Cable Building | office building

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8-story Beaux-Arts office building completed in 1894. Designed by McKim, Mead & White as a powerhouse and office building for the Broadway & Seventh Avenue Railroad Company, which operated cable cars in this area. The building's basement housed four 32-foot wheels that carried the cables that pulled the streetcars along Broadway from the Battery to 50th Street. The upper floors contained offices arranged around a large internal court with two rectangular light wells.

The building was sold in 1925, and was soon occupied by small businesses and manufacturers. From the 1940s to 1970s, the Cable Building housed mainly garment makers, but was converted back to offices in 1983, with new ground-floor storefronts. The basement space that originally contained the cable wheels became a multi-screen movie theater. The ground floor is occupied by a Crate & Barrel store.

The 2-story stone base has large arches, with cartouches at the top of each arch and carved swag at the top of each pier. The entry on Broadway is topped by an entablature supporting two female figures with torches flanking an oval window on the 2nd floor. The base is capped by a band course with a Greek-fret motif.

The upper floors are clad in tan brick, with 4-story recessed arches and cast-iron mullions between the piers. The top two floors have smaller 2-story round-arches, with a dentiled band course and large stone cartouches capping the piers. The building has chamfered corners at both intersections, with the entrance to the Angelika Film Center at Mercer & Houston. All three facades are crowned by a green metal roof cornice with modillions and dentils.

www.nyc-architecture.com/GV/GV015CableBuilding.htm
newyorkdailyphoto.blogspot.com/2010/05/cable-building.h...
dlc.library.columbia.edu/mmw_photographs/10.7916/d8-2c5...
dlc.library.columbia.edu/mmw_photographs/10.7916/d8-wms...
dlc.library.columbia.edu/catalog/cul:6t1g1jwvr7
archive.org/details/atlantic-terra-cotta-vol-9-1927-280...