The Postcard
A postally unused postcard that was published by the Success Postal Card Co., Publishers, New York.
The card has a divided back on which is printed:
'Liberty Tower.
At the northwest corner of
Liberty and Nassau Streets.
A 31-story building, on a
plot of 57.9 by 82.1 feet.
Largest office area compared
to the small plot it occupies'.
The back of the card has also been hand-stamped with an ellipse containing the following message:
"Postcards & Postmarks Library
Skegness, Lincs.
19th. May 1978.
Always Purchasing Before 1930,
Send Samples & S.A.E. for Cash
Offer".
Liberty Tower (Manhattan)
Liberty Tower, formerly the Sinclair Oil Building, is a 33-story residential building in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. Its address is 55 Liberty Street. It was built in 1909–10 as a commercial office building, and was designed by Henry Ives Cobb in a Gothic Revival style.
Upon its completion, Liberty Tower was said to be the world's tallest building with such a small footprint, having a floor area ratio of 30 to 1.
The building's design consists of three horizontal sections similar to the components of a column, namely a base, shaft, and capital. The limestone building is covered in white architectural terracotta with elaborate ornament.
The law office of future U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of its first commercial tenants after the building opened in 1910.
Shortly after the Great War, the entire building was bought by Sinclair Oil. In 1979, architect Joseph Pell Lombardi converted the building from commercial use into residential apartments and renamed it the "Liberty Tower", in one of the first such conversions in Manhattan south of Canal Street.
The building was designated a city landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1982 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1983. It is also a contributing property to the Wall Street Historic District, an NRHP district created in 2007.
The Site of Liberty Tower
The tower's land lot has a total area of 5,198 square feet (482.9 m2). The Liberty Tower is surrounded by numerous buildings, including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Building to the east, 28 Liberty Street to the southeast, 140 Broadway to the south, and the New York Chamber of Commerce Building to the west.
The Design of Liberty Tower
The Liberty Tower was designed by Henry Ives Cobb and constructed by the C. L. Gray Construction Company, with Atlantic Terra Cotta as a major contractor. It has a roof height of 385 feet (117 m).
The building was designed in the English Gothic style, and was influenced by Cobb's experiences in the École des Beaux-Arts and the Chicago school of architecture. Cobb intended the Liberty Tower to be:
"A tower rising from a solid base
and growing lighter toward the
top".
The building is freestanding on the west, south, and east sides, which face the streets, while the northern side abuts other buildings and has a façade of white brick. The freestanding façades are covered in white architectural terracotta ornamented with birds, alligators, gargoyles and other fanciful subjects.
The terracotta was manufactured by the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company, while the dull porcelain brick on the façade was made by the Sayre and Fisher Company.
The Liberty Tower, while smaller than other skyscrapers being built at the time, was one of New York City's first structures to be clad entirely with terracotta. It was also one of the earlier steel-cage skyscrapers to be built.
With a floor area ratio of over 30:1, the Liberty Tower was believed to be the world's slimmest skyscraper at the time of its completion. The New York Times, reporting on the tower's conversion into a residential building in 1979, said that very few buildings had higher floor area ratios because the Liberty Tower's ratio was 50% higher than was allowed under New York City zoning laws in 1979.
The copper roof rises 64 feet (20 m) above the 30th. floor.
The Foundations and Superstructure of Liberty Tower
The Liberty Tower's foundations were dug with caissons sunk 94 feet (29 m) deep through the layers of quicksand and hardpan to the underlying bedrock.
The superstructure is fireproof and made of metal, exerting a total of 19,000 tons upon the foundations.
Interior of Liberty Tower
The main entrance contains marble wainscoting, and originally had a mural-covered vaulted ceiling. The walls on either side contained murals: one side had depictions of "Spring, Youth and Ambition", while the other had "Autumn, Age and Achievement".
There was also a central figure depicting William Cullen Bryant, editor of the New York Evening Post, the newspaper whose headquarters occupied the Liberty Tower's site in the 19th. century. The murals had been removed by the end of the 20th. century. There are five passenger elevators within the building.
Liberty Tower was built as an office building. According to developer Liberty-Nassau Building Company, the original clientele was limited to companies and individuals in finance or law, as well as large corporations. The company offered to reorganize the configurations of the floors for tenants' needs.
Keystone gypsum blocks were used to divide the interior into fireproof partitions. In the original configuration, the 32nd. floor was the superintendent's residence, and the 33rd. floor contained a water tank.
Since residential conversion, the building contains 86 co-operative residential units. The penthouse apartment occupies the 31st. floor, and contains four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a spiral staircase. The penthouse was originally the attic, with steep ceilings and mechanical pipes through many rooms. However, the highest unit in the building is the 32nd. floor, which is smaller because of the roof's taper.
History of the Site
Between 1853 and 1875, prior to the Liberty Tower's construction, a seven-story building on the Liberty Tower's site housed the offices of the New York Evening Post. This building was known as the Bryant Building - after William Cullen Bryant, the Post's editor. It was also nicknamed the "China Tower" because its façade was of "'china'-faced brick".
Ownership of the structure changed several times in the late 19th. century, with the building being sold to Parke Godwin in 1881 and to the Bryant Building Company (of which Parke Godwin was part) in 1883.
Construction
The Bryant Building Company, on behalf of the Parke Godwin estate, sold the site to the C. L. Gray Construction Company in January 1909 for $1.2 million. The Gray Construction Company was acting on behalf of a group of St. Louis investors called the Liberty-Nassau Building Company.
They hired Cobb, a Midwestern architect, to design a speculative, not-yet-named 30-story building on the site. In April 1909, Cobb filed plans for the building.
Because Bryant's offices had previously occupied the site, the new building was known during construction as the Bryant Building, although the name was changed to Liberty Tower by the time the skyscraper was finished.
To aid demolition of the older building, a driveway was built through its first story, two rubbish chutes were installed from the driveway to the top of the old building, and two more chutes were installed outside the Liberty Street facade.
The trim was removed from each story, then the plaster, and finally the brick walls. The old building was removed within 30 days, and foundation work on the new structure started. Foundation work was finished by October 1909.
Moses Greenwood, one of the St. Louis investors who had promoted the project, was simultaneously developing other projects, and ran into financial issues. Two mortgages totaling $1.7 million had been placed on the building.
The developers went into default in November 1910, when the building was nearly completed; the next month, Harold Gray filed a foreclosure suit against the Liberty-Nassau Building Company.
By late December 1910, ownership was transferred to a receiver named Maurice Deiches, who was appointed to complete and insure the building, and to hire a rental agent. At the time, one-third of the building was rented, but the building was largely unfinished, with missing floors and office partitions.
Office Use of the Liberty Tower
By March 1911, rental income had nearly doubled from December 1910 levels, and two mortgages were paid off. In addition, the syndicate controlling the building had taken out a $1.6 million loan from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.
Future U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt's law office was one of its first commercial tenants. Other tenants included the People's Surety Company of New York, as well as the Gray Construction Company.
The building was considered "well rented" by 1916, but the Liberty-Nassau Building Company still had financial issues. That year, Title Guarantee and Trust filed a foreclosure suit against Liberty-Nassau, and the building was sold at auction for $1.8 million to the Garden City Company.
In 1917, an office was leased as cover for German spies seeking to prevent America's intervention in the Great War. The plot involved an attempt to draw the United States into a diversionary war with Mexico and Japan. It was exposed on the 1st. March 1917, with news reports of an intercepted telegram decoded by British cryptographers known as the "Zimmermann Telegram". This prompted President Woodrow Wilson to declare war against Germany a month later.
The Sinclair Oil Corporation bought the Liberty Tower in 1919 for almost $2.5 million. The company's president Harry Ford Sinclair stated that the company desired more space than was available for lease in the Financial District. After the purchase, the Liberty Tower was known as the Sinclair Oil Building until 1945.
While in the building, Sinclair formulated deals with the Warren G. Harding administration that led to the Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920's.
Following the construction of Rockefeller Center in Midtown Manhattan, Sinclair Oil moved to Rockefeller Center in 1935, and the Rockefeller family acquired the Liberty Tower.
Leonard J. Beck bought the Liberty Tower in 1945 for about $1.3 million. The following November, Beck re-sold the building to the Liberty-Nassau Corporation. It was sold again to the Ronor Realty Corporation in November 1947; at the time, there were 100 tenants paying $300,000 a year in rent.
Residential Conversion
The Liberty Tower was bought by G. T. Properties for $1 million in 1978, at which point it was two-thirds empty. Starting in 1979, the Liberty Tower was converted from office use into a residential building.
The conversion became one of the first such conversions in Manhattan south of Canal Street, and one of the tallest such conversions worldwide. All of the newly converted housing units were unfurnished, coming without kitchens, bathrooms, or interior partitions.
The renovation, completed in 1980, benefited from a tax abatement regulation called J-51.
The architect Lombardi retained an apartment on the entirety of the 29th. floor, in Sinclair Oil's old boardrooms. The Liberty Tower was designated a New York City landmark in 1982, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on the 15th. September 1983.
The deteriorating façade was restored for $6 million in the 1990's, with residents being charged an average of $55,000. Some residents could not pay their share of the restoration and had to sell their units.
The Collapse of the World Trade Center
The building was damaged by the collapse of the World Trade Center some 660 feet (200 m) to the west on the 11th. September 2001. Previous repairs to the facade had not been extensive, and LZA Technology published a report in September 2003 showing that the September 11 attacks had caused major damage.
Water leakage had led to rust on the interior steel structure, which in turn expanded the steel beams, and thereby the preexisting cracks. The building received $450,000 in insurance payouts, although another $4.6 million was needed for renovations, averaging $54,000 for each of the 86 apartments. About half of residents chose to pay their share of the renovation up front, while the other half paid in installments over five years.
A restoration of the building was undertaken from 2007 to 2009. During the process, 202 sculptures on the façade and 3,200 terracotta blocks were fixed or replaced, while another 1,040 terracotta blocks underwent minor repairs. The restoration cost $10 million.
In 2007, the Liberty Tower was designated as a contributing property to the Wall Street Historic District.
The Singer Building
In the background of the photograph is the Singer Building (also known as the Singer Tower, which was an office building and early skyscraper in Manhattan. The headquarters of the Singer Manufacturing Company, it was at the corner of Liberty Street and Broadway in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan.
Frederick Gilbert Bourne, leader of the Singer Company, commissioned the building, which architect Ernest Flagg designed in multiple phases from 1897 to 1908. The building's architecture contained elements of the Beaux-Arts and French Second Empire styles.
The façade was made of brick, stone, and terracotta. A dome with a lantern capped the tower. The foundation of the tower was excavated using caissons; the building's base rested on shallower foundations. The Singer Building used a steel skeleton, though load-bearing walls initially supported the original structure before modification. When completed, the building had a marble-clad entrance lobby, 16 elevators, 410,000 square feet (38,000 m2) of office space, and an observatory.
With a roof height of 612 feet (187 m), the Singer Tower was the tallest building in the world from 1908 to 1909, when it was surpassed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower.
The base occupied the building's entire land lot; the tower's floors took up just one-sixth of that area.
Despite being regarded as a city icon, the Singer Building was razed between 1967 and 1969 to make way for One Liberty Plaza, which had several times more office space than the Singer Tower. At the time of its destruction, the Singer Building was the tallest building ever to be demolished.