195 Broadway is a 29-story building on Broadway

Broadway (New York City)

Broadway is a prominent avenue in New York City, United States, which runs through the full length of the borough of Manhattan and continues northward through the Bronx borough before terminating in Westchester County, New York. It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in the city, dating to...

 in the Financial District

Financial District, Manhattan

The Financial District of New York City is a neighborhood on the southernmost section of the borough of Manhattan which comprises the offices and headquarters of many of the city's major financial institutions, including the New York Stock Exchange and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York...

 of the New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 borough

Borough (New York City)

New York City, one of the largest cities in the world, is composed of five boroughs. Each borough now has the same boundaries as the county it is in. County governments were dissolved when the city consolidated in 1898, along with all city, town, and village governments within each county...

 of Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

. It was the longtime headquarters of American Telephone and Telegraph

AT&T

AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...

, as well as Western Union

Western Union

The Western Union Company is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. Its North American headquarters is in Englewood, Colorado. Up until 2006, Western Union was the best-known U.S...

 for a time. It occupies an entire block on one side of Broadway, running from Dey Street to Fulton Street

Fulton Street (Manhattan)

Fulton Street is a busy street located in Lower Manhattan. It is in New York City's Financial District, a few blocks north of Wall Street. It runs from Church Street at the site of the World Trade Center to South Street, terminating in front of the South Street Seaport...

. It also has the address 15 Dey Street, well known as the site of one end of the first transcontinental telephone call. The same building, using the "195 Broadway" address, was the New York end of the first intercity Picturephone call in 1927.

195 Broadway is also known as the Telephone Building, Telegraph Building, or Western Union Building, due its past history. The building is still in use.

Planning and construction

From 1885 to 1910, AT&T was headquartered at 125 Milk Street in Boston.

The building at 195 Broadway was constructed under the leadership of AT&T's president Theodore Newton Vail

Theodore Newton Vail

Theodore Newton Vail was a U.S. telephone industrialist. His philosophy of using closed systems, centralized power, and as much network control as possible, in order to maintain monopoly power, has been called Vailism...

, who had taken the AT&T helm in 1907 and added the same title at Western Union

Western Union

The Western Union Company is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. Its North American headquarters is in Englewood, Colorado. Up until 2006, Western Union was the best-known U.S...

 in 1909 when that firm was purchased by AT&T. In 1912, Vail developed a two-phase plan for a 29-story headquarters building that would be constructed on Broadway on the block stretching from Dey Street to Fulton Street

Fulton Street (Manhattan)

Fulton Street is a busy street located in Lower Manhattan. It is in New York City's Financial District, a few blocks north of Wall Street. It runs from Church Street at the site of the World Trade Center to South Street, terminating in front of the South Street Seaport...

. The plan entailed constructing one wing on the Dey Street corner, followed by the second wing on the Fulton Street corner.

The first portion of the building, the Dey Street wing completed in 1916, was an L-shaped structure at the corner of Dey Street and Broadway with an extension reaching Fulton Street.

William W. Bosworth

William W. Bosworth

William Welles Bosworth was an American architect whose most famous designs include MIT's Cambridge campus, the AT&T Building in New York City, and the Theodore N. Vail mansion in Morristown, New Jersey , now the Morristown Town Hall...

, the architect who designed the John D. Rockefeller

John D. Rockefeller

John Davison Rockefeller was an American oil industrialist, investor, and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure of...

 estate at Kykuit

Kykuit

Kykuit , also known as John D. Rockefeller Estate, is a 40-room National Trust house in Westchester County, New York, built by the oil businessman, philanthropist and founder of the prominent Rockefeller family, John D. Rockefeller, and his son, John D...

, was commissioned to create the Fulton Street wing of the building. Bosworth's designed featured layers of gray granite columns in Doric

Doric order

The Doric order was one of the three orders or organizational systems of ancient Greek or classical architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian.-History:...

 and Ionic

Ionic order

The Ionic order forms one of the three orders or organizational systems of classical architecture, the other two canonic orders being the Doric and the Corinthian...

 styles, and a lobby that included 43 oversized Doric columns made of marble. In 1927, the building was the site of the first transatlantic telephone call, made to London, England.

Art

AT&T commissioned Evelyn Beatrice Longman

Evelyn Beatrice Longman

Evelyn Beatrice Longman was the first woman sculptor to be elected a full member of the National Academy of Design in 1919. Her allegorical figure works were commissioned as monuments and memorials, adornment for public buildings, and attractions at art expositions in early 20th-century America.-...

 to create a bronze sculpture that she called Genius of Telegraphy, that was to be placed atop a pyramidal structure on the top of the Fulton Street wing of the building. The statue that she created depicted a 24 feet (7.3 m) winged male figure in gilded bronze on top of a globe, with the figure having cables around its torso and one of the statue's arms holding bolts of electricity. the statue was cast in bronze and covered with over 40,000 pieces of gold leaf. After a court-ordered divestiture of Western Union, the statue's official title was changed to Genius of Electricity. The statue was renamed Spirit of Communication in the 1930s, but has been better known by its nickname, Golden Boy.

One of sculptor Paul Manship

Paul Manship

Paul Howard Manship was an American sculptor.-Life:Manship began his art studies at the St. Paul School of Art in Minnesota. From there he moved to Philadelphia and continued his education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts...

's earliest public works was "The Four Elements," a set of four bronze reliefs that is on the lower facade of the building.

Demise as headquarters

In 1978, AT&T commissioned a new building at 550 Madison Avenue

Madison Avenue (Manhattan)

Madison Avenue is a north-south avenue in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, United States, that carries northbound one-way traffic. It runs from Madison Square to the Madison Avenue Bridge at 138th Street. In doing so, it passes through Midtown, the Upper East Side , Spanish Harlem, and...

. This new AT&T Building

Sony Building (New York)

The Sony Tower, formerly the AT&T Building, is a tall, 37-story highrise skyscraper located at 550 Madison Avenue between 55th Street and 56th Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It was designed by architect Philip Johnson and partner John Burgee, and was completed in 1984...

 was designed by Philip Johnson

Philip Johnson

Philip Cortelyou Johnson was an influential American architect.In 1930, he founded the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and later , as a trustee, he was awarded an American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the first Pritzker Architecture...

 and quickly became an icon of the new Postmodern architectural style. The building was completed in 1984, the very year of the Bell System divestiture

Bell System divestiture

The Bell System divestiture, or the breakup of AT&T, was initiated by the filing in 1974 by the U.S. Department of Justice of an antitrust lawsuit against AT&T. The case, United States v...

. It proved to be too large for the post-divestiture corporation and in 1993, AT&T leased the building to Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

, who now owns it.

Other features

The building includes an entrance to the Fulton Street station on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line

IRT Lexington Avenue Line

The Lexington Avenue Line is one of the lines of the IRT division of the New York City Subway, stretching from Downtown Brooklyn or Lower Manhattan north to 125th Street in East Harlem. The portion in Lower and Midtown Manhattan was part of the first subway line in New York...

( trains).