Postal Telegraph Building

253 Broadway | also 1 Murray Street | Tribeca | built 1894

Open on the map8 entries

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1892

    March 23

    Silver millionaire John W. Mackay's Postal Telegraph leases the Murray Street corner for a new headquarters

    Irish-born John W. Mackay made his fortune from Nevada silver, then joined James Gordon Bennett Jr. in 1883 to found the Commercial Cable Company against Jay Gould's Western Union. When Gould refused to pass on Commercial's messages, Mackay bought Postal Telegraph and merged smaller firms into it. On March 23, 1892, the company took a 99-year lease from Trinity Church for a headquarters at 253 Broadway that would house its offices and operations under one roof.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1893

    October 30

    A homeless man shoots and kills the construction superintendent on the building site

    On the afternoon of October 30, 1893, a homeless man named Thomas Bradley walked onto the construction site and asked for work. Superintendent Frederick Lewis Mathes ordered him away. Bradley returned about six hours later and shot Mathes dead. A shoot-out with police followed before Bradley was caught.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1894

    June 18

    Guests tour the finished building, with its own dynamos and push-button elevators

    On the evening of June 18, 1894, Postal Telegraph and the Commercial Cable Company invited guests and the press to inspect their new building. The next day a New-York Tribune reporter wrote that it made its own electricity and was full of electric lights. Its new electric elevators were signalled by pressing a button, which spared riders from shouting up or down and often missing the car.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1898

    December 4

    Concrete floors keep a neighboring inferno from spreading into the building

    On the night of December 4, 1898, an explosion started a fire that spread into the 16-story Home Life Insurance Building next door. The Postal Telegraph Building held, and the architect George Edward Harding, a strong advocate of concrete floors, said afterward that it had been saved by its cement floors. The Real Estate Record and Guide agreed on December 10, writing that the fire could make no headway against its incombustible floors.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1900

    October 16

    A fire hits the Hardware Club's rooms on the top floor, but telegraph work goes on

    The Hardware Club, which leased the whole fourteenth floor and had opened in 1894 with mahogany rooms and a dining room for 200, suffered a fire that broke out in a storeroom at 9:25 p.m. on October 16, 1900. Rugs and paintings were damaged by smoke and water, and the club closed for two weeks. Postal Telegraph's vice-president told the Tribune that no operator lost work.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1942

    February

    Treasury's Foreign Funds Control moves in and government agencies fill the building

    Postal Telegraph had come back to 253 Broadway in April 1939, leasing six floors from Trinity Church after the building was renovated as the Paragon Building. The arrangement did not last. In February 1942 the Treasury Department's Foreign Funds Control, its investigating unit, moved in, and the New York Times reported that the fourteen-story building was entirely occupied by government agencies.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  7. 1947

    January 3

    Home Life buys the building and cuts passages through the wall to its neighbor

    On January 3, 1947, the Home Life Insurance Company purchased the thirteen-story Postal Telegraph Building from Trinity Church. Passages and short flights of steps were cut through the party walls to link the two buildings, whose floors sat at different levels. The expansion more than doubled the insurer's home office, and in 1963 the company made 253 Broadway its main entrance.

    “…corridors with flights of steps to connect the buildings' disparate floor levels were cut through the party walls…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  8. 2025

    The Landmarks Preservation Commission moves into the building it designated in 1991

    The city designated the combined Home Life Building a landmark in 1991. In 2016 the Landmarks Preservation Commission began renovating six floors for its own offices, and the project's cost grew from $29 million to $62 million, with completion pushed to 2021. The commission finally settled into its renovated offices and a new public hearing room in 2025.

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

Nearby

All 564 buildings with stories in Tribeca