14 Wall Street, originally the Bankers Trust Company Building, is a skyscraper at the intersection of Wall Street and Nassau Street in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. The building is tall, with 32 usable floors. The original 540-foot tower is at the southeastern corner of the site, and a shorter annex wraps around the original tower.
The original tower was erected on the site of the Stevens Building at 12–14 Wall Street and the Gillender Building at 16 Wall Street. It was built in 1910–1912 and was designed by Trowbridge & Livingston in the neoclassical style as the headquarters for Bankers Trust. A 25-story addition with Art Deco detailing, designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, was constructed in 1931–1933 to replace three other structures. After new buildings for Bankers Trust were erected in 1962 and 1974, the company moved employees away from 14 Wall Street, and eventually sold the building in 1987.
14 Wall Street's tower incorporates a seven-story pyramidal roof inspired by the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. The interior of the building contained numerous amenities that were considered state-of-the-art at the time of its construction; the first three floors were used as Bankers Trust's headquarters, while the rest were rented to tenants. A notable building in Manhattan's skyline in the early 20th century, the building was featured prominently in Bankers Trust's early imagery. The building was designated a New York City landmark in 1997. It is also a contributing property to the Wall Street Historic District, a National Register of Historic Places district created in 2007.
Site
14 Wall Street is in the Financial District of Manhattan, bounded by Nassau Street to the east, Wall Street to the south, and Pine Street to the north. The lot has dimensions of on Wall Street, on Nassau Street, and on Pine Street. The lot has a total area of . Nearby buildings include the Equitable Building to the north, Federal Hall National Memorial (formerly the sub-Treasury building) at 26 Wall Street to the east, 23 Wall Street to the southeast, the New York Stock Exchange Building to the south, 1 Wall Street to the southwest, and 100 Broadway to the west. An entrance to the Broad Street station of the New York City Subway, serving the , is directly to the southeast.
The original building is located at the southeast corner of the site, which was previously occupied by the Stevens and Gillender buildings. In 1880, the Sampson family developed their lots along 12–14 Wall Street into the Stevens Building, which stood until 1910. Sixteen years later, Helen L. Gillender Asinari, owner of the adjoining six-story office building on the northeast corner of Wall and Nassau Streets, decided to replace it with the , 20-story Gillender Building, which was completed in 1897 and demolished in 1910. The two lots, combined, had a nearly square footprint measuring about .
The annex occupies the remainder of the plot and is L-shaped in plan. Prior to the construction of the annex, the land below it was occupied by three buildings. The seven-story Astor Building was located at 10–12 Wall Street, directly to the west of the original tower. The Hanover National Building at 5–11 Nassau Street, erected in 1903, was a 21-story building north of the original Bankers Trust Building, which extended to Pine Street. The final building on the lot was 7 Pine Street, a 10-story building to the northwest of the original tower.
Architecture 14 Wall Street is approximately tall, with 32 usable above-ground floors and a seven-story pyramidal roof at its top, which contains seven storage levels. In addition, 14 Wall Street contains four basement levels; the topmost basement is partially raised above ground level. The original structure was designed by Trowbridge & Livingston for Bankers Trust and was built between 1910 and 1912. An addition to the north and west was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon and constructed between 1931 and 1933. This addition is about tall.
14 Wall Street's "granite-clad roof and its specifically Greek architectural motifs", as described by architectural writer Sarah Landau, which were a departure from earlier designs. The architects wrote that the style had been chosen for its "simplicity and grace, as well as its supreme dignity and seriousness", which fit both the site and the building's use. Inspirations include the Erechtheion, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, and "ancient Macedonian prototypes". cited in
Form
The original structure is a 39-story tower without any setbacks, composed of 32 stories topped by a seven-story roof. The concept behind the original structure's design was to place a pyramidal roof, similar to that of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, on top of a tower like Venice's St Mark's Campanile bell tower. Trowbridge wanted to enhance "the beauty of the upper part of building by a loggia and a stone pyramid, in place of the usual flat or mansard roof." This was one of the first times a pyramidal roof had been used in a skyscraper (after only the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower); previous tall structures had been capped by a cupola, spire, or tempietto.
The rest of the building is surrounded by a 25-story annex, which wraps around the western and northern sides of the original tower. The Wall Street side has setbacks at the 15th, 22nd, and 25th floors and the Nassau Street side has a setback at the 23rd floor. The Pine Street side has a light court above the 11th story, which cuts through the center of that side.
Facade
Original building The facade is clad with of New England granite from several quarries. The original tower is arranged into four sections: a base of 5 stories, a midsection of 21 stories, a top section of 6 stories (including the 32nd-story penthouse), and the roof. The base was originally four stories, but the present third floor was added in the 1931–1933 renovation. On each side are five window bays, each of which contain two windows per floor. The design of each side is largely identical, except that the western facade's midsection is made of brick rather than granite. The windows originally had wood frames covered with metal.
Because 14 Wall Street was surrounded on all sides by other skyscrapers, thereby limiting visibility of the lower section, the lower floors were designed with intricate detail. The upper basement and the first floor were arranged as a stylobate that supported a colonnade above it. The basement facade is smooth, while the first-floor facade consists of rusticated blocks. An entrance porch, with the address 16 Wall Street, faces the Wall Street side. A colonnade above it spans the second through fourth floors. The colonnade consists of Greek fluted columns, molded belt courses, and moldings and was "almost Puritanical in its simplicity". The facade of the lower stories was rearranged slightly when the current third story was created, with new spandrel panels being added to separate the double-height windows that formerly spanned the double-height second story. The fifth story is the topmost story of the base and has a deep cornice at the top. The cornice contains motifs of lions' heads and rosettes.
The midsection begins at the sixth story and rises through the 26th story. It is mostly faced in buff-colored granite. Each bay contains two windows. There are slightly projecting vertical piers separating each bay, except at the corners, which have grooves that make them appear as though they were panels. There is a band course above the sixth floor. Otherwise, the midsection lacks horizontal ornamentation.
The 27th through 31st stories are decorated with engaged Ionic columns in antis. On the 27th through 29th stories, the north, east, and south facades are set back behind colonnades, while the west facade extends outward to the columns of the colonnade. Trowbridge and Livingston had wanted the colonnade on the 27th through 29th stories to contain double columns, as they believed a colonnade of single columns did not suggest "a sufficient massiveness to correspond with the building as a whole". Rectangular windows are located on the 30th and 31st stories, with a cornice between the stories. The 32nd floor is slightly set back and serves as a penthouse. A molded cornice runs above the 32nd story. The roof is made of massive granite blocks and measures tall, with a base of square. There are 23 or 24 steps between the bottom and top of the roof; each step measures high and deep. The roof also has a smokestack measuring in diameter, from which smoke is ventilated.
Annex The annex's facade is made of granite at the base and limestone on the upper stories. It was designed to defer to the "solid and robust architecture" of the original building. The facade of the annex is arranged in two styles. The Wall Street facade contains setbacks at lower stories, and the window arrangement is aligned with that of the original building. The base consists of four stories. Like the original tower, the first floor is rusticated, and the second through fourth floors contain a colonnade. On upper stories, wide piers divide each bay, and narrow piers divide each window. The piers are ribbed and are designed in a modernistic style. The spandrels between each row of windows are ornamented aluminum panels. The combination of piers, spandrels, and windows create a pattern of vertical striping.
The Pine Street and Nassau Street facades are more modern in design, with motifs in the Modern Classic and Art Deco styles. Due to variations in the lot lines on the annex's site, the annex projects further onto the street than did the original building. In addition to an entrance at the center of the annex's Nassau Street side, there are service entrances on Pine Street. The annex facades contain carved ornament, curved piers at the base, wrought-iron gates and grilles, and an eagle sculpture above the entrance on Nassau Street. There are five bays on Nassau Street and eleven on Pine Street; the bays each contain between one and three windows. The base is two stories tall, excluding the basement, which is partially visible as Nassau Street slopes downward from Pine Street toward Wall Street. The design of the upper stories' facade is similar to that on the Wall Street side.
Structural features For the foundation of 14 Wall Street, caissons were sunk around the site's perimeter, reaching to the layer of rock below the street. Concrete was then poured in between these caissons to create a watertight cofferdam measuring thick. The membrane was needed because the surrounding ground was filled with quicksand. Afterward, the lot was excavated, the Gillender Building's foundations were removed, and deep foundations were placed within the lot. Due to high pressure on the cofferdam, temporary timber trusses were used to brace the cofferdam. A pad of concrete, overlaid with waterproof cement, was then placed at the bottom of the pit. The method was not only cheaper than the then-standard method of driving caissons down to bedrock, but also provided more basement space, as the basements were not interrupted by piers for the foundation.
The superstructure contains more than of steel. The second floor does not contain any columns because of the elaborate network of heavy trusses used to support the outer walls. "Unusually heavy bracing" is used to support the fourth floor. There are also four large trusses, two each at the fifth and 29th floors; they each measure thick and weigh . A standard girder-and-column steel structure is used for the rest of the building. The steel frame includes about 39 tiers of beams, which extend to above ground. Thirty-six columns carry the building's estimated dead load of . The largest columns are tall and carry loads of up to .
Interior