Broadway Chambers Building

History and architecture

The Broadway Chambers Building is located on the northwest corner of the intersection of Broadway and Chambers Street. Broadway is one of the oldest roads on Manhattan Island and sections of it predate European settlement. Chambers Street, named after John Chambers, a corporate counsel, alderman, and Supreme Court judge between 1727 and 1765, was ceded to the City of New York by the Trinity Church Corporation in 1761. The land on which the Broadway Chambers Building stands was first developed by Anthony Steenbach about 1791 with a row of one-story buildings fronting on Chambers Street.

In the early nineteenth century, the stretch of Broadway between Chambers and Worth Streets was a mixture of residential buildings and substantial institutions such as Washington Hall (1809-12) which was designed by John McComb, Jr., one of the architects of the City Hall, and was the headquarters of the Washington Benevolent Society, a Federalist organization; and the New York Hospital (opened 1791) which occupied the west side of Broadway between Duane and Worth Streets.

Broadway, north of Chambers Street, maintained a combination of institutions, residences, and shops until AT. Stewart built his famous department store on the site of Washington Hall in 1846. The building, later known as the Sun Building, still stands and is a designated New York City Landmark. The character of Broadway north of Chambers rapidly became strictly commercial.

When opened in April, 1900, the Broadway Chambers Building was recognized internationally as a distinguished New York City skyscraper, garnering a number of awards at the International Universal Exposition held in Paris that year. The building is one of the best examples of a solution to an architectural problem that had challenged New York architects during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. That problem had been to produce an aesthetically effective treatment for the tall commercial building. a relatively new building type in the city.