I have old documentation and pictures from a company that did elevator entrances and enclosures, including the Chrysler and Chase National bank buildings in New York.
I know the Chrysler building (as does most of the world), but the Chase National Bank building is a mystery to me.
Googling Chase National shows that it was founded in 1877 and merged with The Manhattan company in 1955.
I would estimate the pictures I have to be pre-WWII but not earlier than 1930 considering their inclusion of the Chrysler building.
Any ideas what building was called the Chase National building, and does it still stand, NYC historians?
I street-viewed Exchange pl. and Broadway, and unfortunately the original Chase National building appears to be gone. The building in your picture doesn’t match the current streetview.
The building in its place (57 Broadway) isn’t much newer, it appears to be from the 1940s.
[QUOTE=Folly’s tibidt]
The building, along with Two Chase Manhattan Plaza (aka The Chase National Bank Building), 18-20 Pine Street
[/QUOTE]
Huh, that does unequivocally say that the Chase National Bank Building was at 18-20 Pine st.
I don’t think Harpo’s picture was taken AT Exchange and Broadway OF the Pine st. property because the 2 places are about 2.5 diagonal blocks away. Harpo’s picture shows the property about 1.5 blocks away, non-diagonally.
Also, Exchange and Broadway is very close to the address on Chase National’s logo I linked above (“57 Broadway”).
I could be convinced that Exchange and Broadway is a reasonable description of where it was taken. These are very tiny blocks by modern standards. The small building in the foreground of Harpo’s picture is Federal Hall, so the photo was taken looking north, which would place the photographer somewhere just south and slightly west of the Stock Exchange. The building that is there now is much later than when the picture is taken, but it’s the right angle.
Anyway, I pulled out my definitive reference volume, New York 1930.
It doesn’t have a picture, but on p534 says:
I’m surprised that the Museum of the City of New York has wrong info up on its site. It’s a neat little museum and I’ve used it before. It didn’t occur to me to question it. I know, I know, double-check everything.
The building in the Museum’s photo is 2 Chase Manhattan Plaza, also known as the Chase National Bank Building, which was occupied as Chase Manhattan’s headquarters starting in 1928. The actual street address is Pine Street. The building is still standing; now it is condos. It was added on to at some point, because the current building is wider than the building in the photo, but it’s pretty seamless and in the same style.
57 Broadway was the address of headquarters of the Chase National Bank starting in 1915. It was in a building called the Adams Express Building, and the building is still there. Now, it uses the address 61 Broadway (if you want to google map it), but it’s the same building, definitely. This building is at the northwest corner of Broadway and Exchange, but in my opinion, it’s slightly too far west to be the location of where the photo was taken from. My best guess is that it was taken from across the street, also at Broadway and Exchange but on the east side of the intersection. Extremely dry history of this here.
As far as I can tease out, the error in the photo caption seems to be identifying a photo of the new-at-the-time Chase headquarters with the location of the former Chase headquarters, a few blocks away.
Now known is 20 Pine Street … They have the dot com even. Shares the block with the Liberty Street office tower , the block was 2 and 1 Chase Manhatten Bank Plaza… Number 1 is the taller newer office block even though number 2 is older.
The picture I have is only of the elevator entrance inside. No shots of the outside.
The company I work for used to design and fab entrances and enclosures for elevators as a side business. I was hoping to visit some of the extant examples!
Thank you all for your help.
