Former New York Times Building

History and architecture

This sixteen-story office building, constructed as the home of the New York Times, is one of the last survivors of Newspaper Row, the center of newspaper publishing in New York City from the 1830s to the 1920s. Erected in 1888-89 and enlarged in 1903-05, the present building was the paper's second on the site and was so identified with the Times that it was described in King's Handbook of New York (1892) as "the Times expressed in stone."

The former Times Building is the sole remaining office building in the downtown area by the pioneering skyscraper designer George B. Post. Post, the country's pre-eminent -architect-engineer, achieved a major technological feat with this commission which required him to incorporate the floor framing from the Times's five-story 1857 building so newspaper operations could continue on site while the new building was under construction. The Times Building, Post's first in the Richardsonian Romanesque idiom, was considered "a masterpiece of the Romanesque style."

Faced with rusticated Indiana limestone blocks above a gray Mairle granite base, the facades are articulated in a complex composition featuring a series of impressive arcades that emphasize the verticality of the building and horizontal moldings that call attention to the underlying structure. The carefully-scaled details include compound colonnettes, roll moldings, miniature balustrades, foliate reliefs, gargoyles and a mansard with gabled dormers.

In 1904, the Times, which had been sold to Adolph Ochs, relocated to Times Square. The former ground-floor offices of the Times were converted to retail use, the mansard was taken down, and four stories were added to the designs of Robert Maynicke.

Pace University acquired the building in 1951 for part of its Manhattan campus, converting the offices to classrooms and making changes to the base. With its three highly visible facades on Park Row, Nassau Street, and Spruce Street facing Printing House Square, the former New York Times Building remains a prominent presence in New York's civic center. The former New York Times Building is located difficult engineering problems. on a trapezoidal lot which extends 103 feet along Park Row, sixty feet along Spruce Street, ninety-six feet along Nassau Street, and is 104 feet wide at its south party wall adjoining the Potter Building.