Exterior and interior designated: October 1, 1991
The huge concentration of equipment of this building made it a communication crossroads for telephone, tele typewriting, and telephotography. Its polychrome, rough-textured brick exterior embodies the Art Deco style through its setbacks, overall sculpted quality, and linear ornament. This progressive technologically-inspired aesthetic successfully broadcasts the building’s role in housing the technologically sophisticated equipment of a critical American industry.
The Long Distance Building first floor interior is a harmonious complement to the architectural character of the building’s exterior, reflected in the use of rippled surfaces, linear ornament, and earth colored materials. This building was the world’s largest long-distance communications center upon its completion in 1932.
The first floor lobby features an iconographic program that clearly and artfully broadcasts the building’s significance as a hub of international communication, and it displays a linear decorative motif which symbolizes the great distances spanned by the telephone lines and radio waves channeled through this operations facility. The first floor interior was appointed with a terrazzo floor, ceramic iron-spot wall tiles with bronze details, and multi-hued glass mosaic tiles, and it is articulated in an Art Deco aesthetic, an especially appropriate treatment given the building’s associations with technology.
STATUS Designated Exterior and Interior Landmark
The Neighborhood
Tribeca
The area now known as Tribeca was originally developed in the early 19th century as a residential neighborhood close to the city’s center in Lower Manhattan. Its street grid was laid out at right angles off of Greenwich Street and on a diagonal off of...
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