modified Corinthian capitals. In the 1970s a garage was inserted below a portion of the building, with two wide entrance/exits at the east end of the facade.

The ground floor is occupied by Radio Shack, a Duane-Reade pharmacy, and Modell's Sporting Goods.

Categories: office building, administrative building, 1840s construction, local government, historic landmark