90 West Street
| 90 West Street | |
|---|---|
West Street Building with WTC towers in rear | |
 | |
| General information | |
| Status | Completed |
| Location | New York City, New York, United States |
| Opening | 1907 |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 23 |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect(s) | Cass Gilbert |
| Engineer | Gunvald Aus[1] |
90 West Street or West Street Building is a "Gilded Age" skyscraper in Lower Manhattan designed by architect Cass Gilbert for the West Street Improvement Corporation. When completed in 1907, the building's Gothic styling and ornamentation served to emphasize its 23-story height, and foreshadowed Gilbert's later work on the Woolworth Building. Originally built as an office building, the top floor was occupied by "The Garret Restaurant," which advertised itself as the highest restaurant in New York.
Located on West Street, between Cedar and Albany Streets, just south of the World Trade Center site, the building originally commanded a more prominent site at what was then the edge of the Hudson River. Battery Park City has since been constructed on landfill across West Street, separating the building from the river. The first occupants were members of the rapidly expanding railroad and ferry industries of the time.
In 1998, the building's exterior was designated an architectural landmark by the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission. [2]
Design
The twenty-three story building , a rough "C shape" in plan , fills a lot which is a parallelogram in shape, extending along the eastern side of West Street from Albany Street to Cedar Street. The facades have nine bays on West Street, seven bays on Cedar, and six bays on Albany while the eastern facade has two wings enclosing a light court, with four bays on the southern wing and two bays on the northern wing. Each, organized in accordance with a tripartite scheme, is finished with the same materials and has similar motifs. A three-story base of beige Fox Island granite on a polished red granite water table sets off the upper stories, faced in glazed beige architectural terra-cotta (over a brick backing). A donnered three-story mansard roof is clad in standing seam metal. The window sash are one over-one aluminum replacements. Light fixtures have been installed at the bases of the windows on the twentieth and twenty-first stories to provide night-time illumination for the mansard roof.
History
September 11th
The building was severely damaged in the September 11, 2001 attacks when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed directly across the street. Scaffolding which had been erected on the facade for routine maintenance did nothing to stop the fiery debris from raining into the building and tearing a gash deep down its northern face. Two office workers were killed when they were trapped in an elevator. The firestorm raged out of control for several days; the building, which had housed businesses including Hanover Capital, Frost & Sullivan and IKON Office Solutions, was completely gutted. It is believed that 90 West's heavy building materials and extensive use of terra cotta inside and out helped serve as fireproofing and protected it from further damage and collapse, as opposed to more modern skyscrapers such as 7 World Trade Center, which suffered similar damage and collapsed later that day; and the Deutsche Bank Building, which was damanged beyond repair and is undergoing deconstruction.
Present day
90 West Street has been meticulously restored, and in 2006 it received a National Preservation Honor Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.[3] Its interior has been converted into apartments. Restoration of the lobby revealed some of Gilbert's original terra cotta work that had been covered over during an earlier modernization project. The building reopened in spring of 2005. During this restoration, the green copper top of the building was replaced with a less expensive bronze.
In 2007, a mammoth sewer pipe burst open into the bottom floors of 90 West from the World Trade Center construction site, damaging dozens of luxury cars and causing a two week evacuation of the building's residents.
References
- ^ Guide to Civil Engineering Projects In and Around New York City (2nd ed.). Metropolitan Section, American Society of Engineers. 2009. p. 108.
- ^ [1], Landmarks Preservation Commission Designation
- ^ "National Trust Presents National Preservation Honor Award to 90 West Street in Lower Manhattan" (Press release). National Trust for Historic Preservation. 2006-11-02. Retrieved 2006-11-06.