54b. Fulton-Nassau Historic District
Location: Roughly bounded by Broadway, Park Row, and Nassau, Dutch, William, Ann, Spruce, and Liberty Streets
Built: Multiple dates, mainly around 1860-1930
Architect: Multiple
National Register Number: 05000988
Listed: September 7, 2005
Visited: December 1, 2007; January 6, February 28, and March 2, 2008
Man builds building. Building is destroyed; people die. People accuse man of criminal negligence. They say he could've done more. Man then vows to build the biggest, strongest, safest building the world has ever seen. A cliché, or a Jungian archetype of real estate development?
Orlando B. Potter was a politician, a property man, a six-million-dollar-man at his death (meaning he'd be worth $140,000,000 today). The New York World Building (not the later 1890 one), at five stories, a relatively tall building for its day, was his baby. In late January 1882, some tenants, including Alfred Ely Beach (the Scientific American editor and inventor of the proto-subway Beach Pneumatic Transit system) complained to Potter of burning-wood smells and unnaturally hot walls, but Potter refused to contact the fire department. A fire gutted the place soon after, one of the worst New York fires of the time. At least six died, included two who jumped to escape flames.
Only a few weeks later, Potter proposed a new structure for the site. The result is known as, aptly enough, the Potter Building (N.G. Starkweather, 1883-86)--or, for the people who can remember what came before, the New Potter Building. At eleven stories, it pushed the limits of what could be done with the new-fangled iron construction then sweeping the architectural world, and made extensive use of terra-cotta, both as fireproofing and decoration. The exterior is so overloaded with brown terra-cotta ornamentation complementing the vivid, orange-red brick that it reads more like a curiously symmetrical rock cliff than anything belonging a building. It possesses so much ornamentation, in fact, that out of all the people who have ever laid eyes on the building, maybe only a vanishingly small minority have noticed what's on the capital of the huge column on the corner of Beekman and Park Row. The person who wrote the NYCLPC designation report for the Potter even mistakenly refers to it as an eagle. It's not: it's actually a Phoenix rising from the flames.
Built: Multiple dates, mainly around 1860-1930
Architect: Multiple
National Register Number: 05000988
Listed: September 7, 2005
Visited: December 1, 2007; January 6, February 28, and March 2, 2008
Man builds building. Building is destroyed; people die. People accuse man of criminal negligence. They say he could've done more. Man then vows to build the biggest, strongest, safest building the world has ever seen. A cliché, or a Jungian archetype of real estate development?
Orlando B. Potter was a politician, a property man, a six-million-dollar-man at his death (meaning he'd be worth $140,000,000 today). The New York World Building (not the later 1890 one), at five stories, a relatively tall building for its day, was his baby. In late January 1882, some tenants, including Alfred Ely Beach (the Scientific American editor and inventor of the proto-subway Beach Pneumatic Transit system) complained to Potter of burning-wood smells and unnaturally hot walls, but Potter refused to contact the fire department. A fire gutted the place soon after, one of the worst New York fires of the time. At least six died, included two who jumped to escape flames.
Only a few weeks later, Potter proposed a new structure for the site. The result is known as, aptly enough, the Potter Building (N.G. Starkweather, 1883-86)--or, for the people who can remember what came before, the New Potter Building. At eleven stories, it pushed the limits of what could be done with the new-fangled iron construction then sweeping the architectural world, and made extensive use of terra-cotta, both as fireproofing and decoration. The exterior is so overloaded with brown terra-cotta ornamentation complementing the vivid, orange-red brick that it reads more like a curiously symmetrical rock cliff than anything belonging a building. It possesses so much ornamentation, in fact, that out of all the people who have ever laid eyes on the building, maybe only a vanishingly small minority have noticed what's on the capital of the huge column on the corner of Beekman and Park Row. The person who wrote the NYCLPC designation report for the Potter even mistakenly refers to it as an eagle. It's not: it's actually a Phoenix rising from the flames.
posted by Michael at
12:12 AM
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