Bank of New York & Trust Company Building

 office building, bank, landmark, skyscraper, NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, 1928_construction

513-foot, 32-story neo-Classical/neo-Georgian office building completed in 1928. Designed by Benjamin Wistar Morris, it is clad entirely in white limestone. The 3-story rusticated base of the building with its high, arched windows makes for a dignified street presence, and housed the original main banking floors. The lower section rises up 14th floors vertically before a setback tower ascend to the building's pinnacle. To take advantage of the sloping site, the first floor was treated as a raised basement, and the main banking room was raised to the 2nd story.

On Wall Street the facade is organized into five bays at the first and second floors, and into ten bays from the 3rd to14th floors. On William Street there are eight bays at the first and second floors, and 14 bays at the 3rd to 14th floors. The basement cladding consists of smooth limestone blocks with beveled edges, topped by a cornice. It has square window openings with iron grilles. On both facades the next two floors have square-edged rusticated blocks. Large, round-arched windows at the center of the facades are flanked by shorter flat-arched openings in the corner bays. The large arches also have console keystones and rest on stone spandrel panels with carved anthemia. Above the side windows are small mezzanine windows with bronze grilles decorated by anthemia and fleur-de-lis. A belt course with a wave molding extends beneath the 3rd-story windows, which are surmounted by a Doric entablature with an elaborate frieze featuring garlands, anthemia, and paterae. On Wall Street, the six center windows are flanked by pilasters which carry a frieze inscribed "BANK OF NEW YORK".

The entrance to the former banking spaces, at the center of the Wall Street facade, is set off by an elaborate surround with rusticated pilasters with support an entablature and broken pediment. Below are triple polished bronze and glass doors. The entrance to the elevator lobby is at the far eastern bay. The entrance to the rear lobby in the northernmost bay of the William Street facade is marked by a neo-Georgian surround with fluted pilasters, a keystone, and a swan's neck pediment surmounted by an aedicular window surround.

Above the base, the windows are grouped into bays by banded piers. The transitional 4th floor is topped by a simple cornice, and a band course runs beneath the windows of the transitional 12th floor, which is capped by a dentiled cornice. On Wall Street the center bays of the 4th floor are emphasized by anthemia and scroll decorations. The top two floors of the midsection have a decorative frieze of alternating triglyphs and rondels which also incorporate stylized Ionic capitals. The 14th floor is capped by a shallow cornice with a Greek fret motif.

The recessed floors above have a simplified decorative scheme. Major setbacks occur above the 14th, 20th, 25th, 26th, and 30th floors. Simple geometric balustrades extend along the setbacks. Above the 30th floor, the facades step back to form a 4-tier lantern. Its lowest stage is a square, three bays wide and two stories tall, with gabled wings on the north and south. At the second level, the tower is octagonal in plan, with blind oculus windows. The third stage is cruciform in plan and features freestanding colonnades supporting entablatures edged with antefixae, and rectangular windows screened with classical grilles. The square top tier is lit by windows on all four sides. The steeply-pitched metal roof provides a decorative base for the 11-foot-high copper eagle resting on a metal globe.

In 1796, the Bank of New York became the first bank to erect a building on Wall Street, setting a precedent for the future development of the street as New York's financial center. The present building, the bank's third on the site, was erected when the banking industry was taking a leadership role in the redevelopment of downtown with large new skyscrapers. Upper floors were later renovated by Parish-Hadley. It continues to serve as offices owned by Swig Equities, with the basement level formerly occupied by the Museum of American Finance.

www.swigequities.com/48-wall-street/
usmodernist.org/TARCH/ARCH-1929-03.pdf