1 Broadway
also 1 Greenwich Street, 1 Battery Place | Financial District | built 1887
Open on the map14 entries
The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1649
Peter Knocks builds a tavern on the corner where 1 Broadway now stands
Around 1649 the Dutch military officer Peter Knocks, also recorded as Peter Cock, built Knocks Tavern here, likely the first permanent building at the address. A market stand stood on the site in 1656. William Isaacsen Vredenburgh lived on the property until 1673, when the building was scheduled for demolition because it interfered with the defenses of Fort Amsterdam. This entry is about an earlier building on the lot.
“…built around 1649 by Dutch military officer Peter Knocks (alternatively Peter Cock). This was likely the first permanent building at 1 Broadway.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1776
Revolutionary War commanders headquarter at a mansion on the site
Decades before the Washington Building rose, a mansion built around 1760 for Royal Navy captain Archibald Kennedy stood on this lot at the foot of Broadway. Early in the Revolutionary War, generals Henry Lee III and Israel Putnam of the Continental Army used the mansion as a headquarters, and George Washington may have as well, before British commanders Sir Henry Clinton and Sir Guy Carleton occupied it until British forces evacuated New York in 1783.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1851
Banker Nathaniel Prime's old house becomes the Washington Hotel
The Landmarks Preservation Commission traces Archibald Kennedy's house on this corner as a residence, home in the 1830s and 1840s to the early banker Nathaniel Prime, until about 1851, when it was renamed the Washington Hotel. The hotel stayed open until it was demolished to make way for the Washington Building. A bronze tablet on the Broadway corner of today's building records the site's history. This entry is about an earlier building on the lot.
“It remained a residence (in the 1830s-40s for prominent early banker Nathaniel Prime) until about 1851, when it became known as the Washington Hotel…”
- 1884
Cyrus Field's Washington Building rises at the foot of Broadway
The financier Cyrus West Field commissioned architect Edward H. Kendall to design a Queen Anne office building here, completed in 1884. The site had earlier held the Kennedy House, used as a headquarters by British commanders during the Revolution. Among the Washington Building's early tenants was the committee overseeing construction of the Statue of Liberty.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1886
Edward Kendall adds a mansard roof and harbor tower to the Washington Building
Edward Hale Kendall designed the Queen Anne Washington Building, which W.H. Hazzard & Son built in 1882-85 with red brick, red sandstone trim and rounded corner bays. In 1886-87 Kendall added a heavily dormered mansard roof and a round tower looking out over the harbor. The Landmarks Preservation Commission describes the building as twelve stories tall. This entry is about an earlier building on the lot.
“…an elaborately dormered mansard roof and a round tower overlooking the New York harbor were added in 1886-87, also to Kendall's design.”
- 1919
J.P. Morgan's shipping trust buys the building for its steamship offices
The International Mercantile Marine Company, a shipping combine formed by J.P. Morgan in 1902, bought the building in 1919 for $3 million. Architect Walter B. Chambers gave it a neoclassical facade by 1921 and designed a ground-floor booking hall styled like an 18th-century ballroom. IMM and its successor, United States Lines, stayed until 1979, and the building became a city landmark in 1995.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1921
The Washington Building is remade as the International Mercantile Marine headquarters
Architect Walter B. Chambers led a 1921 renovation that reclad the red-brick Washington Building in Indiana limestone and added Neoclassical details, including Mercury and Neptune reliefs, for International Mercantile Marine. The Downtown League named it the city's best-altered building that year, and the ground floor gained a 160-foot booking room with a compass-rose floor and murals of shipping lanes.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1941
The building is transferred to a United States Lines entity
After World War I the International Mercantile Marine Company disposed of its foreign-flag lines. According to the Landmarks Preservation Commission it was merged into its main subsidiary between 1937 and 1940 and renamed the United States Lines Co. in 1943. In 1941 the building at No. 1 Broadway passed to a United States Lines entity, which kept it until 1979. The commission calls United States Lines the largest and most prestigious American merchant shipper of its day.
“The building at No. 1 Broadway was transferred in 1941 to an entity of United States Lines, which retained ownership until 1979.”
- 1970
United States Lines proposes replacing 1 Broadway with a 50-story tower
By the late 1960s or early 1970s United States Lines, struggling financially after World War II, had put 1 Broadway up for sale. In 1970 it proposed replacing the building with a 50-story skyscraper, a plan that would have meant drawing on the air rights of the nearby Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House. Its owner Walter Kidde & Company reportedly nearly sold the building in 1972 but withdrew it after New York real estate prices fell.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1979
United States Lines leaves for New Jersey and the building sells for $9.75 million
Malcom McLean bought United States Lines in 1977, and that December the company announced it would move to Cranford, New Jersey. The move took place in mid-1979, though the company stayed on the ground floor through the end of that year. The buyer was the Muna Realty Development Corporation, a Dutch Antillean firm, paying $9.75 million for the building plus $250,000 for the shipping line's remaining rent.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1992
Allstate takes 1 Broadway in a foreclosure and pays for a stone restoration
In 1992 the Allstate Life Insurance Company acquired the International Mercantile Marine Company Building through a foreclosure. The Landmarks Preservation Commission found its masonry cladding seriously deteriorated by then. Allstate funded a restoration of about $2 million in 1993-94 by architects Stephen L. Cohan & Associates, with Cathedral Stoneworks and C & D Restoration as contractors, replacing around eight percent of the limestone and marble.
“…foreclosure in 1992. The masonry cladding of the structure was seriously deteriorated by that time and Allstate funded a $2 million restoration of the exterior…”
- 1995
The city designates 1 Broadway a landmark after a facade restoration
Allstate Insurance, which had acquired the building through foreclosure in 1992, spent $2.2 million restoring its limestone facade, replacing about 8 percent of the stonework by 1994. The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building a New York City landmark the following year, in 1995.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2005
Law firm Kenyon & Kenyon sues over penthouses planned above its floors
Kenyon & Kenyon, an intellectual property law firm, moved into four floors of 1 Broadway in 1980 and by 2001 occupied almost all of the offices except half of the sixth floor, where it held a right of first refusal. In 2005 it sued after the landlord, Logany LLC, offered it no lease on that space and proposed building penthouses on the 12th floor, which the firm claimed was an attempt to force it out. Kenyon & Kenyon won, which blocked the penthouses and forced Logany to offer the lease.
“This led to a 2005 lawsuit when Logany did not offer a lease to Kenyon & Kenyon for Logany's half of the sixth floor…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2018
Midtown Equities buys 1 Broadway to convert it into apartments
United States Lines, the building's longtime shipping-line tenant, had moved its operations to New Jersey by 1979, and the office tower changed hands several times afterward. In 2018, Midtown Equities purchased 1 Broadway for $140 million and announced plans to convert the century-old office building into apartments.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- 1 BroadwayWikipedia
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