Historic Lower Manhattan Atrium Considered for Landmark Designation
The soaring interior gallery of the Temple Court Building at Five Beekman Street (a few steps east of City Hall) is being considered by the City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) for the unusual designation of interior landmark. The external facade of the building was granted legally protected status in 1998.
Now part of the Beekman Hotel, the nine-story atrium crowned by a pyramidal skylight is the centerpiece of an 1889 building originally designed as an office tower. This feature was preserved from renovation or demolition largely by accident: For decades, enclosed courtyards were considered fire hazards (because during a blaze, they act like a chimney, conducting smoke and flames upward), so building owners found it more cost effective to seal them off from the rest of a structure than to modernize them. In this way, the atrium in the Temple Court Building was effectively abandoned in the early 1950s, and largely forgotten about for the following half-century.
At the February 27 meeting of the agency’s board, LPC researcher Marianne Percival said, “this is an early and rare surviving example of a 19th-century office building interior built around such a feature, long enclosed and inaccessible to the public. It is the only known surviving 19th century atrium of this scale and height in New York City.”
“In the 19th century, the interior atrium became a popular feature in arcades, hotels, libraries, exhibit halls, department stores, and office buildings,” she said, “since the volume allowed for both natural lighting and an enclosed, usually grand, and often highly decorative space.” The decorative elements in the Temple Court atrium include terraces supported by elaborate iron brackets and lined with iron railings.
At the conclusion of the February 27 presentation, the LPC board voted to put consideration of the Temple Court atrium on their calendar for a public hearing at an upcoming meeting, following which there will be a vote on designation.