The Continental Bank Building is a 50-story

skyscraper A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources currently define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition. Skyscrapers are very tall high-ri ...

at 30 Broad Street in 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 ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. It was completed in 1932 in the

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unit ...

style. It is next to the

New York Stock Exchange Building The New York Stock Exchange Building (also the NYSE Building), in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City, serves as the headquarters of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). It is composed of two connected structures occupyin ...

History

Origins

In 1929, a new 50-story building was announced at 30 Broad Street (location of the former 15-story Johnston Building) to house the

Continental Bank and Trust Company The Continental Bank and Trust Company of New York was a financial institution based in New York City, New York, United States. It was established in 1870 as the German-American Bank, which became the Continental Bank of New York. Originally in th ...

and various brokers. The site extends along Broad Street at , the length of Exchange Place runs from New Street, and runs along New Street. The building site was once owned by the

Dutch Reformed Church The Dutch Reformed Church (, abbreviated NHK) was the largest Christian denomination in the Netherlands from the onset of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century until 1930. It was the original denomination of the Dutch Royal Family and ...

which had erected the city's second

almshouse An almshouse (also known as a bede-house, poorhouse, or hospital) was charitable housing provided to people in a particular community, especially during the medieval era. They were often targeted at the poor of a locality, at those from certain ...

on the site before 1659.

Architecture and construction

The estimated cost of the new building was $20 million. The project was the largest single cooperative building venture undertaken to that time.

Cross and Cross Cross & Cross (1907–1942) was a New York City-based architectural firm founded by brothers John Walter Cross and Eliot Cross. History Cross & Cross was known as Old New York City Society's architectural firm of choice. John Cross (1878–1951) ...

were announced as the building's planners. An "unusual" feature of the building was a sub-

basement A basement or cellar is one or more Storey, floors of a building that are completely or partly below the storey, ground floor. It generally is used as a utility space for a building, where such items as the Furnace (house heating), furnace, ...

clearing house Clearing house or Clearinghouse may refer to: Banking and finance * Clearing house (finance) * Automated clearing house * ACH Network, an electronic network for financial transactions in the U.S. * Bankers' clearing house * Cheque clearing * Cle ...

where owner-tenants each have floor space and can transact business with other owner-tenants in the building by a system of

pneumatic tube Pneumatic tubes (or capsule pipelines, also known as pneumatic tube transport or PTT) are systems that propel cylindrical containers through networks of tubes by compressed air or by partial vacuum. They are used for transporting solid objects, a ...

s to exchange receipts. Architects Morris and O’Connor completed drawings for the building in 1931. The demolition of the Johnston building was planned from May 5 to July 13. The 15-story structure had exterior masonry that bore walls composed of

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies un ...

(some pieces weighing as much as 10 tons) that were up to three feet thick at the lower walls. The exterior was ashlar granite while the interior was common brick backup laid in cement mortar. Its steel internal skeleton was only designed to carry the floor loads, because the exterior was self-supporting.

Opening and owners

The building opened for occupancy on April 27, 1932. The commercial real estate services company

Cushman & Wakefield Cushman & Wakefield plc is a global commercial real estate services firm. The company's corporate headquarters is located in Chicago, Illinois. Cushman & Wakefield is among the world's largest commercial real estate services firms, with revenues ...

established a branch office here in 1932. The City Investing Company bought the building in 1943.

Architecture

The building was designed as a skyscraper rising 48 stories, above street level with a "simple" architecture. According to the architects, the structure is designed to express straightforward business of the highest class without excessive ornamentation. The first three stories of the

façade A façade () (also written facade) is generally the front part or exterior of a building. It is a loan word from the French (), which means ' frontage' or ' face'. In architecture, the façade of a building is often the most important aspect ...

are clad in

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms w ...

with the remainder made up of light-colored brick and dark brick at the

spandrel A spandrel is a roughly triangular space, usually found in pairs, between the top of an arch and a rectangular frame; between the tops of two adjacent arches or one of the four spaces between a circle within a square. They are frequently fill ...

s. The building footprint rises from street level to the 20th floor, where the first setback is made; another setback exists at the 23rd floor. The building tower then rises from the 24th to 48th floors. The top of the building is flat (having no ornament). The building's lobby runs through from Broad Street to New Street with two

elevator An elevator or lift is a cable-assisted, hydraulic cylinder-assisted, or roller-track assisted machine that vertically transports people or freight between floors, levels, or decks of a building, vessel, or other structure. They ...

banks which serve the building, one set from the

lobby Lobby may refer to: * Lobby (room), an entranceway or foyer in a building * Lobbying, the action or the group used to influence a viewpoint to politicians :* Lobbying in the United States, specific to the United States * Lobby (food), a thick st ...

to the 20th floor and the other from the lobby to floors 21 through 47. The 48th floor is accessed by stairs from floor 47. Total rentable space is announced as . The building columns sit on new footings which rest upon rocks. The average depth of the new foundations is below Broad Street. However, the Broad Street side of the building rests on existing caissons. An adjoining structure along the southern property line required triple cantilever plate girders to provide headroom for the elevator doors. There are three floors below ground. The total building weight is estimated at 55,000 tons (7,000 tons of steel). Pearl and Broad - panoramio

In popular culture

30 Broad Street appears as the "Larrabee Building" in the original 1954 version of the movie '' Sabrina'', as the headquarters of the family business empire. Its address is prominent in a scene late in the movie with

Audrey Hepburn Audrey Hepburn (born Audrey Kathleen Ruston; 4 May 1929 – 20 January 1993) was a British actress and humanitarian. Recognised as both a film and fashion icon, she was ranked by the American Film Institute as the third-greatest female screen ...

standing on the sidewalk outside its entrance. The building and Broad Street are also seen in an early scene when

William Holden William Holden (born William Franklin Beedle Jr.; April 17, 1918 – November 12, 1981) was an American actor, and one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1950s. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the film ''Stalag 17'' (1953) ...

parks his car out front. The building is also used as a location in the opening scene of the 1954 film '' Executive Suite'', also starring William Holden. A businessman walks out of the building, looks up and down Broad Street for a taxi, then succumbs to a heart attack, setting the movie's plot into motion.

References

{{Financial District, Manhattan Art Deco architecture in Manhattan Broad Street (Manhattan) Financial District, Manhattan Office buildings completed in 1932 Skyscraper office buildings in Manhattan