proposed John Street/Maiden Lane historic district

The John Street/Maiden Lane district in Manhattan is an area of early skyscraper office building development constructed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These buildings were built on speculation to house the many collateral businesses attracted by the concentration of wealth and business in the nearby Financial District.

The area is of particular interest architecturally, as the buildings show the early evolution of the office skyscraper, in what might be termed its ancestral home of Lower Manhattan. As evidenced by the wealth of extant building decoration, the architects were experimenting with materials and motifs in the new skyscraper form. Although all of them have elevators, several have traditional masonry load-bearing walls, and possess façade treatments that are not typical in later steel-frame construction. Additionally interesting in a skyscraper district in New York City, most of these buildings were built before the 1916 Zoning Resolution, which required set-backs and minimal sky-plane exposure. The combination of the winding street-grid, itself a remnant of colonial New York, with the towering building masses lends a unique and distinctive “turn of the century” sense of place.

Originally Maiden Lane from the East River to approximately Nassau Street was a pebbly brook where housewives and their young daughters would wash their clothing and household linens. The brook was filled in during British rule and it soon became an elite residential area, housing people such as Thomas Jefferson, while New York was the country’s capital city. The area converted quickly into fine specialty stores due to its proximity to the docks on the East River. The New York Arcade, built in 1827, stretched between John Street and Maiden Lane along Broadway and contained over forty stores with a skylight-covered corridor. This profitable commercial area was one of the first to be gas-lit by the New York Gas-Light Company in the late 1820s. As the separation between work and home became more distinct in New York, the area became solely commercial, serving the needs of businessmen who spent the workweek downtown. By the late nineteenth century many office buildings began to replace the smaller commercial residences that had existed in the area.

In the 1880s when office buildings in Lower Manhattan were beginning to grow taller, Francis H. Kimball and a handful of other architects began to design buildings that did not conform to the sober utilitarian-style office buildings that marked many parts of New York. Kimball designed the nine-story masonry bearing Corbin Building (1888-1889) at No. 11 John Street. The building is marked by a series of arcades of varying heights designed with a brownstone base below the tawny brick and dark terra cotta detailing of the upper stories. Architectural critic Montgomery Schuyler noted the Kimball’s “work is of a very high interest…. We can scarcely see in New York, except in Mr. Kimball’s own work, so idiomatic and characteristic a treatment of terra cotta on so elaborate a scale.” Andrew Dolkart notes, in his “Lower Manhattan Architectural Survey Report” that the Corbin Building is of particular interest today, not only for its elaborate design but also for the fact that is one of the few early skyscrapers that still rises above its neighbors, preserving the original effect that it must have had when it was built. Kimball truly revealed his expert command of terra cotta in the detailing of this structure.

In addition to the Corbin Building, there are many significant buildings in this area. One such structure is the Cushman Building (1897-1898) at No. 1 Maiden Lane. C.P.H. Gilbert, one of the most prolific architects of his time, designed this beautiful twelve-story tower. It is composed mainly of brick with stone and terra cotta trim and is topped by a mansard roof. Gilbert A. Schellinger’s Diamond Exchange Building at No. 14 Maiden Lane (1893-1894) is a sliver, 11-story brick and metal building. Across the street at No. 21 Maiden Lane is the Romanesque Revival style Hays Building by John Rochester Thomas, architect of the Surrogate’s Court House. The architects Clinton & Russell designed several buildings in this area including No. 6 Maiden Lane and the Wilks Building No. 65 Nassau Street. In addition, there is a building at No. 63 Nassau Street dating back to around 1860 that is thought to be one of James Bogardus’ few works in New York City. This poorly maintained building still retains some beautiful detail work including rope moldings, fluted cast-iron columns, heavy foliate spandrels, and relief portraits of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.