Former Greenwich Savings Bank

History and architecture

Haier America acquired the building in 2002.

The Greenwich Savings Bank building, constructed in 1922-24 as the imposing new headquarters to mark this institution's progress from its modest Greenwich Village origins to a prominent Midtown location, is one of the most refined examples in the impressive corpus of bank buildings from the firm of York & Sawyer.

Both architects, initially employed by McKim, Mead & White, carried the senior firm's monumental classicism into a more academic classical architecture. Philip Sawyer's knowledge of ancient Roman prototypes, and his appreciation for the organization which characterizes eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French design and planning is demonstrated in the adaptation of the bank's three facades to the irregular site.

The projecting and recessed planes of the colonnades, raised high on the rusticated ground story, unify the bank's three facades while belying the building's skeletal steel frame. In the Greenwich Savings Bank building Sawyer displayed his versatility in manipulating the classical architectural canon to create a veritable temple to thrift and to make the Greenwich Savings Bank one of the finest examples of the academic classical architectural tradition in this country.

Brief History of the Greenwich Savings Bank

The growth of the Greenwich Savings Bank was linked inextricably to the expansion of the city of New York. In 1832 the population of Greenwich Village suddenly increased when a cholera epidemic sent many residents of the city at Manhattan's tip to the healthier climate of the Milage. To prepare for what must have been seen as inevitable growth, the bank's founding trustees, a group of far-sighted local businessmen, met in 1833 at the Northern Dispensary to found the Greenwich Savings Bank. Housed in the first floor of a row house at 10 Carmine Street, just off Sixth Avenue, the bank expanded into No. 12 a year later. At this time it was the only savings institution in Greenwich Village.

The state legislature authorized the bank to receive deposits and invest these in bonds or stocks issued by the United States Treasury or by the States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, or New York. Following the fires that swept the city in 1835, Greenwich Village again found itself serving an expanded population. In 1836 the state legislature authorized the bank to make loans on unencumbered real estate in New York City. Exemplary management carried the bank through the national financial crises of 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, and 1907.

In 1839 the trustees moved the bank around the corner to quarters at 11 Sixth Avenue, the avenue on which the Greenwich Savings Bank would do business for nearly a century and a half-Keeping pace with the northward surge of the city's population up Manhattan Island, the bank's addresses rose steadily up Sixth Avenue. In 1846 the bank leased space on the northwest corner of 4th Street at 41 Sixth Avenue where it remained until 1853 when the trustees acquired two lots on the southwest corner of Sixth Avenue and Waverly Place.

The new building opened in 1854. When the bank outgrew that site, the southeast corner of West 16th Street and Sixth Avenue, adjacent to Saint Francis Xavier Roman Catholic Church, was purchased in 1889-90, with the bank's fifth home opening in 1892. Now demolished, it was designed by Robert W. Gibson, well-known as an ecclesiastical architect. With this commission the bank's trustees demonstrated that they understood the associational advantage implicit in a well-designed building in a good location.