CONTEMPORARY NY
standard.jpg (71269 bytes) New York Architecture Images- Lower Manhattan

STANDARD OIL BUILDING Landmark

architect

Carrere & Hastings, Shreeve, Lamb & Blake

location

26 Broadway at Bowling Green. 

date

1922

style

Renaissance Revival

construction

steel frame, limestone clad

type

Office Building

 

  Image- special thanks to Andrew Goldberg.
 
 

images

standard8.jpg (27779 bytes)090.jpg (71157 bytes)Pict0119.jpg (117687 bytes)Pict0120.jpg (122218 bytes)Pict0079.jpg (128063 bytes)Pict0077.jpg (127705 bytes)Pict0076.jpg (129231 bytes)Pict0075.jpg (129760 bytes)Pict0060.jpg (135466 bytes)

 

 
 

notes

Built as the headquarters for John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company, Carrere & Hastings' nine-story base follows the curve of Broadway. The very dignified Renaissance style lobby bespeaks the company's wealth and importance. Following the breakup of the company in 1911 due to anti-trust laws, Shreeve, Lamb & Blake added a massive tower squared to the grid of the uptown streets.


26 Broadway (offices)/originally Standard Oil Building, NE cor. Beaver St. Expanded from 1884-1885 Standard Oil Building, 1920-1928. Carrere & Hastings and Shreve, Lamb & Blake.

This curving façade reinforces the street's group architecture, working particularly well with No.25, across the green. Begun as The Standard Oil Building, built by the Standard Oil Trust Organization, the earlier structure on the site (1884-1886 Ebenezer L Roberts) was only 10 stories tall.

The 480-foot-high pyramidal tower seems squared to the city's uptown gridiron, rather than to the loose geometry of lower Manhattan's street pattern.  The designers were concerned with the tower as an element in the city's skyline, not as a local form.

Source: A.I.A Guide To New York City, 4th ed

contact

nyc-architecture.com