A Campus

Another vaguely radioactive-looking nighttime photo from circa 1910.* That’s the Metropolitan Life tower as seen from across Madison Square Park. The low building abutting the tower** was the first phase of Met Life’s move uptown from the financial district, built in 1893. The low building was almost a cube when constructed, 100 feet wide on Madison Avenue, a bit longer on 23rd Street, and 13 stories high. Additional wings were built along 23rd Street and then Park Avenue until the complex absorbed the entire block.

I suspect that expansion was a retroactive reaction to the company’s growth, and my evidence is the second tallest building in the photo. That’s the Met Life printing annex on 24th Street, where the complex printing of insurance policies took place. If the plan was, from day one, to absorb the entire block, wouldn’t the printing annex by lower and broader, to better harmonize with the office buildings that eventually surrounded it? The northwest corner of the block, at 24th and Madison, was the last to be developed by Met Life, and that’s where they decided to put a signature tower. Later on changes were made that really erased the original building to building distinctions: new facades were put on all of the low buildings, some of the low buildings were partially demolished and replaced, and a lot of the ornament was stripped from the tower.

There are a lot of these mini-campuses scattered around Manhattan, sometimes overtly as at the old J. P. Morgan collection*** at 23 and 37 Wall Street, 15 Broad Street, and 43 Exchange Place, but usually obscurely as at the ABC collection near Lincoln Center. In a city with relatively small blocks and a lot of big businesses, it’s pretty much inevitable.

* This post was written in response to the surprising number of people who took the time to look at nothing more than me reposting a LinkedIn piece of Gabi’s. I’ve delayed the post originally written for today.

** One Madison Avenue.

*** Broken up in the 1990s.