Morse Building
140 Nassau Street | also 10 Beekman Street, 138 Nassau Street | Financial District | built 1880
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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.
- 1880
Gilbert and Sidney Morse Jr. build the Morse Building
Gilbert Livingston Morse and Sidney Edwards Morse Jr., nephews of telegraph inventor Samuel F.B. Morse, develop a ten-story office tower at Nassau and Beekman Streets. Architects Benjamin Silliman Jr. and James M. Farnsworth design the 140-foot brick building, completed in March 1880 at a cost of $200,000 and containing 175 rental offices.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1897
Vitagraph films an early movie from the Morse Building's roof
The pioneering Vitagraph Company of America, which keeps offices and a rooftop studio in the Morse Building, films its short "Burglar on the Roof" atop the structure, by the studio's own account its first posed picture. Sources differ on whether the shoot took place in 1897 or 1898, but it ranks among the earliest movies made in New York City.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1902
The Morse Building grows to fourteen stories
Architects William P. Bannister and Richard Montgomery Schell add four more floors to the Morse Building between 1901 and 1902, raising it to 180 feet. New owner Charles Ward Hall, who acquires the building in an 1900 property swap, serves as the project's chief engineer, with Hall & Grant Construction as general contractor.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2006
The city designates the Morse Building a landmark
One of the earliest tall commercial towers in Lower Manhattan, the Morse Building joins the National Register of Historic Places in 2005 and receives New York City landmark status the following year. By then its offices have already been converted, in 1980, into 39 residential cooperative apartments.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Morse BuildingWikipedia
- The 1895 American Tract Society Bldg -- 144-152 Nassau StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
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