Standard Oil Building
26 Broadway | also 73 New Street, 28 Broadway, 5 Beaver Street | Financial District | built 1885
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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.
- 1885
Standard Oil moves into Francis H. Kimball's new nine-story headquarters
Standard Oil, which had relocated its headquarters from Cleveland to New York in 1870, moved into architect Francis H. Kimball's new nine-story Renaissance Revival building at 26 Broadway in 1884-1885. By 1890 the company controlled roughly 88 percent of the nation's oil refining capacity.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1895
Six stories and a north annex are added to Standard Oil's Broadway headquarters
A decade after the company moved in, its building grew upward and sideways. In 1895 the architects Kimball & Thompson added six stories and a 27-foot-wide extension on the north side, in a more ornate version of the original Renaissance Revival look. From these offices the Standard Oil trustees directed nearly forty trust-controlled operations. The plain red brick and granite rear wall of the older building can still be seen from New Street.
- 1911
The 1911 antitrust ruling breaks up Standard Oil, but its successors stay at 26 Broadway
The decision of 1911 ordered Standard Oil to give up all of its subsidiaries. The successor companies were still owned and run by the same men, and they kept directing the American petroleum industry from their offices at 26 Broadway. Standard Oil of New Jersey, the largest of them and the former holding company, kept its headquarters in the building as well.
- 1921
Standard Oil builds its expansion in five phases because a Childs restaurant will not leave
Under Walter Clark Teagle, president of Standard Oil of New Jersey, the company assembled one of lower Manhattan's largest parcels, with more than 500 feet of Broadway frontage. A Childs restaurant at 3 Beaver Street held out, and a shortage of downtown offices made it hard to clear tenants from four other buildings. The company therefore demolished and rebuilt in sections, starting in 1921 at the northwest corner of Beaver and New streets. The middle of the Beaver Street side went up in 1928, after the restaurant's lease ended.
“…included a long-time holdout - the Child's restaurant at No. 3 Beaver Street - affected the expanded structure's distinctive shape and protracted construction schedule…”
- 1925
A bust of John D. Rockefeller Jr. is installed in the lobby of the "Rockefeller address"
Sculptor Jo Davidson's bust of John D. Rockefeller Jr. was installed in the lobby in 1925. The address was known as the "Rockefeller address" because both the younger Rockefeller and his father, John D. Rockefeller Sr., kept their offices in the building.
“26 Broadway was known as the "Rockefeller address" because the offices of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and John Sr. were in the building.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1928
A 31-story tower rises around the original Standard Oil headquarters
Starting in 1921, architects Thomas Hastings and Shreve, Lamb & Blake expanded the building into a 520-foot, 31-story tower wrapped around the earlier 1885 structure, completed in 1928. Architectural historian Mark Hewitt later called the finished building one of the finest achievements of American Classicism.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1933
The Rockefellers leave Standard Oil's longtime address for Rockefeller Center
John D. Rockefeller Sr. and Jr. had long kept office space at 26 Broadway, an address so tied to the family that it was likened to oil's answer to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Both men moved their offices to the newly built 30 Rockefeller Plaza in 1933.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1988
The Museum of American Finance opens inside the former Standard Oil headquarters
The Museum of American Finance was founded in 1988 with space inside the former Standard Oil building at 26 Broadway, before relocating uptown in 2006.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1995
The Landmarks Commission designates the Standard Oil Building after eleven speakers back it
At the Landmarks Preservation Commission hearing on May 16, 1995, eleven witnesses spoke in favor of designation, among them Councilwoman Kathryn Freed and representatives of the Municipal Art Society and the New York Landmarks Conservancy. No one spoke against it, and the owner's representative took no position. The commission designated the building on September 19, 1995. Its report describes the irregular five-sided site as among the biggest parcels yet put together in lower Manhattan.
- 2008
The Sports Museum of America opens in the old Standard Oil headquarters
Billed as the first national sports museum, the Sports Museum of America opened at 26 Broadway in May 2008, filling 45,000 square feet. It covered thirty sports through 600 artifacts, 1,100 photographs and twenty original films, and it was financed partly with $52 million in tax-free Liberty Bonds. One gallery held the original Heisman Trophy, which had gone to the top college football player each year from 1935 to 2001 at the Downtown Athletic Club nearby.
Source: therealdeal.com
- 2010
City schools take over the space left by the failed Sports Museum of America
The Sports Museum of America closed in February 2009, unable to service its debt or attract enough visitors at a $27 ticket price. A year later the School Construction Authority signed a lease of more than 20 years for the 106,000-square-foot space. The Chetrit Group, which had bought the building's ground lease for $225 million in 2007, had to buy part of the land from the Smathers family to make the long lease possible.
Source: commercialobserver.com
Further reading
- 26 BroadwayWikipedia
- An Art Nouveau clock on a downtown skyscraperEphemeral New York
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