American Express Building
55 Hudson Street | also 2 Jay Street | Tribeca | built 1891
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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.
- 1867
American Express already has a stone-fronted freight depot and stable on the site by 1867
Before the present building, American Express had its New York freight depot and stable on this corner lot by 1867. The company started as a mail-delivery business running between Albany and Buffalo. The 1867 building was fronted in stone, designed by Rich & Griffiths, and covered roughly the same footprint as the later warehouse. This was an earlier building on the site.
“By 1867 the company had constructed a large freight depot and stable in New York City on the site of the present building…”
- 1891
American Express builds a ten-story warehouse at Hudson, Jay and Staple Streets, designed by Edward Hale Kendall
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American Express built its ten-story warehouse in 1890-91, designed by Edward Hale Kendall, an architect noted for institutional commissions. McCabe Brothers were the builders. The building runs about 103 feet along Hudson Street, 97 along Jay Street and 102 along Staple Street. The company stayed in the building until the middle of the twentieth century, and the Commission found a school and offices in it.
- 1891
The American Express Building is a Romanesque Revival design with tall arcades and original loading bays
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Kendall gave the Hudson and Jay Street fronts a two-story base of coursed brick with stone trim. Above it, four-bay arcades rise to arched windows at the seventh floor, and paired double-height bays with arches mark the ninth and tenth. The ground-floor openings were loading bays and still have their cast-iron lintels. A terra-cotta cornice and an arcaded brick parapet crown the building.
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