I had worked at the old Bankers Trust Plaza, a back office annex of the main office of that one time big bank on Wall Street. The annex which was located on Liberty and Greenwich Street and was across from the old World Trade Center, number Two in particular partially facing the BT Plaza building, this was in the late 70's through early 80's before I gave it all up to attempt some writing projects on spec and working as a temp to pay the rent.
Around 1983 I was working on some project involved with a future change in software in the ongoing development of a program to manage the incoming and outgoing electronic money transfer department, through our massive mainframe on the top two floors of the building. I was not a programmer but a user and had to understand how to use and teach these new changes to our staff in Money Transfer.
So to make a long story short I was at a lunch time meeting two or three stories above my regular desk on the east side of the building and I was on what I believe was the 18th or 19th floor and on the west side of my building.
Never having seen this view before of the adjoining high rise office building of one half block away. The building was old and dark and the stonework dirty from decades of New York City's coal burning up until the 1950's for heat in winter. Just an ugly wall of old dirty stone it looked like to me. And then the noon day sun shone over the top of my building and into the dark space between the BT Plaza building and the 90 West Street building and with the sun hanging at a certain angle, this whole wall of dark dirty stone came alive in the shadows of the sunlight hitting it and accenting all the carved pieces or really molded pieces, as it turned out, of Terra Cotta.
It was the most surprising thing and the most beautiful thing I have ever experienced until then architecturally speaking with few exceptions since.
Both buildings went their separate ways. The Deutsche Bank building (the former BT Plaza building by Skidmore Owing and Merrill) and the 90 West Street, the West Street Building described in the article below, both surviving and wounding from the 911 WTC collapse across the street.
Bankers Trust as I still call it lingered on and was torn down eventually for mold and insurance reasons (the site of the present Greek Orthodox church still under construction). The West Street building got patched, restored and converted into condos and survives to this day.
I share this experience in Terra Cotta, architecture and NYC history. The richness of the words of Charles P. Warren brought back rich memories, and now almost tears of joy (at the writer's so very apt words), of that one noon time experience of mine in light, and art, and architecture, and the ancient art of terra cotta.
The Brickbuilder, August 1907
The Use of Architectural Terra Cotta
in the West Street Building,
New York.
BY CHARLES P. WARREN.
The architect of the West Street Building is one of the few who seems to have realized that architectural terra cotta is not imitation stone and that it should not be used as such; that it is an entirely different material, having peculiar properties of its own, and should be treated in a wholly different way. The elevation shows unmistakably that this has been done. What could be more unlike stone than the treatment of the upper portion? On the twentieth story, for instance, just under the crowning member, what may appear to be at first glance a row of Gothic cusps carved in high relief from the background is, in reality, a series of round arches with a pendent flowered ornament on the soffit. As shown in the section on the detail, the whole is projected in front of the plane of the wall. The arches spring from drops, or pendants, which are hung by rods passing through them and fastened to an angle which is cantilevered out from the frame. Wherever possible the decoration, as in the canopies over the piers between the sixteenth-story windows, and over the caps of the columns in the nineteenth story, is suspended, or hung, from the wall and not projected or cut out as in stone. Moreover, the belt courses and moldings are made with great overhangs and are deeply undercut, and the flowered decoration is in very high relief. Obviously such treatment is not suitable to stone, not only because the great expense involved would be beyond consideration in a commercial building, but also because the pendants and drops would soon, from the effects of the weather, become dislodged and fall off, and, after a few years of weathering, the entire facade would have its ornament trimmed off nearly back to the plane of the wall. Here, indeed, is a novel, highly interesting and very successful use of a misused material.
In order to still further emphasize the fact that this is not an imitation stone facade, any constructive use of the material has been carefully avoided. The steel columns are not masqueraded as stone piers, nor are the beams and girders hidden behind stone arches and lintels. Everything is done to draw attention to the fact that the outside is a mere veneer, or covering, and has no structural function whatever. Instead of attempting to suggest a Gothic clustered pier for the twelve-story wall divisions between the coupled windows, which would have required deeper reveals and many undercut moldings, the wall surface is nearly plain, the play of light and shadow being produced by reeding. Even in the rows of arches previously referred to, there are no corbels, or brackets, built out from the wall to give them even a semblance of support. They are frankly suspended from above.
The ornament, moreover, has been designed for this particular building. It is not a modification or adaptation of Gothic ornament, — as a matter of fact there is scarcely anything Gothic about the entire facade, — but is the result of studies of the effects of light and shade made on the models. Contrary to the usual custom, full size detail drawings of the ornament were not made. Half-size details, however, were made, and from these the clay models. On the models, the moldings and ornaments were studied, high lights were made here, deep shadows there, as they seemed to be required. The result is that the whole work has the impress of the individuality of the designer. Witness the tourelles terminating the corner piers. Could anything be more graceful, charming and delightful, and more suited to the purpose, than these, but they are not Gothic, nor is it easy to classify them with any of the well-known styles.
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