Variety At A Street Corner

That’s the corner of Chambers Street and Broadway, viewed from the west, down Chambers. (Click to enlarge.) There are a bunch of buildings here, each with a different story. We used a version of this photo for advertising our firm from 2012 to 2016.

1. At the far left is an industrial loft from 1854. The fire escape was added later, in the second half of the 19th century, and the bottom two stories of the front facade were removed and replaced with some really cheap-looking metal storefront.
2. Next to it and low is a two-story commercial building dating from 1936, which is almost certainly a new facade tacked onto the innards of one or two old loft buildings (that would have looked much like number 1) that were cut down to this height. If you look at the side wall of the next building to the east (number 3), you can see filled-in joist pockets on the side wall about halfway between the light-blue graffiti and the band of stucco at #3’s parapet. These were the fourth floor joists of the old building at this location. Note that the 1930s front facade has strip windows at the second floor, which means that the facade contains real spandrel beams and columns.
3. Next to number 1 and high is the glass facade of an apartment house facing Broadway and built in 2010.
4. Next to number 2 is an industrial loft with a cast-iron facade painted gray. Portions of the building date from the 1840s and were originally built as a hotel annex; the conversion to industrial use, strengthening of the interior floors, and iron facade came in 1858. The second floor of the facade has been altered badly.
5. Next to number 4 is another loft, built as five stories in 1848 as part of the same hotel, converted to industrial use in the late 50s or early 60s, and expanded to six stories in 1876.
6. The big building on the corner is the Broadway Chambers Building of 1900, named after the streets and not some attempt to attract the legal profession. It was Cass Gilbert’s first building in New York and his first skyscraper.
7. Way off on the right is the side wall of the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank Building (you can see the “…ANT / …RIAL of the mural on the side wall), east of Broadway on Chambers, a 1912 skyscraper by an architect less skilled than Gilbert.
8. In front of the Emigrant building is the A.T. Stewart / Sun Building, wrapped in scaffolding. It was built in 1846 and modified and expanded numerous times. The A. T. Stewart store was the first real department store in New York; when the store moved uptown, the building was eventually taken over by the New York Sun newspaper, and then by the city. It now houses the New York Department of Buildings. The most notable feature of the building is its facade, which is entirely tuckahoe marble: it sounds luxurious, but it weathers badly and has needed a lot of repairs.

That’s a lot of history and a lot of different construction types in the space of a block.