Jul. 7, 2006 - dynamic city / time runs out on a stripped Tiffany’s

Here is the second of two posts inspired by Sunday’s NY Times that got me thinking about how dynamic New York City is.

From champagne to jewels

Sunday’s Real Estate section carried a piece about an ugly building on Union Square West, six blocks due west along 15^th Street from the new Moet HQ.

Who knew that this spare white building began life in 1870 as the flagship of Tiffany & Company, jewelers and was a “monster [cast] iron building”?

The Times [in 1870] called the new building a "palace of jewels," with black-walnut counters and ebony cases holding watches, fans, opera glasses and other articles in wood, leather, silver, cloisonné, enamel, bronze and rosewood. The Times observed that one ornamental statue, " 'Zingerilla,' by the Spanish sculptor Klessinger, appears almost ready to speak to her admirers."

Tiffany’s stayed for only 35 years before moving uptown (to 37^th Street and Fifth Avenue) and the building became a home for garment companies. By 1925 the building was owned by Amalgamated Bank, which had been formed by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, one of many trade unions located (coincidentally?) around Union Square (the square was named for the federal union – The United States).

An accident and a careful architect

How did this “elaborate” cast-iron building turn into the “blocky white blob of a building” it has been?

It was an accident, literally.

A piece of iron fell from the façade in 1952, leading to the death of the unfortunate pedestrian it landed on. The Amalgamated Bank hired a thorough architect to “make sure” that such an accident never recurred. Which this careful architect did by stripping away every projecting piece of iron from the façade and encasing the shell in white brick.

Since then, the bank has been just one part of the polyglot assortment of Union Square's architecture, which mixes Romanesque, Queen Anne, Federal, postmodern and other styles

This polyglot of styles persisted through the decline of the Union Square area as the City’s fortunes waned across the Board in the 1970s, and the square was a place to avoid at night (and sometimes during the day). The coming of the greenmarket and restaurateur Danny Meyer in the 1980s began the upswing in fortunes. I believe Meyer deserves much of the credit for marshalling property owners around the square to pressure the City for better police and sanitation services. His Union Square Café became a big social and gustatory hit, which increased the attention paid to the area, and resulted in the last few years in major improvements to the square. (A personal note: I vividly recall the street reconstruction projects being well under way on September 11, 2001, as I walked through the square just before 9 AM that Tuesday, just after the first plane had flown low and loud over my head, heading south.)

(Bless Meyer also for similar work he did on marshalling corporate neighbors in cleaning up Madison Square a few years ago, where his 11 Madison and Tabla sit.)

But I digress….

A predictable but dynamic change

The next act for the boring white brick bank building that used to be an elaborate cast-iron jewelry firm is clear, at least for this structure. Given the zoning and the general market, when the bank sells the building (as it has begun to do) it is likely to be torn down to be replaced by a condominium tower.

From luxury jewelry to ladies underwear to a union bank to the inevitable condo, in four acts spanning about 140 years. Maybe that is not so dynamic a series of changes, after all....