Broadway-Chambers Building, Beaux-Arts skyscraper at Broadway and Chambers Street, Manhattan, US
The Broadway-Chambers Building is an 18-story Beaux-Arts skyscraper at the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street in Lower Manhattan. Its facade is divided into three clear horizontal bands: a granite base at street level, a red brick shaft rising through the middle floors, and a terra cotta crown at the top.
The building was completed in 1900 and was the first New York project by architect Cass Gilbert, who later designed the Woolworth Building. It went up at a moment when steel-frame construction was still new, and Gilbert used it to work out how classical ornament could fit a modern tower.
The Broadway-Chambers Building shows how architects of that era looked to classical columns and cornices to give early steel-frame towers a familiar, dignified face. That approach shaped the streetscape of Lower Manhattan in ways still visible from the sidewalk today.
The Broadway-Chambers Building is an active office building, so access to the lobby is generally limited to business hours on weekdays. The best view of the full facade comes from across the street, where you can step back far enough to take in all three horizontal bands at once.
A small steel model of the building was shown at the 1900 Paris Exposition as an example of American construction methods. The crown of the building is faced with multicolored glazed terra cotta, a technique that offered color and weather resistance beyond what plain brick could achieve.
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