Bennett Building

History and architecture

The Bennett Building, constructed in 1872-73 and enlarged in 1890-92 and 1894, is a major monument to the art of cast-iron architecture. Ten stories high with three fully designed facades fronting Fulton, Nassau, and Ann Streets, it has been described as the tallest habitable building with cast-iron facades ever built. Commissioned as a real estate investment by James Gordon Bennett, Jr., the publisher of the New York Herald newspaper, the Bennett Building was originally a six-story French Second Empire structure.

Designed by the prominent architect Arthur D. Gilman, whose Boston City Hall was instrumental in popularizing the Second Empire style in America, the Bennett Building appears to be the architect's only extant work in the style in New York. Gilman was also an important pioneer in the development of the office building, and the Bennett Building is the sole survivor among the major office buildings he designed. Second Empire office buildings flourished in Lower Manhattan after the Civil War; this is one of two such buildings with cast-iron fronts still standing south of Canal Street.

In 1889, the Bennett Building was acquired by John Pettit, a leading real estate investor who commissioned architect James M. Farnsworth to enlarge the building to its present size. Farnsworth replicated the Gilman's richly textured, ornate design, including the distinctive curving corners linking the facades and the crisply articulated details that are particularly well suited to the medium of cast iron.