Beard Building

120 Liberty Street | also 125 Cedar Street | Financial District | built 1900

Open on the map6 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

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.

  1. 1897

    Metropolitan Life buys the Beard Building before ground is broken, and it opens as a hub for engineering firms

    Swiss-born architect Oswald Wirz drew the Beard Building for the construction firm of James G. Wallace, filing plans in March 1895 at a projected cost of $350,000. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company bought it before ground was broken, and Wirz gave it a barbell-shaped plan to bring light into interior offices. Finished in 1897, it filled fast with makers of pumps, elevators and electrical equipment, and two thirds of the space had tenants by April.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1902

    July 14

    Detectives raid an illegal horse-betting room on the fourth floor, and the operators keep going

    On July 14, 1902, detectives from the Church Street station raided what The Evening World called a pool room on the fourth floor, arresting John Brown and Samuel Marshall and seizing racing sheets and a "dope" book. On October 1, an officer in plain clothes knocked, and Leon Stedeker told him to serve a warrant or get out. Stedeker was arrested for interfering with an officer, and the paper said he had been urging gambling dens citywide to demand warrants.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1903

    April 7

    Coal company cashier Charles Blaisdell vanishes one evening, then turns up as a union treasurer in New Jersey

    Charles T. Blaisdell, cashier for the coal dealers Curtis & Blaisdell, whose office was in the building, put a young woman on a streetcar on the evening of April 7, 1903 and then dropped from sight. Police, detectives and clairvoyants found nothing, while his rooming house kept over forty suits and about $4,000 in diamonds waiting for him. Late that year the Asbury Park Press reported him as treasurer of a musicians' union local in Long Branch, New Jersey.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1915

    Strikebreaking firm Berghoff Brothers, based here, has 30 armed guards arrested during the Bayonne oil strike

    Berghoff Brothers, Inc., which called itself a labor adjuster, rented offices in the building and supplied armed guards to companies facing strikes. During the July 1915 strike at the Tidewater oil plant in Bayonne, New Jersey, Sheriff Kinkead found that workers' houses had been under rifle fire overnight and that guards were showing weapons on the plant walls. He arrested 30 guards, the firm's superintendent and P. Lee Berghoff on charges of inciting to riot.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1921

    October 1

    A "plausible youth" tricks two crewmen into leaving a tugboat owned by a tenant, and the Britannia disappears

    On Saturday night, October 1, 1921, the tug Britannia of the Ambrose Lighterage and Transportation Company, a tenant in the building, was tied up at Pier B in Jersey City with a cook and a fireman aboard as guards. Around 10 p.m. a young man woke them, handed them $5 and said owner John N. Sheary wanted them to sleep in a hotel because a fresh crew was coming. They went, and two days later the tug had still not been found.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 2005

    June 16

    Construction begins on the 9/11 Tribute Center in the former Liberty Deli space beside Ladder 10 and Engine 10

    Construction began on June 16, 2005, as The New York Times reported the next day, on a $3 million visitor center at 120 Liberty Street. The September 11th Families Association planned it in the former Liberty Deli space, next to the firehouse of Ladder Company 10 and Engine Company 10, to connect visitors with the 9/11 community. Governor Pataki called it an interim destination until the museum opened, yet the Tribute Center stayed on, and in 2016 the Times announced a move to larger space nearby.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 276 buildings with stories in Financial District