Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower
Encyclopedia
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 Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, 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...
and a familiar Brooklyn landmark.
At 37 stories and 512 feet (156 m) tall, it was the tallest and is still the third tallest building on Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
, and is among the tallest four-sided clock tower
Clock tower
A clock tower is a tower specifically built with one or more clock faces. Clock towers can be either freestanding or part of a church or municipal building such as a town hall. Some clock towers are not true clock towers having had their clock faces added to an already existing building...
s in the world.
History
Built in 1927 by the architectural firm Halsey, McCormack and Helmer, in a modernized (Art DecoArt Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
), Byzantine
Byzantine architecture
Byzantine architecture is the architecture of the Byzantine Empire. The empire gradually emerged as a distinct artistic and cultural entity from what is today referred to as the Roman Empire after AD 330, when the Roman Emperor Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire east from Rome to...
and Romanesque style, it is located at 1 Hanson Place, at the corner of Ashland Place, near the intersection of Atlantic
Atlantic Avenue (New York City)
Atlantic Avenue is an important street in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. It stretches from the Brooklyn waterfront on the East River all the way to Jamaica, Queens...
and Flatbush Avenue
Flatbush Avenue (Brooklyn)
Flatbush Avenue is one of the major avenues in the New York City Borough of Brooklyn. It runs from the Manhattan Bridge south-southeastward to Jamaica Bay, where it joins the Marine Parkway Bridge, which connects Brooklyn to the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens...
s, across from the Atlantic Terminal Mall
Atlantic Terminal Mall
Atlantic Terminal is a shopping mall located on Atlantic Avenue surrounded by Hanson Place, Fort Greene Place and Flatbush Avenue in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, New York....
. Despite the name it stands in the Fort Greene
Fort Greene, Brooklyn
Fort Greene is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Part of Brooklyn Community Board 2, Fort Greene is listed on the New York State Registry and on the National Register of Historic Places, and is a New York City-designated Historic District...
section of Brooklyn rather than Williamsburg
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Williamsburg is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, bordering Greenpoint to the north, Bedford-Stuyvesant to the south, Bushwick to the east and the East River to the west. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 1. The neighborhood is served by the NYPD's 90th ...
, spelled without the h, where the bank's original headquarters building
Williamsburgh Savings Bank
The Williamsburgh Savings Bank was an important institution in Brooklyn, New York, from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries. A series of bank mergers brought it into the HSBC group late in the 20th century...
by George B. Post
George B. Post
George Browne Post was an American architect trained in the Beaux-Arts tradition.-Biography:Post was a student of Richard Morris Hunt , but unlike many architects of his generation, he had previously received a degree in civil engineering...
still stands; the original building's landmark dome was applied as a cap, at the bank officers' insistence, over Helmer's protests, with the familiar phallic result. It was built with a vast, vaulted banking hall, 63 feet (19.2 m) high, one of the most famous interiors in New York, facing with limestone and marbles, with mosaics and huge tinted windows containing silhouetted iron cutouts with vignettes of workers, students etc. Above were two floors of banking offices. The rest of the balanced through not symmetrical vertical massing of staggered setbacks in buff-colored brick and architectural terracotta
Architectural terracotta
Terracotta, in its unglazed form, became fashionable as an architectural ceramic construction material in England in the 1860s, and in the United States in the 1870s. It was generally used to supplement brick and tiles of similar colour in late Victorian buildings.It had been used before this in...
contained rental office spaces.
On the exterior a highly-polished shoulder-height dado
Dado (architecture)
In architectural terminology, the dado, borrowed from Italian meaning die or plinth, is the lower part of a wall, below the dado rail and above the skirting board....
, veneered with veined and colored Minnesota granite, presents a glistening variegated surface to the pedestrian passing at close distance and offers a discreet inscription near a corner:
TO OUR DEPOSITORS PAST AND PRESENT THIS BUILDING IS DEDICATED. BY THEIR INDUSTRY AND THRIFT THEY HAVE BUILT HOMES AND EDUCATED CHILDREN, OPENED THE DOOR OF OPPORTUNITY TO YOUTH AND MADE AGE COMFORTABLE INDEPENDENT AND DIGNIFIED. BY THOSE STURDY VIRTUES THEY HAVE OBTAINED THEIR AMBITIONS, SWEPT ASIDE THE PETTY DISTINCTIONS OF CLASS AND BIRTH AND SO MAINTAINED THE TRUE SPIRIT OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY.
Carved details around the windows are appealingly literal, in the vein of architecture parlante
Architecture parlante
The phrase architecture parlante refers to the concept of buildings that explain their own function or identity.The phrase was originally associated with Claude Nicolas Ledoux, and was extended to other Paris-trained architects of the Revolutionary period, Étienne-Louis Boullée, and Jean-Jacques...
, speaking of the values of thrift with beehives, squirrels that store nuts, the head of Mercury
Mercury (mythology)
Mercury was a messenger who wore winged sandals, and a god of trade, the son of Maia Maiestas and Jupiter in Roman mythology. His name is related to the Latin word merx , mercari , and merces...
, god of Commerce, wise owls, and seated lions whose paws protect the bank's lockbox, with the bank's monogram on the lock haft. Embedded in the ashlar wall face above are square basreliefs, one on the right of a burglar, whom the depositor understood would be thwarted by the extremely massive 60-ton vault doors in the basement, which stood open for inspection during banking hours.
The architect of Halsey, McCormack and Helmer, Robert Helmer, wrote at the time of the building's opening that he wanted the building "to be regarded as a cathedral dedicated to the furtherance of thrift and prosperity."Inside, the low vaulted ceiling of the narthex
Narthex
The narthex of a church is the entrance or lobby area, located at the end of the nave, at the far end from the church's main altar. Traditionally the narthex was a part of the church building, but was not considered part of the church proper...
-like vestibule is mosaiced with tesserae that vary from gray-blue to the most intense turquoise and ultramarine. Glass doors applied with wrought iron screens by René Chambellan
Rene Paul Chambellan
Rene Paul Chambellan was an American sculptor, born in West Hoboken, New Jersey.Chambellan studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian in Paris and with Solon Borglum in New York City. Chambellan specialized in architectural sculpture...
depicting the artisan trades open to the vast limestone banking hall, 128 feet (39 m) long, with a central nave divided from side aisles by Romanesque columns with cast-stone capitals. Friezes carved in the two-plane relief manner of Lombard Comacine masons
Comacine masters
The early medieval Lombard Comacine masters were stonemasons working in a region of excellent building stone who gave to Lombardy its preeminence in the stone architecture that preceded Romanesque style.-Comacini:...
, of foliate scrolls with animal heads, inhabited with human and animal figures, relieve the masonry walls. The ceiling vaults glitter with mosaics of tesserae of gold leaf
Gold leaf
right|thumb|250px|[[Burnishing]] gold leaf with an [[agate]] stone tool, during the water gilding processGold leaf is gold that has been hammered into extremely thin sheets and is often used for gilding. Gold leaf is available in a wide variety of karats and shades...
under glass, embedded with moulded stars and showing the constellations of the Zodiac
Zodiac
In astronomy, the zodiac is a circle of twelve 30° divisions of celestial longitude which are centred upon the ecliptic: the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year...
. The floor is inlaid with various colored marbles in the Cosmatesque
Cosmatesque
Cosmatesque, or Cosmati, is a style of geometric decorative inlay stonework typical of Medieval Italy, and especially of Rome and its surroundings. It was used most extensively for the decoration of church floors, but was also used to decorate church walls, pulpits, and bishop's thrones...
manner At the far end a giant mosaic panel gives a bird's-eye view of Breuckelen with Manhattan in the distance beyond and the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower illuminated in a shaft of sunlight.
The building was designed for the Williamsburgh Savings Bank
Williamsburgh Savings Bank
The Williamsburgh Savings Bank was an important institution in Brooklyn, New York, from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries. A series of bank mergers brought it into the HSBC group late in the 20th century...
, then owned later by its parent, Republic National Bank
Republic New York
Republic New York Corporation was the holding company for the Republic National Bank of New York and the Safra Republic Bank. The company was controlled by billionaire Edmond Safra, who was killed in a fire in his Monte Carlo penthouse apartment by his nurse Ted Maher...
, then, via a merger, HSBC
HSBC
HSBC Holdings plc is a global banking and financial services company headquartered in Canary Wharf, London, United Kingdom. it is the world's second-largest banking and financial services group and second-largest public company according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine...
. For years the building's offices were notably dentists' offices; the New York Daily News
New York Daily News
The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....
once called it 'The Mecca of Dentistry'. As of early 2006, Magic Johnson
Magic Johnson
Earvin "Magic" Johnson Jr. is a retired American professional basketball player who played point guard for the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association . After winning championships in high school and college, Johnson was selected first overall in the 1979 NBA Draft by the Lakers...
is converting the building to luxury condominiums.
In 2008 CJ Follini
CJ Follini
CJ Follini is an American digital media entrepreneur, film producer and real estate investor. A native New Yorker who built his group of companies by investing in alternative real estate types such as: digital film studios; healthcare real estate; student housing; and artist residence clubs as...
and Noyack Medical Partners purchased the commercial half of this famed landmark.
The building features a gilded copper dome; carved lions, turtles and birds on the exterior; and a marble banking hall on the ground floor with 63 feet (19.2 m) vaulted ceilings, 40 feet (12.2 m) windows and elaborate mosaics; and two abandoned public observation decks with signage describing the Battle of Brooklyn.
The building was declared a landmark in 1977. Replacement of windows engendered a lawsuit from the Landmarks Preservation Commission that forced restoration of the original appearance of the windows.
Current use
In 2005, Skylight One Hanson was created in conjunction with Canyon Capital Realty Advisers, as part of their massive redevelopment of the former Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building. Located in one of Brooklyn’s most famous landmarks, the Skylight One Hanson event space is composed of the Romanesque Beaux Arts Bank Hall and the Art Deco Vault. Throughout the restoration and redevelopment of the building, great care was taken to preserve the architectural prestige of its marble floors, carved teller stations, magnificent 63-foot vaulted ceiling and the iconic 40-foot mosaic of New York as a Dutch colony.Managed by the Manhattan-based venue management firm Skylight Group and winner of the Bizbash Award for Best New Venue of 2010, Skylight One Hanson has gained world-wide acclaim as a host for the most cutting edge private events in New York. Skylight One Hanson has held charity events, weddings and staged concerts to photo and film shoots. In June 2011, the impressive event space hosted a secret concert with headliner Kanye West leading a pack of talented performers (this paragraph appears written by a PR hack). Skylight One Hanson is also the winter home of the treasured Brooklyn Flea
Brooklyn Flea
Brooklyn Flea is a company based in Brooklyn, New York. Founded in 2008 by Jonathan Butler, creator of Brownstoner.com, and Eric Demby, the former communications director for Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn Flea runs several of the largest flea markets on the East Coast of the...
.
External links
- Forgotten NY web page on the building
- Collection of images of the building
- Emporis profile building is 42 stories tall
- PropertySharks or 41
- NY Observer Ad or 37
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/hjbizzarro/267028164/in/photostream/ pictures of Rene Paul ChambellanRene Paul ChambellanRene Paul Chambellan was an American sculptor, born in West Hoboken, New Jersey.Chambellan studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian in Paris and with Solon Borglum in New York City. Chambellan specialized in architectural sculpture...
's interior work