Tribeca Landmark is Nominated to State Historic Register
Governor Kathy Hochul has nominated a Lower Manhattan landmark for addition to the State and Federal Registers of Historic Places. The six-story building at 287 Broadway (also known as 55 Reade Street), which dates from 1872, is a cast-iron amalgam of Italianate and French Second Empire styles, designed by architect John Snook, whose work defined much of the historic character of the neighborhoods now known as Soho and Tribeca.
Working with cast-iron manufacturer Jackson, Burnet, & Co., Snook created a facade with three bays of keystone-arched windows on its Broadway face, and twelve bays on the Reade Street side. (Surviving cast-iron buildings with two facades are rare, as corner lots have long been coveted by developers.) The structure, which replaced an earlier house, was the City’s first cast-iron office building and was among the first to contain a newfangled Otis passenger elevator. It was erected at a time when Lower Broadway was rapidly evolving from a residential to a commercial district. (In an illustration of Talleyrand’s maxim that the more things change, the more they stay the same, 287 Broadway became emblematic of the area’s transformation back into a residential enclave in 2018, when the offices were converted to ten condominium apartments.)
The structure was designated a legally protected landmark by New York City in 1989, but was nonetheless endangered in 2007 when excavation for a new skyscraper next door undermined the older building’s foundation, causing it to tilt by as much as eight inches. A decade of forensic engineering and precisely calibrated buttressing (during which time the building was supported by an erector set of external steel beams, hurriedly installed as an emergency measure) brought the structure back into vertical alignment, saving it from having to be condemned and demolished as a safety precaution. In 2022, the New York Landmarks Conservancy conferred its prestigious Lucy G. Moses Preservation Award on 287 Broadway for this rescue.
Governor Hochul’s nomination now aims to add the building to the State’s Register of Historic Places, which confers legal protection complementary to the local recognition. While the City’s landmark designation prevents private owners from demolishing or significantly altering the property, it is powerless to stop a government agency from doing so. State and Federal designations do nothing to prevent a private-sector actor from knocking down a building, but restrain government agencies from such actions. Being added to the Federal Register also confers tax benefits for expenses related to maintaining or rehabilitating such a property.
The Governor’s nomination of 287 Broadways kicks off a year-long process of historical investigation and documentation. Once a property is added to the State’s Register of Historic Places, the process is automatically taken up by the National Park Service, which determines whether the same building meets the criteria for inclusion on the corresponding National Register.