195 Broadway, also known as the Telephone Building, Telegraph Building, or Western Union Building, is an early skyscraper on Broadway in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. The building was the longtime headquarters of AT&T Corp. and Western Union. It occupies the entire western side of Broadway from Dey to Fulton Streets.
The site of the building formerly was occupied by the Western Union Telegraph Building. The current 29-story, building was commissioned after AT&T's 1909 acquisition of Western Union. It was constructed from 1912 to 1916 under the leadership of Theodore Newton Vail, to designs by William W. Bosworth, although one section was not completed until 1922. It was the site of one end of the first transcontinental telephone call, the first intercity Picturephone call, and the first transatlantic telephone call. Though AT&T's headquarters relocated to 550 Madison Avenue in 1984, 195 Broadway remains in use as an office building .
Bosworth's design was heavily Greek-influenced: though the facade is made of white Vermont granite, it features layers of gray granite columns in Doric and Ionic styles, as well as various Greek-inspired ornamentation. The northwestern corner of the building was designed similar to a campanile with a stepped roof, which formerly supported the Spirit of Communication statue. The Greek design carried into the large lobby, clad with marble walls and floors, and containing sculptural ornament by Paul Manship and Gaston Lachaise. The exterior and first-floor interior spaces were designated as city landmarks by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 2006.
Site 195 Broadway is on the west side of Broadway, between Fulton Street to the north and Dey Street to the south, in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The building has a frontage of on Dey Street, on Broadway, and on Fulton Street. According to the New York City Department of City Planning, the lot has an area of . 195 Broadway shares a block with the Millennium Hilton New York Downtown hotel to the west. Other nearby buildings include St. Paul's Chapel to the north, the Fulton Center and Corbin Building to the east, and the World Trade Center Transportation Hub and 3 World Trade Center to the west.
Architecture
Though William Welles Bosworth is credited as the architect, the design of 195 Broadway was largely influenced by AT&T Corp. head Theodore Newton Vail. According to Bosworth, "It was the aim of Mr. Vail that [195 Broadway] should express the ideal the Telephone Company stands for." For the lobby, Bosworth was inspired by the design of the Parthenon's porticos and Egyptian hypostyles to create "a forest of polished marble" supported by massive columns.
Bosworth's design was heavily Greek-influenced; it featured layers of gray granite columns in Doric and Ionic styles, and a lobby that included 43 oversized Doric columns made of marble. Many building details, such as the columns and the metal grilles above each entrance bay, were nearly identical copies of similar features on classical Greek buildings such as the Parthenon and the Temple of Artemis. Bosworth also incorporated several "architectural refinements" that Brooklyn Museum professor William H. Goodyear had noted as being characteristic of Greek architecture, including column spacing and progressively smaller columns at higher floors. Ornament was yet another important part of the design and was ubiquitous within 195 Broadway. Bosworth later wrote that he was "immensely proud" of the 195 Broadway design, from which he drew all of his subsequent Greek-inspired designs.
The main structure is 27 stories, including its attic and double-height lobby. The Dey Street annex, along the southern portion of the building, was an L-shaped structure at the corner of Dey Street and Broadway with an extension reaching Fulton Street. The westernmost on Fulton Street was designed like a campanile to fit with its narrow and tall form. The campanile is 29 stories high.
Facade
The facade is made of white Vermont granite. It was built in three sections: the western portion of the lot facing Dey Street; the extension east to Broadway with a small wing extending north to Fulton Street; and the corner of Broadway and Fulton Street. There are three sets of four bays on Dey Street and two such sets on Broadway; the "transitional bays" are plainer and slightly set back. On Dey Street and Broadway, each set of four bays is arranged so that the center bays are wider, and the columns at higher stories are slightly set back with smaller diameters. The Fulton Street facade, unlike the Dey Street and Broadway facades, is divided into two sections: the campanile to the west and the continuous eight-bay colonnade to the east. On all three principal facades, the first-floor bays contain entrance frames or window frames made of bronze. Wheelchair ramps are cut into certain entrance bays along both Fulton and Dey Streets.
The building's articulation consists of three horizontal sections similar to the components of a column, namely a base, shaft, and capital. However, unlike in other buildings where the base and capital were more elaborate than the shaft, the entire facade of 195 Broadway consisted of "sustained decoration of superimposed orders", similar to ancient Greek and Roman buildings such as the Septizodium in Rome or the Library of Pergamum in what is now Turkey. The facade was thus composed of a Doric colonnade along the double-height first floor, and eight sets of triple-height Ionic colonnades on subsequent stories. The Doric columns at the base supported a frieze running along the top of the first floor. The lowest story of each layer of Ionic colonnades contained mullions and spandrels made of stone, which contributed to the building's "solidity". A tall parapet at the building's top was intended to show "strength and solidity binding the columns", as did the structure's transitional bays. The entire facade was designed like this except for the campanile-like tower on Fulton Street.
On the Fulton Street side, the westernmost three bays comprise a tower whose facade consists of an ornate three-story base and a relatively undecorated 22-story granite shaft. The base contains two garage openings on the first floor; two pairs of bronze-framed windows on the second floor, with each pair separated by an Ionic column; and a colonnade on the third floor, articulated by vertical pilasters that contain various decorations. The top stories are flanked by Ionic columns. The roof of this tower is a pyramidal crown inspired by contemporary renderings of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.
The minor elevations are along the north side of the Dey Street wing and the west sides of the Dey Street and Fulton Street wings. The western facade of the Fulton Street wing contains relatively plain window openings, and the western facade of the Dey Street wing is a windowless wall mostly blocked by the Millennium Hotel. The northern facade of the Dey Street wing also contains window openings; the center section of this facade is windowless and contained a "light court" which was infilled during the 1960s.
The facade contains ornaments such as swags and wreaths. There are bronze spandrels with decorative friezes within the upper-story bays, and the facade of the top story under the parapet contains bronze lion heads. Foliated reliefs are located within the door and window frames at ground level, and antefixes are located above the shop windows and the Dey and Fulton Street subway entrances. The subway entrances also contained granite faces and bronze gates, and the decoration extended into the basement where the subway platform was located.
Interior 195 Broadway has almost a million square feet () of interior floor space, approximately per floor. According to the Department of City Planning, the building has of gross floor area. There were formerly 28 elevators serving the office floors, but , there are 22 passenger elevators that travel from the lobby to the upper floors. The elevators are divided into zones, with each elevator only serving a certain range of floors. Specifically, eight elevators travel from the lobby to the 23rd through 28th floors; six elevators travel to the 15th through 22nd floors; and eight cars travel to the 4th through 15th floors. A single freight elevator serves all floors. The office floors contain varying ceiling heights. The 6th, 9th, 12th, 16th, 19th, 22nd and 25th floors have ceilings that are tall; the 28th floor's ceiling is tall; and the remaining office stories starting from the 4th floor are tall.
Sculptor Paul Manship designed decorations for the interior, including elevator doors, floor panels, and drinking fountains made of bronze. The bronze decorations in the lobby were removed when AT&T moved out during 1984. Manship may have also worked on the chandeliers and windows in the lobby, though the extent of his involvement is unclear. Lachaise was given the commission for the frieze lining the elevator bank on Fulton Street.
According to The New York Times, 195 Broadway is considered to have the most marble of any New York City office building; the material is so ubiquitous that it was even used for the fire stairs. The structure also incorporates cast bronze or nickel silver on its interior furnishings, such as window frames and door knobs.
First floor
The lobby has a ceiling high and contains of floor area. The ceiling is supported by white marble columns in the Doric order; the interior partitions are also made of white marble; and the floors are of gray marble. The ceiling contains a grid of coffers punctuated by heavy, green-and-gold decorated beams. The directory boards in the lobby are also brightly colored. There are forty bronze-and-alabaster chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. As with the facade, the lobby includes bronze furnishings and is heavily influenced by Greek architecture. Among the Greek-inspired features of the lobby was a white marble mailbox with eagle carvings, modeled after a Greek stele.
The oldest section of the building, on the southwest side facing Dey Street, includes a lobby, shops, offices, fire stairs, and a narrow bank of elevators near the east wall. The elevators face eastward, toward the larger Dey Street lobby.For a diagram of the interior, see The rest of the Dey Street (south) wing, extending eastward to Broadway, includes a main vestibule with revolving doors on Dey Street. It is surrounded to the north, west, and east by elevator banks. Because Dey Street rose gradually as it approached Broadway to the east, there are numerous slightly raised enclosures near the entrance bays on Dey Street. The space is further subdivided by low-height railings and partitions of marble. A corridor extends east to Broadway, where originally there were two revolving-door entrances.
Under the campanile on Fulton Street, there was retail space, later largely converted to a pair of loading docks deep. The Fulton Street (north) lobby also contains a passageway extending south to the Dey Street wing, and there are elevators on the south and east walls of the lobby. When the corner space at Broadway and Fulton Street was completed, the wall separating the new lobby to the north and the old lobby to the south was removed. The elevator banks on the east wall were installed, and more columns were erected inside the lobby to create a hypostyle-like hall. Cantilevered trusses were installed on the third floor to support the weight originally carried by the wall in the Broadway lobby. The corner section's construction included the addition of two more revolving doors on the northern section of the Broadway facade, three revolving doors on Fulton Street. This section included a store for the Benedict Brothers.