#arcade building

Broadway (No. 7)

The Empire Building is a 21-story, 293-foot-tall (89 m) steel framed curtain-wall skyscraper located at 71 Broadway, on the corner of Rector Street, in the Financial District of Manhattan, New York City. It was designed by Kimball & Thompson in the Classical Revival style and built by Marc Eidlitz & Son from 1895 to 1898.  It is one of the earliest skyscrapers built on pneumatic caissons and one of the oldest still standing today.  The building was the home of United States Steel Corporation from its founding in 1901 to 1976.  Since 1997, it has served as an apartment building. It was designated a New York City landmark in 1996 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.

The plot measures 78 feet (24 m) along Broadway, 223 feet (68 m) along Rector Street, and 50 feet (15 m) on Trinity Place with a footprint of approximately 14,000 square feet (1,300 m2) and a total floorspace of 300,000 square feet (28,000 m2).  Some portions of the Broadway entrance cross over the lot line. Along Rector Street, it is adjacent to the churchyard of Trinity Church, providing a dramatic backdrop for the church and ensuring open views for the building. There are entrances to New York City Subway stations right outside both of the Empire Building's principal facades: two stairs to the Wall Street station (4 and ​5 trains) are located to either side of the building's main entrance, while an entrance to the Rector Street station (N, ​R, and ​W trains) is located on Trinity Place just outside the building entrance there. 

Charles Sooysmith designed the foundation which was a mix of grillage and 23 pneumatic concrete caissons that went 23 feet (7.0 m) down to bedrock. 

The building has a tripartite design with a base, shaft, and capital sections, as in the column of a classical order.  The original design called for architectural terracotta sheathing, but the owners switched to granite.  The base is four stories of polished gray granite.  The shaft is twelve stories of a white rusticated granite.  The capital is four stories tall with colonnaded loggias and a metal cornice.  There is a full basement, which is exposed along Rector Street, and a full-height storefront on Trinity Place due to the difference in elevation between the front and the back of the building. The main entrance on Broadway is based on a triumphal arch with a main archway and two smaller flanking ones which leads to first floor stores. 

The twenty-first floor designed by John C. Westervelt was added in 1930. The main entrance on Broadway, the Trinity Place entrance, and the connection to the Sixth Avenue elevated's Rector Street station on Trinity Place were all refashioned in an Art Deco style by Walker & Gillette in 1938.

Another failure, this time in Jamestown, NY.

The 1890-built Arcade Building in the historic part of the city was hit by a fire in 2017. The two-story southern portion closest to the tracks was gutted, suffering a total roof collapse. As the city awaited demolition funds, the vacant structure continued its decay. Upon my visit today, that structure had been demolished.

Earlier this year as I arrived to check on the building I noticed two individuals lurking about. I prepared my backpack and camera and walked to the back of the building, noticing fresh footprints in the snow...leading to a set of stairs and a compromised door panel. I quickly decided to ascend and take a look inside the doorway. The footprints crossed the threshold, and I boldly crawled into the building, which is not a thing I would normally do. However, I badly wanted to look inside this old treasure.

Ice covered a good portion of the floor, and as I stood up I immediately heard the individuals shuffling about upstairs. I had no idea where they were or if they were returning, so I started firing shots without adjusting my camera. I left after about a dozen lousy photos.

Today I realized I’d missed a great opportunity. If I had returned a week or two after that visit, I may have been able to enter without the threat of other characters in the building. When I viewed the exterior wall where the demolition occurred, it was clear there was a doorway into the main building. And through burned-out windows just above the doorway I could see iron columns and an impressive interior balcony, awaiting discovery. Color me profoundly disappointed. 

Public Art, New York City (No. 5)

At 140 Broadway in Lower Manhattan, Isamu Noguchi’s Red Cube stands out prominently against the backdrop of the soaring Brown Brothers Harriman high rise. Halal carts are frequently parked nearby and adjacent buildings that house HSBC bank and the Bank of America flank the “cube” on its sides. We use the term loosely in this context, as the sculpture is not actually a cube, but a distorted shape seemingly stretched along its vertical axis.

Born in Los Angeles, Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) was an American artist and industrial designer who is regarded as one of the twentieth century’s most important sculptors. During the span of his career, he crafted gardens, furniture and theater designs, among a number of other works, which can be found in major cities around the world. You’ve undoubtedly seen his work around New York City: the Sunken Garden is located in the open plaza in front of Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza and News decorates the main entrance to 50 Rockefeller Plaza. Moreover, the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum (now known as The Noguchi Museum) in Long Island City features an outdoor sculpture garden and several galleries of his work.

While his career flourished from the 1920s through to his death in 1988, Noguchi’s initial submissions for the Public Works of Art Program were declined. Red Cube, however, was accepted and installed in 1968.

Like many of Noguchi’s works, the sculpture playfully interacts with the surrounding urban fabric. After all, the site in which a piece is exhibited can be just as important as the sculpture itself. Noguchi, in recognizing this important relationship, once noted: “a sculptor is not merely a decorator of buildings but a serious collaborator with the architect in the creation of significant space and of significant shapes which define this space.”

Alongside the obvious pop of color, you’ll notice that Red Cube is mostly comprised of diagonal lines, while vertical and horizontal lines are seen throughout the surrounding buildings. Crafted from steel, cast in aluminum and painted in red, the sculpture’s most notable feature is a cylindrical hole that runs upward through its center to reveal the building standing behind it. The piece also balances on one corner, with an opposite corner stretching upwards to a height of 24 feet; a viewer’s eye is instantly directed to the sky.

Passerby have compared Red Cube to a rolling die, and interestingly enough, the sculpture does alludes to the “gambling” nature of the surrounding financial markets, according to the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

“The cube signifies chance, like the rolling of dice,” Noguchi explained. “If the ‘sun’ [in reference to another Noguchi’s piece, The Garden (Pyramid, Sun, and Cube), at Yale University] is primordial energy, the cube is that man-made pile of carbon blocks by which he had learned to stimulate nature’s processes. The cube on its point may be said to contain both earthly square and solar radiance.”

You can read more about Red Cube in The Life of Isamu Noguchi: Journey without Borders by Masayo Duus. It is also one of the works featured in our upcoming Public Art Tour in Lower Manhattan, which will also look at pieces from American grand masters like Daniel Chester French (as in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC).

Manny’s House of Pizza, Nashville, 4/16/21

exterior Manny’s House of Pizza is in the historic Arcade Building in downtown Nashville.  As you walk up don’t be surprised to see a line out the door but be assured it moves quickly and as you wait you can watch Manny toss the pizza dough and spread the tomato sauce.  Born in Sicily, Manny started in a Brooklyn pizzeria where he learned the skills needed to open his shop in the mid-80’s down in…

I was at the St. Lawrence Market over the weekend and I saw a poster up for the original Yonge Street Arcade building, which was located at Yonge Street and Temperance Street here in Toronto. Initially constructed in 1884, the building was ultimately demolished in 1952 and replaced with today’s building by 1960.

Here is a photo of the original arcade dated 1885:

The Yonge Street Arcade has been fairly well documented online (check out here and here). But what interested me when I saw the poster was the building’s retail characteristics.

Modeled after the glass-roofed malls being constructed in Europe at the time -- the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II opened in Milan in 1867 -- the Yonge Street Arcade is said to be Canada’s first enclosed shopping mall.

The galleria was 267 feet in depth and 3 storeys high (pictured above). The ground floor contained 32 retail units, each 12 feet wide by 29 feet deep. 24 of the units were in the galleria and the other 8 faced outward toward each street frontage.

On the 2nd floor were 20 more units. Some sources say they were intended to be offices, while others say they were retail units. The above photo makes me think they were retail. The 3rd floor then had offices and maybe some artist studios.

This 1878 illustration from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper depicts the new Arcade and Post Office building on Broadway. The building also contained shops and the offices of the Saratogian, according to the full article published along side the illustration, which you can view here.