40 Wall St.: A 70-Story Ghost Town in New York
For a few months in 1929--until Chrysler pulled a spire out of its hat--40 Wall Street was the world’s tallest building. Today it’s the world’s emptiest building, a vertical ghost town with floor upon floor of great views that no one sees.
Almost 80% of the million-square-foot-office building is vacant. At dusk, as neighboring towers glow, 40 Wall is a black hole in the financial district firmament.
Over the last four years Wall Street has lost tens of thousands of jobs, and firms have left for midtown, the suburbs and points beyond. A fourth of downtown’s pre-World War II office space is empty--more than 7 million square feet, enough to swallow downtown Louisville, Ky.
Andrew Silberstein, a real estate agent who is trying to find tenants for 40 Wall, admits it’s a tough sell. “In New York, Wall Street doesn’t mean what it once did.”
Nor does the tower with the familiar green pyramidal top. Forty Wall makes some wonder if the prewar Manhattan skyscraper, the signal achievement of American architecture, is obsolete.
Normally conservative people are advancing seemingly radical solutions to the plight of 40 Wall and its generation: Mothball ‘em. Tear ‘em down. Turn ‘em into apartments.
“We know what to do with an old house: Cherish it, preserve it,” says Joseph Pell Lombardi, an architect who suggests converting the top half of 40 Wall to condominiums. “But what do we do with an old skyscraper?”
No one was asking that question in 1929, the year when it became clear that the 792-foot Woolworth Building was about to lose its crown as the world’s tallest building.
Chrysler Corp. had announced plans for an office tower near Grand Central Terminal. Downtown, another tall office building was planned a half-block from the New York Stock Exchange. The race to the sky was on.
It was a grudge match. Craig Severance, architect of 40 Wall Street, and William van Alen, Chrysler’s designer, had until recently been partners. Their split was not amicable, and now each maneuvered to get a leg up.
In the subways and the salons, New Yorkers debated the towers’ styles--Chrysler was gleaming Art Deco, 40 Wall a more sober exercise in limestone and brick--and cheered on their favorite.
Chrysler added 10 stories to its design; meanwhile, plans for 40 Wall grew from 47 to 60 to 70 stories. Finally, Severance, thinking that Chrysler would be 925 feet high, added a rooftop lantern and flagpole that pushed 40 Wall to 927 feet and, it seemed, to victory.
But Van Alen had a surprise up his sleeve . . . and inside his building. He had secretly moved five sections of a 185-foot spire into the building and assembled them on an upper floor. Once 40 Wall had been topped off, Van Alen pulled the spire out and put it up. Chrysler was No. 1--until 1931, when the Empire State Building was finished.
Meanwhile, the stock market had crashed and the economy was collapsing. Half-empty and only able to get rents at half the ’29 rate, 40 Wall limped along for a decade before falling into foreclosure.
Forty Wall’s problems evaporated in the prosperous years after World War II but returned in the 1980s when it was secretly purchased by Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. After Marcos was overthrown, he was forced to give up 40 Wall.
Although a court-appointed receiver continued to collect rents and make routine repairs, there was no money for capital improvements. And in October, 1987, the stock market crashed again.
A new developer took over in 1989 and announced plans for a $50-million renovation. But Manufacturers Hanover moved out after merging with Chemical Bank, and Morgan Guaranty followed suit. Citibank, which held the mortgage, cut off renovation funds, and the developer defaulted on mortgage payments.
Most of 40 Wall’s floors are empty, their lights turned off and heat turned down. The elevators are programmed to pass by. Down in the lobby, attendants usually outnumber everyone else.
To the high-tech financial services industry, 40 Wall looks like an antique. The floors on its upper stories are too small, with too many columns. The wiring is old. There is no freight elevator.
In the last three years, 40 Wall’s assessed market value has dropped from $123 million to $75 million; although Citibank declines to comment, real estate brokers say the bank would sell its interest for as little as $10 million. Not since the Depression has so large a building lost so much value so fast.
The tower’s tax bill is so large that if tenants (or a buyer) are not found, Citibank could have to give it to the owner of the underlying property. The nation’s 12th-tallest building might even be abandoned to the city, like some burned out tenement.
Joseph Pell Lombardi, who specializes in renovation and conversion of old buildings, thinks the upper 30 stories of 40 Wall should be broken into 120 apartments and sold, bare-bones, to homesteaders who would finish them at their own pace, taste and budget.
Office towers, he points out, have many residential amenities: imposing lobbies, high ceilings, fine vistas. And Wall Street is relatively safe and, at night, quiet. You can walk to the South Street Seaport, to Battery Park, to work.
Although conversion of some prewar office space into residences has been suggested by the Real Estate Board of New York and is being studied by the city Planning Department, brokers point out that the residential market is almost as depressed as the office market.
But Lombardi says something has to give.
“For the first time in history, we’re going to have 100-year-old skyscrapers--buildings that were designed for very specific purposes and built, essentially, to last forever. . . . They’re monuments. They aren’t going to go away.”
