If you spend enough time looking at old buildings in New York (and probably elsewhere) you get used to seeing missing parts. Cornices are removed, window hoods shaved back, interesting ornament is replaced by flat brick or stucco. So my first thought when I look at the little building above, an old bank branch, is “what did it look like before the facade got stripped?” For once, it turns out that question was wrong.
The facade has changed surprisingly little since the building got to its current form. (Without doing a much more involved search than a blog post justifies, it’s difficult to be certain, so the following is my best guess from admittedly partial information.) It looks like there has been a 5-story building on the two lots here (265 and 267 Broadway) since the 1800s, which in the 20s were heavily modified and got a new street facade. For a long time this was a branch of the Corn Exchange Bank, which was one of the many specialized banks that used to be all over this part of town. (The Corn Exchange Bank was eventually bought out by the Chemical Bank, which led to an institution called the “Chemical Corn Exchange Bank.” After a whole bunch more mergers, it’s now part of Chase.) In any case, in 1937, the facade looked much the same as it does today, albeit with more attractive windows and cleaner masonry. I strongly disagree with the “Art Deco” tag on the MCNY web site: this is modern (or maybe moderne) or streamlined, or one of the other terms used for the corporate interpretation of the artistic styles like Deco. The strange thing at the center of the parapet certainly looked better when it supported a flagpole.
There’s currently a plan to demolish the building, which is empty, and build a 40-story hotel/condo. This is a prime location, facing City Hall Park, so the desire for more development is understandable, but unfortunate. No one is building odd little moderne cubes in NYC any more, and I’ll be sad to see it go.
