CARY BUILDING, 105-107 Chambers Street, Borough of Manhattan

Landmarks Preservation CoffillQssion August 24, 1982, Designation List 158 LP-1224 CARY BUILDING, 105-107 Chambers Street, Borough of Manhattan. Built 1856-57; architects King & Kellum; iron cast by D.D. Badger's Architectural Ironworks. Landmark Site: Borough of Manhattan Tax Map Block 145, Lot 3. On November 18, 1980, the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a public hearing on the proposed designation as a Landmark of the Cary Building and the proposed designa tion of the related Landmark Site (Item No. 10). The hearing was continued to February 10, 1981 (Item No. 3). Both hearings had been duly advertised in accordance with the provisions of law. Nine witnesses spoke in favor of designation. There was one speaker in opposition to designation. A letter hffi been received in favor of designation. DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS The Cary Building, built in 1856-57, is one of New York's most important 19th-century commercial structures. Designed by one of New York's most prominent firms specializ ing in commercial architecture, with cast-iron fronts fabricated by the city's most important foundry, it is a significant early product of the period during the middle of the century when New York's premier position in the commercial life of the nation was established. The pioneering Cary Building exemplifies three developments which set major patterns for the spectacular commercial growth of post-Civil War New York: 1) the commercial redevelopment of the area north and west of City Hall; 2) the introduction of the Italianate "palazzo" type; and 3) the development of the cast-iron facade. The build ing's architects, Gamaliel King and John Kellum, were important for their role in shap ing the new commercial city; and the foundry which cast the building's iron fronts, Daniel D. Badger's Architectural IronWorks,was the first major foundry in the business and eventually the most prolific and influential. As an early product of key trends in the city's commercial development, as one of the earliest surviving cast-iron buildings, and as the product of a major architect and foundry, the Cary Building is of seminal importance to the development of 19th-century commercial New York. The Commercial Transformation of Lower Manhattan and the Cary Building The unparalleled growth of New York City in the 19th century, which led to its emergence as the largest and richest city in the country, was primarily the result of commerce. Following the end of the War of 1812, which reopened the Atlantic trade routes, and the opening in 1825 of the Erie Canal, which connected New York to the interior, the city grew into the country's major port and trading center. Commercial pressure almost immediately began to push the city beyond the traditional limits of lower ~anhattan, and a pattern of rapid development and redevelopment emerged. The city's commercial districts moved northward into former residential areas, replacing older houses with first-class shops. New well-to-do residential districts developed still further north on the city's outskirts. Older prime commercial areas to the south became warehouse and wholesale districts.l -2- Followingthe completion in 1846 of the A.T. Stewart store, the first department store in the country,2 on Broadway between Reade and Chambers Streets, the residential dis trict along Broadway north of City Hall rapidly changed into the city's leading commer cial district. Over the next forty years, the Broadway area between City Hall Park and Madison Square became the commercial heart of the metropolis. Stewart's store also set architectural precedents for that development: his architect, John Snook, designed an enormous stone "palazzo," with cast-iron and glass storefronts, in the newly fash ionable Italianate style. This was the first of the "commercial pa laces" built for New York's "merchant princes," and it set the style and the type for the next several decades. The change in the Broadway area was noticed as early as 1852: The entire length of Broadway seems to have been measured for a new suit of marble and freestone--six and seven story buildings going up on its whole length, of most magnificent elegance in style ••. Indeed public and private buildings are going up in all directions ... with Aladin-like splendor and celerity.3. By the time of the Civil War, the district's character had irreversibly changed accord ing to the writer of a retrospective editorial in Harper's Magazine in 1862: Those who remember the Broadway of twenty years ago can hardly walk the streets now without incessant wonder and surprise. For although the transformation is gradually wrought, it is always going on before the eye. Twenty years ago it was a street of three-story red brick houses. Now it is a highway of stone, and iron, and marble buildings .... Some of the new stores in Broadway are almost as imposing as some of thepalaces in Italian cities.4 The Cary Building on a site running through the block from Chambers to Reade Streets between Church Street and West Broadway,5 was built for the firm of Cary , Howard & Sanger, drygoods rnerchants. 6 The major partner in the firm was William H. Cary (1787- 1861), a Bostonian who carne to New York in the 1820s and eventually became quite weal thy, owning real estate in Brooklyn and New York, and stock in banks, insurance com panies, and the Brooklyn Railroad Company of which he was president. Cary, Howard & Sanger, established during the economic depression of 1837, prospered so that by 1854 it was considered the "richest house" on the trade. The store was located at 243 Pearl Street, in the older commercial district; Cary, following the trend north and west, purchased the site for a new building on Chambers Street in 1856. The Chambers Street area was already being redeveloped for commercial purposes by that date: one block to the east was A.T . Stewart's store, and one block to the west was the new station for the Hudson River Railroad. Cary's site, originally part of the Trinity Church farm, had already been in use by the New York Bank for Savings since 1844.7 Cary ' s new build ing was completed in 1857;8 soon afterwards, the immediately surrounding blocks were largely redeveloped with stone and cast-iron commercial structures. Cary, Howard & Sanger, in its new location, was an important commercial establishment, serving as both store and warehouse. A contemporary account described it as an "ele gant structure," and a "first class, well-regulated warehouse-- 1500 different kinds of articl es of foreign and domestic fancy goods comprising jewelry, perfumery, cutlery, guns , musical instruments, combs, brushes, etc. Nothing pertaining to fancy goods that is not to be found here."9 The drygoods department store, initiated by Stewart in 1846 , was still novel, and the same account noted that Cary's store'saves purchasers rnudh time and perplexity ordinarily occasioned by searching for goods at various places," and called the store "the largest and most complete of its kind in the world ... (and) the most satisfactory evidence of the triumph of American excellence in commerce." -3- Cary, as the proprietor of one of the new drygoods stores in the new commercial dis trict,had hired King & Kellum, a prominent firm specializing in commercial architecture; they designed an Italianate style "palazzo" in the new tradition of Stewart's store, with facades fabricated in cast iron, the latest innovation in commercial architecture. Cast-Iron Architecture and D.D. Badger's Architectural Iron Works The use of cast-iron in architecture, although not entirely an American innovation, led to the development of one of the most extraordinary indigenous architectural forms in the history of American architecture. Daniel D. Badger (? -1884) was one of the most important innovators in the field and his foundry, the Architectural Iron Works, was the most prolific in New York. James Bogardus and Daniel Badger both published claims to having built the first cast iron buildings in America, Bogardus in a promotional pamphlet of 1856, and Badger in a foundry catalogue of 1865.10 In fact, cast iron, mostly imported from England, had been used for decorative and structural purposes from before the turn of the century, and at least one cast-iron front had been constructed as early as 1830.11 ;Bogardus's development and promotion of cast-iron facades, however, and Badger's construction of hundreds of cast-iron storefronts and facades, elevated cast iron from the position of an occasional constructional aid to one of prominence in the field of commercial archi tecture for nearly nalf a century.12 The rise of cast iron as an architectural material, widely used for the facades of com mercial buildings from the 1850s to the 1890s, can be attributed to a number of techni~ cal and economic factors. Badger claimed for cast iron the virtues of "Strength ... Lightness of Structure ... Facility of Erection ..• Economy ... Durability ... Incombustibi~ lity ... Renovation L-by a coat of paint_)" and added that "sufficient strengthlS:arQbe secured without the exclusion of the light--which is often highly desirable both for mercantile and mechanical purposes."l3 Bogardus, who made similar claims, added that: ... a building once erected, it may be taken to pieces with the same facility and despatch, without injuring or destroying any of its parts, and then re-erected elsewhere with the same per fection as at first.l4 The advantage of economy derived not so much from the cost of iron relative to stone, but from the replacement of costly elaborate stone-carvingwith inexpensive prefabri cated iron casting. The advantage of allowing in a maximum of light was of great im portance to retail stores.

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