Nothing is ever simple. The Singer Building was actually three different buildings constructed at different times and merged when the third building – the tower – was conducted 1906-1908. The Singer company built a headquarters building on the west side of Broadway at the corner of Liberty Street in 1898. It was ten stories tall – just barely big enough to make it into The Structure of Skyscrapers – with the top two stories in an elaborate curved mansard roof. A year later, the company built a second building – effectively a back-office extension – immediately adjacent to the west: the 14-story Bourne Building, named after the president of Singer. The Bourne Building was taller but had a much plainer facade, and had construction stopped there, the two separate buildings would always have looked like two separate buildings. The tower extension, was north of the original building on Broadway, with a base that matched the style of the original building.
During the constriction of the tower, the original building was raised from 10 to 14 stories – the matching base of the new tower was 14 stories tall – and the elevators in the Bourne Building were removed to gain more floor space as more modern elevators were constructed in the tower. The original building was a narrow rectangle oriented east-west; the Bourne Buidling had a C shaped plan with the light court in back (on the north), and the base of the new tower left space (at the second floor and above) on the west and south for light courts between it and the two older buildings. The result was, from the 2nd to the 14th floor, a bulbous E plan. The narrow and kinked light courts were never visible from the street because they were blocked by the City Investing Building. It’s easier seen than described, so here are some floor plans. First, the ground floor, filling the entire lot. The heavy-walled portion on the lower left (southeast) is the original building, the Bourne Building is above that on the drawing (to the west) and the base of the tower is to the right (north) of the original. The formal lobby, with two revolving doors to Broadway, is the south end of the tower building
Up one floor and the light court within Bourne and the light court between Bourne and the tower appear.
The typical floors up to 14 have the full light courts and therefore the full somewhat-tortured floor plan:
It’s hard to look at that plan and see the slender square tower above, but it’s there. If you look closely, the columns around the bank of eight elevators on the right are in a regular and symmetrical grid that reflects the tower layout:
Here’s a photo showing the peculiarities. The mansard-roofed building that abruptly ends in steel framing (in front of the tower) is the tower base. The original building is to the left, flat-topped after its mansard removal. The steel framing being erected behind the tower, and the white facade under construction just to the right of the tower base, is the City Investing Building.
A little bit later, the vertical addition of the original building is beginning:
Putting aside the awkward floor layouts of the lower floors, which were not visible from the street, the combination made the Bourne Building into the plain-facade rear wing of a building with a wide and architecturally uniform Broadway front. Several early high-rises in New York were expansions of older, lower buildings, with the old New York Times Building on Park Row and the Standard Oil Building at the foot of Broadway as good examples. But Singer had arguably the most complex combination history and was arguably the most awkward of the early towers.
Finally, the picture at the top shows the steel frame immediately after topping out, with its celebratory flag.
You must be logged in to post a comment.