1 Wall Street / 14 Wall Street
Exploring Downtown
1 Wall Street
On one of the world’s most expensive corners – 1 Wall Street and Broadway – architect Ralph Walker conceived his zig-zag Art Deco skyscraper for the Irving Trust Company as a “curtain wall” – not the typical sheet of glass hanging from a steel cage, but a limestone wall rippling like a curtain descending on a Broadway stage.
Because of the curves in the wall, the bank doesn’t completely occupy its full building lot, and by law unoccupied and unmarked land reverts to the public – not too many square inches are left unused here, but each one is worth gold. So a slender metal line in the sidewalk makes clear who owns what.
14 Wall Street
The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus piled on top of the bell-tower of St. Mark’s in Venice, at the corner of Wall and Broad – that’s the design concept behind 14 Wall Street. In its day the world’s tallest bank building, the 539-foot-high skyscraper originally housed the headquarters of Bankers Trust, one of the country’s wealthiest financial institutions.
Many early skyscrapers took the Venetian bell-tower as a logical model for a modern office tower, but 14 Wall Street was the first to top it off with a temple in the sky, a seven-story stepped pyramid modeled on one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The bank then adopted the pyramid as its trademark, and took as its slogan “A Tower of Strength.”
Instantly a standard-bearer in the fabled Downtown skyline, 14 Wall Street went on to become a widely recognized symbol of Wall Street and American capitalism.
Marker is at the intersection of Wall Street and Broad Street, on the left when traveling east on Wall Street.
Courtesy hmdb.org
