Architectural Branding

That’s 26 Broadway, about two blocks from our office. It’s more commonly known as the Standard Oil Building, although Standard Oil has been gone for a long time. When Standard was broken up, the new companies made out of the fragments included Eastern States Standard Oil (Esso, later Exxon), Standard Oil Company of New York (Socony, later Mobil) and Standard Oil of California (SoCal, later Chevron).

It’s the third version of this building on the site. The first two weren’t demolished – they’re just buried inside the two later additions. But what I really want to talk about is that funny thing at the top of the peaked roof. Here’s a more artistic view:

That thing is a brazier, a huge pot meant to hold a fire as a beacon. The fire was originally lit using kerosene, Standard Oil’s first popular product. It was a beacon for the nearby harbor, visible at night as a big flame coming out of the top of the building and during the day as a pillar of black smoke. We’re used to modern buildings putting up messages in LEDs or arc lights or neon, but there’s something very weird from the modern perspective about a fire beacon on top of a steel-framed skyscraper.

Standard Oil as a business has a deservedly terribly reputation, but someone at the company understood branding in the modern sense over one hundred years ago. Putting a beacon 300 feet up in the air is an unforgettable way to say “we sell fire for light and heat.” The beacon hasn’t been lit since the 1950s and environmental regulations mean that it will not be lit again. I’d love to see what to looks like.