Monday, January 9, 2012

The Bankers Trust Company Building

The Bankers Trust Company Building designed by Trowbridge & Livingston c. 1912 at 14 Wall Street in New York City. Yesterday saw Edmund Converse's home 'Conyers Farm', today we see the building of the company he was president of. Converse would leave the Bankers Trust Company in 1914 to become president of the Astor Trust Company, which in 1917 was acquired by Bankers Trust. Click HERE for more on the Bankers Trust Company Building, HERE for Christopher Gray's Streetscapes article and HERE to see the building on google street view. Click HERE for a history of the Bankers Trust Company.

Quite the view of Ernest Flagg's c. 1908 Singer Building.






Photos from Architecture & Building, 1912.

2 comments:

archibuff said...

Built back in the day when walking into a bank gave you supreme confidence in the institution and the people sitting behind the desks. Beautiful and powerful Wall Street landmark. Of note, this structure replaced the ridiculously slender Gillender skyscraper, an early sliver tower, which was approximately 25 wide, over 20 stories tall and survived less than 20 years. One of the first skyscrapers to be purposely torn down and from the first 2 photos, one can see the incredible Singer Tower rising majestically in the distance, unfortunately a later skyscraper tear down, but instead of constructing a landmark building, the Singer Tower site got a hulking black carcass of steel.

The Down East Dilettante said...

Historically the confidence in the institution was no more warranted then than now, but certainly it was an ennobling exper)ience to walk into such a building. This has long been one of my favorite early skyscrapers, sadly now subsumed by the new towers that dwarf it (I miss the Manhattan skyline of my youth, rhythmic and spiky. Every year now, viewed from afar, it is boxier and boxier...