90. Building at 254-260 Canal Street

A.K.A.: The Bruce Building
Location: 254-260 Canal Street
Built: 1856-1857
Architect: Probably James Bogardus
National Register Number: 06000475
Listed: June 07, 2006
Visited: November 15, 2008



254-260 Canal Street is also known as the Bruce Building, the Bruce here being George Bruce. The National Register of Historic Places registration form quotes a source calling him the "'father and chief' of typography in America." Not being in the field, I suppose I can't bring his publishing innovations to a height lower than a little over my head, but I do "get" the utility and beauty of the typefaces his foundry birthed, including Ornamented No. 1514 a.k.a. Gold Rush a.k.a. Klondike, a type I had to fake when designing one of my just-about-dead blogs.



Of the thirty-seven buildings known to be or suspected to have been designed by cast-iron pioneer James Bogardus, only five survive. Of the remaining five, the Bruce Building is closer to "suspected" than "known," as we have no direct proof of Bogardus' involvement; however, Bogardus did list Bruce as a client a year after this building was completed, and the Medusa heads topping the fourth-story arches are known to be characteristic of his work. I think it's also possible there's significance in Bruce's background, as several of James Bogardus' largest known works were built for publishers, including the Sun Iron Building and the Harper & Brothers Publishing Plant; perhaps it was thought of as a minor specialty of Bogardus. It's not much of a stretch to imagine the intuitive appeal a cast-iron building might have to someone who works with movable type, as both the printed page and something like the façade of 254-260 Canal Street are the fruits of individual pre-fabricated metal parts that can be mixed 'n' matched in infinite permutations.

89. Former New York Life Insurance Company Building

Location: 346 Broadway
Built: 1894-1898
Architect: Stephen D. Hatch (eastern section); McKim, Mead & White (western section)
National Register Number: 82003376
Listed: June 28, 1982
Visited: November 15, 2008
A.K.A.: The Clock Tower Building



I don't wear a watch. My last one inexplicably popped from my wrist--and off a moving train. Its suicide so shook me I vowed never to wear another. When I walk around the city now, it is in ignorance of the time. This is a pain when catching movies or showing up for dates, but miracurously, I am rarely late. I can get by with discreet peeks into stores, looking for working clocks, or furtive glances at people's watches. Public clocks are better bets, but they're pretty rare in New York City, rare once people realized in the sixties-seventies what a fucking pain in the ass they are to maintain.

Entirely mechanical, the clock atop 346 Broadway needs someone to manually wind it every eight days. It hadn't worked for twenty years until two city employees, Marvin Schneider and Eric Reiner, decided to give a damn and fix the thing, this in the era of the ungovernable city. The NYT: "'There was a foot of garbage up here,' Mr. Schneider recalled. 'A lot of the parts were missing; junkies had sold them. The glass faces were broken, which exposed the clock to all kinds of weather. Even the pigeons found the place repugnant.'” Today, Schneider is the city Clock Master, handling all the clocks on city property, thirteen in all, including seven in City Hall, plus the subject of dozens of New York Times profiles in addition to those just linked to--and why not, really? The job is so quaint, his story, so compelling.



The clock situation is currently assured, but the rest of the building's history hasn't been quite so straightforwardedly happy-ending. New York Life had its headquarters on this site starting in 1870; after the installation of a new-fangled Otis Elevator, two more stories were added. King's Handbook of New York City 1892 shows a lovely marble Italianate building with a high mansard roof. But the company kept growing, so in 1894, it hired Stephen D. Hatch to design an eastern extension (which is weird because the photo in King's Handbook shows it already extended down the block, but...whatever). Then, soon after he died, McKim, Mead & White were hired to replace the entire original building--no more mansard--with the Broadway front we see today.

A statue of Atlas used to top the clock tower, but disappeared around 1950 under mysterious circumstances. (The building looks incomplete without it.) Natural light used to bathe the insurance agents poring over their actuary tables on the south side of the building, but some jerk decided to replace some low-rise retail with a mid-rise apartment building block to its right. The lobby. Hmm. It was once quite grand, but by 1982 it had gotten all hoiked up with an added mezzanine for file storage. It may or not have been renovated. When I went there last week, it did not even occur to me to check. There was a cop and cop car on the corner, so I didn't even feel comfortable taking pictures of the thing from across the street. Even if he wasn't there, well, my default assumption for most downtown buildings is that NO, you CANNOT just walk through the front door for a look. If you try, some security guard will kill you, KILL YOU DEAD.

88. Firehouse, Engine Company 31

Location: 87-91 Lafayette Street
Built: 1895
Architect: Napoleon Le Brun & Sons
National Register Number: 72000870
Listed: January 20, 1972
Visited: November 15, 2008



More municipal masquerade. Yes, a firehouse--not a French chateau or an Upper East Side derivation. One that cost almost four times as much as your average firehouse at that time. Absurd? What, is nothing too good for the working class? But even with the dormered windows and the fancy Gothic detailing (including dolphins!), it manifestly is--or was, rather--a firehouse: you can tell from the fire-engine red accents on the doors and windows.

It was still operating as a firehouse as late as 1966 when it was landmarked by the NYCLPC. The city later sold it off to two non-profits, the Chinese-American Planning Council and the Downtown Community Television Center, who soon realized they had the historic renovation job from hell on their hands. Christopher Gray: "The building was built on wooden piles preserved by sinking them under the water table. But the water level fell, the piles dried and rotted and some of the interior floors roll and heave like waves." After seven years of work, the foundation was completely restored in 1990; then the exterior was restored in 2000, and the interiors in 2004. There was some rumblings last year about an absolutely batshit-crazy blue trapezoid to be built behind it; even if the city bureaucracy hadn't already gravely wounded that project, then economy probably woulda finished it Mortal Kombat-style.