Twenty Exchange Apartments (New York City, New York)

 office building, landmark, skyscraper, Gothic revival (architecture), apartment building, historical building

741-foot, 57-story office/residential building completed in 1931 as the City Bank-Farmers Trust Company Building. Designed by Cross & Cross for the newly merged banks, First National City Bank of New York and the Farmers Loan and Trust Company, predecessors of Citigroup, it was originally intended to be the world's tallest building, but was scaled back to 741 feet. The facade is sheathed in Mohegan granite, Alabama Rookwood limestone and brick.

The massive lower portion occupied the whole irregular shaped lot, with a slender tower that is angled to the base and remains a notable presence in the skyline. The basement level of the building is faced in granite, and terminates in an overscaled molding. Set into the basement are square openings with grilles, some of nickel silver and others of carved stonework. The names of each street are carved into the stone at the corners.

The main entrance to the building, at 20 Exchange Place, is a round-arched portal of carved Mohegan granite. Its chief adornment is a series of eleven carved granite replicas of coins, which represent countries with branches of the National City Bank, set on a background of abstract foliate forms. Above and to either side of the portal are large medallions, to the right a seal of the National City Company and to the left a seal of the National City Bank. The entrance, approached by several steps, is set behind a deep reveal, to which a modern set of revolving doors has been added at the location of the original doors; windows above the doors fill in the arch. At the corner of William Street and Exchange Place is another entrance set in a carved reveal leading to a rotunda and the former senior officers’ room of City Bank-Farmers Trust. The four doors are of nickel silver, a white alloy of nickel, zinc and copper, with bronze trim. Both the two round doors in the center and the two flanking flat doors include a series of panels representing various forms of transportation which were designed by David Evans. The panels in the center doors show historic transportation methods including sailing ships, hot air balloons, and steam locomotives. Those on the sides show modern transportation, including airplanes, ocean liners, and diesel engines. Two nickel silver panels above the doors include in their ornamentation two allegorical figures in bronze, one with a cornucopia suggesting abundance, the other with a lock and key suggesting the prudence of banking. They are surrounded by a variety of animal figures and abstract floral forms. Four owls stand on the top of the panels. The glass panes above, in the upper half of the entranceway, are set into a nickel silver frame work trimmed in bronze, including still more symbols of industry, including scales, hourglasses, sheaves of wheat, and mechanical gears. Above the entrance is another large stone medallion, this one showing the seal of the City-Bank-Farmers Trust Company.

A similar but less elaborate set of doors with scenes of transportation survives at the corner of Beaver and William Streets. Here there are only two doors, not four; they repeat the scenes of the modern transportation series. The rear entrance to the tower, in the middle of the Beaver Street facade, is through three round-arched openings. Above the middle opening is another stone medallion. Within the middle archway is a service entrance. Above the door is a carved bison head flanked by reliefs of coiled snakes. In each flanking arch is a set of four doors, framed in nickel silver, with marble transoms and multi-pane windows set in decorative nickel silver framing.

Between the entrances, each set of window openings - whether one on Hanover, three on Exchange Place, or five on William Street, is flanked by two much narrower and shorter openings, each with a simple nickel silver grille at the base and a key stone at its top center. Above this level of openings runs a series of small, plain square-headed windows, at the level of the large stone medallions above the entrances. A final level of larger, square-headed windows in deep openings encircles the building; it is topped by a band of abstract geometric panels. Above all this rise the largely unadorned elevations of the remainder of the base, and the tower.

At the 19th-floor setback, a set of 14 enormous sculptural heads, representing "giants of finance", and apparently modeled on Greek and Assyrian sources, stare down at the street. Not all piers end in these heads, just those that visually line up with the tower above. Flanking piers end at the 17th floor and have large statues of eagles perched atop them.

The chamfered-corner tower, which has little ornament, is defined by broader and slenderer piers, faced with brick, framing uninterrupted vertical bays of paired windows and spandrels. The top level of spandrels are aluminum, rather than stone. Two levels of horizontal ashlar bands wrap around the dark brick center bays, visually binding the tower. Tall arches at the top support a double-tiered crown. Communications equipment has been placed on top of the tower since it was completed.

At the time of construction the building was the 4th tallest building in the world and it remained among the top ten tallest buildings in New York until 1970. Surviving the stock-market crash of 1929 thanks to its size and organization, the National City Bank of New York continued on through the Depression and World War II. It was renamed the First National City Bank of New York in 1955, in 1962 became the First National City Bank, and in 1976 became Citibank, part of the larger Citicorp. Citibank headquarters remained at 20 Exchange Place until 1956, when it moved to midtown Manhattan. Even so, Citibank owned 20 Exchange Place until 1979, and remained a tenant in the building until 1989.

In 1996, the building was designated a City Landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Currently the lower floors remain as office space, but floors 19-57 are residential. There is a large lobby on the second floor, currently vacant but occasionally used as a film set. In 2006, the building served as a fictional branch location of the Manhattan Trust Bank in the movie "Inside Man", and in 2009 it served as several different bank locations in the Fringe episode "Safe". The building also makes an appearance in the film "Wall Street.

www.renttwentyexchange.com/
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