Historical Perspectives

Jesse Serwer is managing editor of Real Estate New York, from which this article is excerpted.

Then…The Making of a ‘Fortress’

When it was built in the 1920s, the massive Barclay-Vesey Building at 140 West St. hulked over the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan, long before Battery Park City was even a thought. The breakthrough work of architect Ralph Walker included a hand-carved decorative facade and is often cited as New York City’s first Art Deco skyscraper.

Constructed between 1923 and 1926, 140 West St. was originally created as the headquarters for the New York Telephone Co. Following a surge in demand for telephone service after the first World War, the NYTC found its “greatly enlarged personnel and equipment scattered about the city in many locations, a number of which were leased,” according to Telephone Review, a September 1926 publication issued by the phone company. The same document went on to report that “all studies which had as their genus economy led to one conclusion: the erection of a building conveniently located and large enough to satisfy present demands and reasonably anticipate future requirements.”

The job of designing the building was entrusted to Ralph Thomas Walker, who was then a largely unknown associate with the firm of McKenzie, Voorhees & Gmelin but would go on to fame after Barclay-Vesey’s completion.

One of the first skyscrapers to go into the ground following New York City’s 1916 zoning ordinance requiring skyscrapers to stagger their setbacks from the street, Barclay-Vesey (which took its name from the streets framing it to the north and south) would be hailed as the first to use the law as a design asset.

After studying the relationship between land cost and construction cost, Walker and the NYTC chose 32 stories as the most economical size and set about creating a building that would prove functional for both corporate offices and telecommunications equipment while celebrating the building’s uses in its form.

Though its exterior was predominantly brick, it was punctuated by intricately carved limestone and sculptural work depicting various motifs, such as bells, the symbol of the telephone company. Ornamental grillage surrounding Barclay-Vesey’s entrances depicted marine images such as whales, pelicans and seahorses, a nod to its location on the Hudson River (a feature it lost when what is now Battery Park was landfilled in).

Decades after its completion, Barclay-Vesey was hailed as New York City’s first Art Deco (the term would not come into usage until the 1960s) skyscraper.

“It was a transitional building,” explains Tony Robins, an architectural historian and the founder and vice president of the Art Deco Society of New York. “Art Deco takes its name from an exhibition that was held in 1925, and this building was started in 1923. But it was the first skyscraper that will have pieces of what will become Art Deco.”

At the time of its completion, the building was also praised for its innovative vaulted pedestrian arcade along Vesey Street. But the most impressive feature of 140 West St. was, perhaps, the interior lobby. A vaulted ceiling decorated with 10 murals tracing the history of communication, from ancient Aztec couriers and Egyptian megaphones through to the advent of the rotary phone, was created by Edgar Williams and the firm Mack, Jenney & Tyler. The lobby floor was also covered with bronze plates depicting the construction of New York’s telephone network.

Architecturally, the building is probably most important for being “Walker’s breakthrough skyscraper,” says Robins, noting several other iconic buildings in New York City, including the Irving Trust Building at One Wall Street, were later designed by Walker. Following Barclay-Vesey, Walker would become a partner with his firm, which would be renamed Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker.

The building, which would earn the nickname “The Fortress” among telephone employees, would carry on its dual role as a switching hub and corporate offices until 1972 when the NYTC moved its executive offices to 1095 Avenue of the Americas.

In 1991, the Barclay-Vesey’s facade, first-floor interior and entrances were awarded landmark status by the New York City Landmarks Commission, along with two of Walker’s other Manhattan buildings, the Long Distance Building of the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. at 32 Avenue of the Americas, and the Western Union Building at 60 Hudson St.

Around this same time, as advancements in technology and more compact equipment sizes freed up room, NYNEX (as NYTC was re-dubbed after becoming a Regional Bell operating company in 1984) gradually began moving engineering staff and non-technical personnel back in to the building. It was the largest of five major switching hubs serving the Financial District when, in 2000, NYNEX was folded into the newly formed Verizon.

Everything would change, however, on Sept. 11, 2001.

Now…An Unprecedented RecoveryHow 140 West St. Survived 9/11

Despite its strength, “the Fortress” appeared headed for potential destruction following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Seven World Trade Center, located just 60 feet across Washington Street, crumbled into 140 West St.’s east wall. On the other side of the Twin Towers, the Deutsche Bank Building at 130 Liberty St., only 27 years old at the time of Sept. 11, would endure damage that would lead to its eventual condemnation.

The building at 140 West St., meanwhile, absorbed severe structural and facade damage to its south face, with entire column bays destroyed as high as the 13th story. As the 47-story 7 World Trade crumbled, it spilled predominantly to its west, causing structural damage to the eastern portions of 140 West St.’s first nine floors. The remains of 7 World Trade ultimately piled seven stories high against the eastern facade of 140 West St., effectively destroying the exterior wall up to that point.

Blazes at 7 World Trade Center continued to burn well into October, and the Fire Department of New York fought many of them from within the Verizon Building. Eventually, one-and-a-half levels of its basement became completely submerged with water. “There were 40 million gallons of water in here,” says Domenic Veltri, director of real estate operations for Verizon. “The water damage went all the way to the 10th floor.”

Despite everything, the 74-year-old building withstood the destruction and attendant side effects of that day. But saving the landmark proved to be no small feat.

“There was a very fundamental difference between us and Deutsche Bank,” explains Veltri. “Deutsche Bank evacuated. We were more severely damaged than them–7 World Trade fell on top of us. But our real estate people were here on Sept. 11, and, on Sept. 12, we mobilized the biggest restoration effort in New York City, probably. The next day we came back with 700 to 1,000 workers, who were here 24/7 for the next three months.”

Just as much as the preservation effort saved the building, so too did the building itself.

“It’s a steel frame masonry exterior building, not a curtain wall kind of structure,” says Steven Saraniero, a partner with William F. Collins Architects, the lead architect in the ensuing restoration. “That this building is standing today is a testament to that construction type. The durability of the material itself helped not only with the impact of falling debris but also in being a natural fireproof element. Fire was highly contributory to the collapse of all the buildings on that particular day. We didn’t have a fire.”

The disaster recovery team, which, in addition to Verizon and Setauket, LI-based William F. Collins, included Tishman Construction Corp. (acting as general contractor) as well as numerous outside consultants and engineers, began the process of reclaiming the building from the elements and restoring it back to functionality.

“We lost all of our abilities and our cables on the street,” Veltri says. “To provide telephone service in and out of the building we built a temporary power plant outside–we had six million watts of generators out back on Barclay Street. We provide the communications services in this area for the FBI, FEMA and the Mayor’s office–we couldn’t turn this building off. We had to keep it on, and build everything around it, while producing the service through which we make our revenue.”

On the other hand, emergency workers at Ground Zero were “looking at us like, ‘How do you know your building is not going to fall down?’” Veltri recalls. “We had to petition the Department of Buildings and FEMA and prove to them it wasn’t going to fall.”

Once the job of securing the facility was complete, Verizon began the process of reassembling and preserving the building’s exterior, as well as restoring and updating interior features like the elevator system and the lobby murals.

“We had 42 simultaneous, parallel actions going on at once,” Saraniero says.

It was also necessary to walk a tightrope between preserving 140 West St.’s defining characteristics and adapting it into a functional modern building in compliance with contemporary standards and regulations.

Particularly challenging was the replacement of the exterior brick and the ornamental limestone, perhaps Barclay-Vesey’s defining characteristics.

“We gave Landmarks 8-10 different variations of brick and mortar,” before they would agree on a type, Saraniero says. Mount Vernon-based stone fabricators Petrillo Stone Corp. was brought in for the arduous task of replicating the limestone carvings.

The bronze whales, seahorses and other grillage on the lower portions of the east side were recreated by Petrillo’s artisans, who worked from rubber impressions taken from the undamaged west side.

Also tricky was the restoration of the first-floor frescoes, which, having already lost some luster over the years, were covered with soot after Sept. 11. The two easternmost panels also sustained significant water damage from the firefighting effort.

EverGreene Painting Studios, which specializes in restoring murals and other decorative features in landmark buildings, was brought in to touch up and repaint all of the murals, which had been repainted 20 years earlier with paints that had begun delaminating the original layer. Following 9/11, that original layer was flaking fast.

A new 3,200-ton chiller plant was installed, including seven cooling towers, and the building’s water, sanitary and storm systems were brought up to the “top of the house.”

“Prior to 9/11, all of our electrical services came into the basement,” Veltri says, explaining one of the underlying lessons gleaned from the catastrophe. “We moved all of our electrical gear above grade and out of the flood plane.” In total, 600,000 sf of office and technology space were reconstructed.

When all was said and done, Verizon spent over $300 million on the restoration effort at 140 West St. In the course of rebuilding, the phone company decided to sell off its corporate headquarters building at 1095 Ave. of the Americas and rededicate 140 West St. as its corporate headquarters, which it did on December 2005.

“It gave us an opportunity to complete the circle associated with restoring the building to as much of its natural beauty and also to get more utilization and efficiency out of it than even prior to 9/11,” explains Lee Brathwaite, vice president of corporate real estate for Verizon. Not only did Verizon executives return to the original NYTC executive offices on the 29th floor, which looks much like it must have in the 1920s, complete with paintings from the Hudson School and the original furniture created by Ralph Walker’s team, the company also reactivated a long-forgotten mezzanine level above the 31st floor.

The redevelopment effort has won eight major industry awards including the New York Landmark Conservancy’s Lucy G. Moses Preservation Award in 2004, BOMA NY’s 2005 Pinnacle Award and the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2005 Preservation Award.—RENY