American Surety Company Building

History and architecture

The American Surety Company Building, a key building in the evolution of the skyscraper, was erected to designs of the eminent architect Bruce Price between 1894 and 1896. Prominently sited at the southeast corner of Broadway and Pine Street, opposite Trinity Church graveyard, the building stands in the heart of the insurance district; the insurance industry played a major role in the development of this section of Broadway, at the same time fostering advances in skyscraper design. The American Surety Company, one of the leading bond insurance companies in the nation, erected the second highest building in the city.

This was the first and most important tall building by Price and reflected his innovative ideas about skyscraper design. It was one of the first buildings in the city to incorporate such structural techniques as steel framing, curtain wall construction, and caisson foundation piers that carry a cantilevered steel foundation structure. Clad in Maine granite, the twenty-three story American Surety building features a rich neo-Renaissance decorative scheme that incorporates Greek elements such as the Ionic entrance colonnade and the severe classical sculptural figures, designed by J.

Massey Rhind, at the third story. Credited by the noted architectural critic Montgomery Schuyler with popularizing the tripartite column analogy for tall buildings, Price's design for the American Surety Building set a model for tall buildings on corner sites in the 1890s and was a prototype for the freestanding tower skyscrapers of the early twentieth century. Between 1920 and 1922, as the American Surety Company prospered and expanded, the building was modified with the addition of four bays on Broadway and four bays on Pine Street and by the addition of two penthouse stories.

Designed by the talented and inventive New York architect Herman Lee Meader, these additions matched Price's original design in material and articulation.

The American Surety Company, organized in 1881, began doing business at 160 Broadway in 1884 under the leadership of Richard A. Elmer, a former Postmaster General of the United States, and William H. Wheelock, former president of the Central National Bank. By 1892 it was "the largest surety company in the world and the only company organized in the United States devoted exclusively to acting as surety on bonds and undertakings required in judicial proceedings."

After moving to its new office building in 1896, the company continued to grow; by 1898 it had 1,200 agents who were managed directly from the home office. At that time a system of branch offices was organized. In 1924, it had forty branch offices and 15,000 local agents in the United States and its Canadian and Mexican subsidiaries. The company's charter was amended in 1951 to permit it to deal in accident and health insurance. In December 1963, it merged with the TransAmerica Insurance Company of California.