New York Times Building (41 Park Row)

and 150 Nassau Street at left The building is in the Financial District of Manhattan, just east of New York City Hall and the Civic Center. It sits on a plot that abuts Nassau Street to the east, Spruce Street to the north, and Park Row to the west. 150 Nassau Street is directly across Nassau Street to the east, while the Morse Building is across Nassau Street to the southeast. The Potter Building is on the same block as 41 Park Row and Pace University's One Pace Plaza is across Spruce Street. The structure sits on a trapezoidal lot with a frontage of on Spruce Street, on Nassau Street, and on Park Row, with a party wall adjoining the Potter Building. The building has alternate addresses of 40–43 Park Row and 147 Nassau Street. The triangle just north of 41 Park Row, bounded by Nassau and Spruce Streets and Park Row, was called Printing-House Square because of the area's status as New York City's "Newspaper Row" in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A bronze statue of Benjamin Franklin holding a copy of his Pennsylvania Gazette stands in the square. The statue was made by Ernst Plassmann and was dedicated in 1872. == Architecture ==

41 Park Row was originally designed by George B. Post and constructed between 1888 and 1889 in the Romanesque Revival style. Following the expansion, 41 Park Row was tall with 16 stories. Facade 41 Park Row contains a facade of Maine granite on its lowest two stories, rusticated blocks of Indiana limestone on the 3rd through 14th stories, and terracotta on the 15th and 16th stories. As originally constructed, the northern, western, and eastern facades of 41 Park Row were arranged into three horizontal sections. These consisted of the five-story base, a six-story midsection of two stories above four, and the two-story mansard roof with dormer windows. The horizontal lines of these facades were less prominent, with two courses above the 5th and 11th stories dividing the three horizontal sections. The arrangement of these facades after its expansion remained largely unchanged except in the upper stories. Vertical piers on the facade highlight the building's vertical axis. The piers split the Nassau Street and Park Row facades into four vertical bays and the Spruce Street facade into three bays. The Nassau Street and Park Row facades generally contained several superimposed arches in each bay, similarly to Post's previous commission of the New York Produce Exchange. The articulation of the Spruce Street facade is similar to that the northernmost bays on Park Row and Nassau Street, except at the first story. The northernmost bays on Park Row and Nassau Street, as well as all the bays on Spruce Street, are also narrower than the other bays on the facade; the remaining bays on Park Row and Nassau Street are the wider bays. The first story contains large display windows in each bay, with granite piers separating the bays. A streetlight, which is a New York City designated landmark, is affixed to the Nassau Street facade. The foundational piers from the previous building on the site, which dated from 1858, are wrapped with masonry to allow them to handle the current building's greater load. When the current building was erected, new foundations were appended to the old piers. The basement and subbasement extend underneath the adjacent streets, projecting outward underneath Nassau Street and outward underneath Park Row. In addition, there is another basement with a footprint measuring underneath Spruce Street, with a ceiling tall. The lowest five floors are at the same height as the original building's stories, as were the two basement levels. Unlike its predecessor, the current building has no interior partition walls. ==History==

The 41 Park Row lot, and the adjoining lot immediately to its south (now the Potter Building site), was the site of the Old Brick Church of the Brick Presbyterian Church, built in 1767–1768 by John McComb Sr. Starting in the early 19th century and continuing through the 1920s, the surrounding area grew into the city's "Newspaper Row"; several newspaper headquarters were built on Park Row, including the Potter Building, the Park Row Building, the New York Tribune Building, and the New York World Building. The New York Times and other newspapers would be among the first to construct early skyscrapers for their headquarters, with the current building being one such development. Meanwhile, printing was centered around Beekman Street, less than one block south of 41 Park Row. Previous buildings The Times, founded in 1851, was first housed in 113 Nassau Street, one block south of 41 Park Row; it moved to Nassau and Beekman Streets in 1854. The Times grew quickly and, by 1856, it needed new quarters. The Times had become popular, with over twice the readership of the competing Tribune by 1855 and was described in ''Harper's Weekly'' as having "won a reputation for the and variety of its news". When Brick Presbyterian Church's congregation moved uptown to Murray Hill in 1857. Times cofounder Edward B. Wesley partnered with investors Frederick P. James and Henry Keep to buy the northern half of the church site for its third building. The newspaper's other cofounders, Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, subsequently bought James's and Keep's shares. The third building's cornerstone was laid in May 1857. The structure had arched brick floors set within iron girders. Because of the demand for office space, Jones and the Times other owners proposed erecting a taller building on the site of the Times headquarters, rather than look for another site in Lower Manhattan, where available land was scarce. Furthermore, it would be extremely difficult to move the Times printing presses to a temporary location, so such a building would have to be constructed while the existing structure kept operating. The existing floors were then shored up with wood; the old building's structural stability was retained because its floors rested on a party wall with the Potter Building to the south and on the Spruce Street wall to the north, as well as upon internal partitions. The Spruce Street wall was demolished only after additional floor beams had been installed. By the next month, the facade of the building was completed. Expansion Jones, who died in 1891, had believed the Times Building to be a monument to himself, having spent large sums on the project. The Times Association gave ownership of 41 Park Row to a holding company called the Park Company, from which the New York Times Publishing Company would lease the building. the paper was purchased by Adolph Ochs in 1896, This prompted Ochs to acquire land for a new headquarters in Longacre Square (shortly thereafter renamed Times Square) in 1901. In November 1902, two men were killed in a fire in 41 Park Row's basement. The fire had originated at a wooden partition erected for the construction of the first line of the city's subway system, which ran adjacent to the building's basement under Park Row. Sometime in 1903, plans for alterations were filed but not carried out. During the expansion, the facade was demolished above the 11th floor. The original 13th floor was demolished, the 13th-floor mezzanine became a full 13th floor, and three new floors were added. The 12th and 13th floors, and the 15th and 16th floors, were modeled with double-height triple arches, similar to the 10th and 11th floors. and that November, a passerby was killed by a falling beam. On January 1, 1905, the Times moved to the newly completed One Times Square. Afterward, four show windows were installed at the first floor, where the Times publication offices had formerly been located. The expansion was completed by 1905. Businesses in other sectors also took space at the building. Minor modifications were also made to the ground-level storefronts in 1919, 1928, 1938, and 1941. and purchased the building three years later. A newer campus building, 1 Pace Plaza, was opened immediately to the north in 1970, though 41 Park Row still housed Pace University's graduate school. 41 Park Row also became known as Pace Plaza during the late 20th century. The building underwent further renovations starting in 1982, when the interior was restored in several phases of two floors each. On September 7, 2005, the New York Times Building was designated as a contributing property to the Fulton–Nassau Historic District, a National Register of Historic Places district. Pace University announced in February 2017 that it would extensively renovate 41 Park Row as part of a master plan for the university campus. Due to 41 Park Row's landmark status, Pace sought and obtained approval from the LPC. The renovations, designed by FXFowle, included restoring the lower floors and adding an entrance on Spruce Street, which had been removed in the 1950s renovations. Work was completed in January 2019. Other phases of the expansion plan entail moving administrative offices from 41 Park Row. == Critical reception ==

In January 1889, when the new building was near completion, the Real Estate Record and Guide called the new structure "the finest commercial building in New York". Moses King's Handbook of New York, published in 1893, described the then-new building as "a masterpiece of the Romanesque style" and "the New-York Times expressed in stone". When the Union Trust Building on Broadway was erected the year after the Times Building's completion, the Real Estate Record and Guide described the arched facade of the Union Trust structure as an improvement over the Times Building's facade. According to architectural writers Sarah Landau and Carl Condit, contemporary observers said that the building's style had been inspired by the works of Henry Hobson Richardson. Art critic Russell Sturgis objected to the horizontal groupings of floors and to the size of the original mansard roof, which he felt was too small compared to the building's height, though he praised the vertical piers. == See also ==