14 Maiden Lane, or the Diamond Exchange, is an early example of a New York skyscraper in what is now the

Financial District A financial district is usually a central area in a city where financial services firms such as banks, insurance companies and other related finance corporations have their head offices. In major cities, financial districts are often home to s ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

. Completed in 1894, it is still standing.

History

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, the area around Maiden Lane and John Street became home to a number of early skyscrapers built speculatively to house businesses attracted to the booming financial district, which was expanding north. Maiden Lane was already established as the center of the city's

jewelry Jewellery ( UK) or jewelry ( U.S.) consists of decorative items worn for personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, pendants, bracelets, and cufflinks. Jewellery may be attached to the body or the clothes. From a w ...

district as early as 1795, and the area near

Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...

was a busy shopping district. In 1892,

real-estate developers Abraham Boehm and Lewis Coon announced that they had acquired the property at 14 Maiden Lane and intended to demolish the existing structure, replacing it with a ten-story tower specifically intended for the

diamond Diamond is a solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the chemically stable form of carbon at room temperature and pressure, ...

trade. At the time, the planned building would be among the tallest in the city, as elevators and new building techniques permitted ever higher construction and the city's rapid growth created an insatiable real-estate market.

Design and construction

Boehm and Coon hired prolific

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

Gilbert A. Schellenger to design the building for the specific requirements of diamond merchants and jewelers. The building was of fireproof construction, with a

cast-iron Cast iron is a class of iron–carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impuriti ...

and

steel frame Steel frame is a building technique with a "skeleton frame" of vertical steel columns and horizontal I-beams, constructed in a rectangular grid to support the floors, roof and walls of a building which are all attached to the frame. The developm ...

, and hollow- brick floor arches. The frame and floors were made unusually strong in order to accommodate the heavy safes required by the

trade Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market. An early form of trade, barter, saw the direct excha ...

, large windows provided ample daylight, augmented by

gas Gas is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, liquid, and plasma). A pure gas may be made up of individual atoms (e.g. a noble gas like neon), elemental molecules made from one type of atom (e.g. oxygen), or ...

and electric lights, and the facade was ornately decorated. Constrained by the narrow lot, Schellenger emphasized the building's slenderness with three slim brick colonnettes flanking the large

bay window A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room. Types Bay window is a generic term for all protruding window constructions, regardless of whether they are curved or angular, or ...

s on the building's face. The tall, narrow building towered over the older, neighboring structures. Cast-iron and steel construction were both relatively new techniques, and construction of the Diamond Exchange suffered a major setback in October 1893 when a powerful windstorm caused the incomplete cage to shift about from plumb. The problem was eventually traced back to oversized holes in splices on the cast-iron columns. Each new story added to the cage permitted additional movement, and the force of the wind was sufficient to cause the whole structure to tilt. To resolve the problem, the builders were forced to install "knee braces" at the ceiling line of each story, converting the original unbraced cage to a braced design. In 1904 the same flaw led to the collapse of the eleven-story Darlington Hotel, also in New York, which killed 25 construction workers. Construction was completed in 1894 and the building was occupied by jewelers and diamond dealers. The ground floor, decorated in polished granite, was leased to retail tenants; in 1915 it became home to Tessaro's, a dealer in rare books. One year after it was completed, the developers sold the building for $375,000 (it had cost approximately $275,000 to build).

Fate

While many early skyscrapers have been demolished or dwarfed by modern neighbors, the Diamond Exchange, , still stands above the adjacent buildings. In 1920, the buildings to the east were destroyed in a fire which killed several people. The buildings to the west were demolished in 2015 to make way for a planned hotel. By 2001 the building had been converted to residential use with one large apartment on each floor. In January 2022, it was sold for $9.5 million and the remaining tenants, mostly artists, were evicted.

References

{{reflist Office buildings completed in 1894 Financial District, Manhattan 1894 establishments in New York (state) Residential buildings in Manhattan