J. & W. Seligman & Company Building

History and architecture

The rusticated, richly sculptural, neo-Renaissance style J. & W. Seligman & Company Building, designed by Francis Hatch Kimball in association with Julian C. Levi and built in 1906-07 by the George A. Fuller Co., is located at the intersection of William and South William Streets, two blocks off Wall Street. It was commissioned as headquarters of J. & W. Seligman & Co., a prestigious investment banking firm founded in 1864 by Joseph Seligman and his brothers, who established one of the preeminent German-Jewish families in the United States and became known as "the American Rothschilds." Kimball emerged in the forefront of early skyscraper design in New York City, particularly during his collaboration with G. Kramer Thompson in 1892-98, while Levi, apparently a nephew of the Seligmans, was a recent graduate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

The design of the eleven-story, steel-framed and limestone-clad skyscraper, treated in a manner similar to that of the contemporary commercial and public architecture in Great Britain referred to as "Baroque Revival," skillfully adapts the difficult quadrilateral shape of the lot and acute angle of the primary corner by providing a dramatic vertical focus, with a round tempietto-form tower, as the building is approached from Wall Street. The building was the headquarters from 1929 to 1980 of Lehman Brothers, another prestigious investment banking firm (founded in 1850) owned by another of the prominent German-Jewish merchant banking families of New York City. Architect Harry R. Allen altered the base of the South William Street facade in 1929 by creating a new corner entrance and replacing the original arched entrance with a treatment similar to that of the William Street facade.

Since its purchase in 1981, the building has been the New York headquarters of the Banca Commerciale Italiana, one of Italy's largest banks, founded in 1862. An eleven-story addition, clad in banded limestone and black granite and constructed in 1982-86 to the design of Italian architect Gino Valle, skillfully respects the original in an abstracted contemporary idiom.