195 Broadway, also known as the Telephone Building, Telegraph Building, or Western Union Building, is an early skyscraper on Broadway in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. The building was the longtime headquarters of AT&T and Western Union. It occupies the entire western side of Broadway from Dey to Fulton Streets.
The site of the building formerly was occupied by the Western Union Telegraph Building. The current 29-story, building was commissioned after AT&T's 1909 acquisition of Western Union. It was constructed from 1912 to 1916 under the leadership of Theodore Newton Vail, to designs by William W. Bosworth, although one section was not completed until 1922. It was the site of one end of the first transcontinental telephone call, the first intercity Picturephone call, and the first transatlantic telephone call. Though AT&T's headquarters relocated to 550 Madison Avenue in 1984, 195 Broadway remains in use as an office building .
Bosworth's design was heavily Greek-influenced: though the facade is made of white Vermont granite, it features layers of gray granite columns in Doric and Ionic styles, as well as various Greek-inspired ornamentation. The northwestern corner of the building was designed similar to a campanile with a stepped roof, which formerly supported the Spirit of Communication statue. The Greek design carried into the large lobby, clad with marble walls and floors, and containing sculptural ornament by Paul Manship and Gaston Lachaise. The exterior and first-floor interior spaces were designated as city landmarks by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 2006.
Site
195 Broadway is on the west side of Broadway, between Fulton Street to the north and Dey Street to the south, in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The building has a frontage of on Dey Street, on Broadway, and on Fulton Street. According to the New York City Department of City Planning, the lot has an area of . 195 Broadway shares a block with the Millennium Hilton New York Downtown hotel to the west. Other nearby buildings include St. Paul's Chapel to the north, the Fulton Center and Corbin Building to the east, and the World Trade Center Transportation Hub and 3 World Trade Center to the west.
Architecture
Though William Welles Bosworth is credited as the architect, the design of 195 Broadway was largely influenced by AT&T head Theodore Newton Vail. According to Bosworth, "It was the aim of Mr. Vail that [195 Broadway] should express the ideal the Telephone Company stands for." For the lobby, Bosworth was inspired by the design of the Parthenon's porticos and Egyptian hypostyles to create "a forest of polished marble" supported by massive columns.
Bosworth's design was heavily Greek-influenced; it featured layers of gray granite columns in Doric and Ionic styles, and a lobby that included 43 oversized Doric columns made of marble. Many building details, such as the columns and the metal grilles above each entrance bay, were nearly identical copies of similar features on classical Greek buildings such as the Parthenon and the Temple of Artemis. Bosworth also incorporated several "architectural refinements" that Brooklyn Museum professor William H. Goodyear had noted as being characteristic of Greek architecture, including column spacing and progressively smaller columns at higher floors. Ornament was yet another important part of the design and was ubiquitous within 195 Broadway. Bosworth later wrote that he was "immensely proud" of the 195 Broadway design, from which he drew all of his subsequent Greek-inspired designs.
The main structure is 27 stories, including its attic and double-height lobby. The Dey Street annex, along the southern portion of the building, was an L-shaped structure at the corner of Dey Street and Broadway with an extension reaching Fulton Street. The westernmost on Fulton Street was designed like a campanile to fit with its narrow and tall form. The campanile is 29 stories high.