{"id":62,"date":"2010-05-14T19:34:48","date_gmt":"2010-05-15T00:34:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/?p=62"},"modified":"2010-08-19T16:30:40","modified_gmt":"2010-08-19T21:30:40","slug":"transported-back-at-20-exchange-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/wordpress\/explore-new-york\/transported-back-at-20-exchange-place","title":{"rendered":"Transported Back at 20 Exchange Place"},"content":{"rendered":"

Buildings are like stories, marked by scenery, time and place, and plot. They often have a rise and decline, and maybe a rise again. Buildings evoke an era, and characters conceive, design, build, and inhabit them. <\/span>Like the times when we read only a few pages or a chapter of a story, we may see and appreciate much just by looking at a part of a building.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve walked many times by a single entrance and a set of doors on Hanover Street in Downtown Manhattan, hurrying by, noticing the doors\u2019 beauty, and making a mental note to dig into the story of the building. Hanover is a narrow, curving street from the days of Dutch settlement, with large skyscrapers hulking above that make it somewhat dark even on the sunniest days. When I stopped to look at the entrance, I noticed the fine details, fanciful images, and rich materials. On the door panels are trains, ships, hot air balloons, and other means of transport, while above them are many animal figures, carved abstract forms, and allegorical figures. What is it about this building entrance, and what do its images mean? Who designed them?<\/p>\n

\"Ocean<\/a><\/p>\n

The building is 20 Exchange Place, named for its address on a narrow cross street to Hanover and now housing high-end rental apartments<\/a>. Originally, this streamlined skyscraper, a New York City designated landmark, was the City Bank Farmers Trust Company Building, headquarters of the bank that today survives as Citibank. It has an odd, irregularly shaped base that conformed to the \u201cthis-way-and-that-way\u201d diagonal streets of Exchange Place, and Hanover, Beaver, and William streets. From its odd shape the skyscraper dramatically rises, with setbacks, to a slender tower that is situated askew to the base so that it conforms to New York City\u2019s north-south grid. It\u2019s one of Lower Manhattan\u2019s most distinctive skyscrapers, with quite a history.<\/p>\n

Aiming To Be \u201cThe Tallest\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The well-known New York firm of Cross & Cross, two brothers, designed the skyscraper, and the company built it in 1930-31. The skyscraper\u2019s planning and construction phase included fascinating challenges and obstacles, set in the midst of the boom-boom late 1920s when the sky seemed to be the limit. City Bank Farmers Trust Co. had grown out of a massive merger and was one of the new banking conglomerates of the era. While Wall Street had long drawn banks and exchanges since the early 19th<\/sup> century, in the early 20th<\/sup> century banks looked to build massive skyscraper headquarters in the area, City Bank Farmers Trust included.<\/p>\n

Couple this with the frenzy by varied companies to build the world\u2019s tallest building, a race in which City Bank Farmers Trust sought to compete. The bank staked its claim to the \u201cworld\u2019s tallest\u201d title when it filed building plans in October 1929, according to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) landmark-designation report.<\/p>\n

Then the stock market crashed that very month and a proposed merger with another large bank fell through afterward, changing the situation. City Bank Farmers Trust scaled back its plans and constructed a 59-story skyscraper of just above 685 feet. At the time of completion, it was the world\u2019s tallest stone-faced building, the LPC notes, its steel frame clad in Mohegan granite at the base and Alabama Rookwood veined gray limestone on the tower.<\/p>\n

\"20<\/a><\/p>\n

Physical impediments played a role during the construction phase, too. The builders and engineers had to contend with parts of old foundations, quicksand, and water on the site. It is, however, solidly anchored in the earth, as the LPC report explains: \u201cThe excavation took the lower basement to 40 feet below water level, dug out of solid rock.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bank spared nothing when it came to the building\u2019s exterior of stone and its interior lobbies of marble and ornate decoration, as directed by the architects. Its presence and ambitions as an international bank are symbolized by 11 coins of carved granite on the main entrance at 20 Exchange Place, each representing a different country in which the bank had offices.<\/p>\n

\"Hanover<\/a><\/p>\n

Yet it\u2019s the lavish and solid decorative doors, like the ones I often pass on Hanover Street, that catch my eye most on this skyscraper. They are made of nickel silver, an unusual alloy, which the architects wanted to deploy to avoid colored metal. On one panel are the modes of historic transportation, from sailing ships to steam locomotives. On another panel are those of modern transportation, such as airplanes and ocean liners.<\/p>\n

\"Airplanes\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Boundless Horizons<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

British sculptor David Evans, who created much of the building\u2019s ornament, captured the flavor of that age, in my view. Transatlantic flight and cruises across the world\u2019s oceans spoke powerfully of the increasing power to travel to faraway places and engage in international commerce. <\/span>The decade of the 1920s was the pioneering one for commercial flight. Suddenly, a world of greater possibility existed, freed from yesterday\u2019s limits.<\/p>\n

Seemed the banks, such as City Bank Farmers Trust, sought to place themselves at the center of this sense of possibility and prosperity, through their buildings\u2019 iconography, but always balanced with the symbols of wisdom and prudence. (Pity that speculation during the era proved that many in the market disregarded those qualities.) Above the doors are nickel silver grilles with the scenes of transportation, punctuated with caducci, which are ancient Greek symbols of commerce. Owls, the symbol of wisdom, are perched above.<\/p>\n

\"Carved<\/a><\/p>\n

This carved grille has a caduceus, historically a symbol of commerce.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Owl<\/a><\/p>\n

An owl watches from above.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the building opened, the Hanover Street doorway served as the entrance for a branch office of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, a building tenant. The entrance appears to no longer be in use, far different than when many streamed through the doors during the years as a bank. Today, a doorway full of trains, ships, and planes carries the imagination back to an earlier time of fanatical optimism and tumult around Wall Street.<\/p>\n

Here are additional views of the details at 20 Exchange Place, followed by a slide show<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

These figures, representing the “giants of finance,” look down at the street from a setback at the 19th floor.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Locomotive\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

View the slide show<\/a> larger in Flickr.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Buildings are like stories, marked by scenery, time and place, and plot. They often have a rise and decline, and maybe a rise again. Buildings evoke an era, and characters conceive, design, build, and inhabit them. Like the times when we read only a few pages or a chapter of a story, we may see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[34,24,8,18],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-explore-new-york","tag-architecture","tag-historic-preservation","tag-manhattan","tag-new-york"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2PDqY-10","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}