Irving Underhill‘s portrait of Irving Trust at 1 Wall Street falls into the “romantic view of skyscrapers” category. 1932 was the perfect year to take this picture: Irving Trust was brand new, and the old 2 Wall Street had been demolished (preparatory for the new 2 Wall Street being built) so there was a vacant lot and Wall Street to the north, between Irving Trust and the expanded American Surety Building, to allow a better view. Irving Trust’s facade is limestone and it seems to be glowing white in the sun. The brownstone exterior of Trinity Church had been, ill-advisedly, coated with wax to protect the fragile surface of the stone; the wax rapidly turned black as it collected soot in that coal-burning era. So the dark appearance of Trinity is not entirely fake. (The wax has been removed and the stone surface restored.)
Irving Trust is always described as Art Deco and that’s as good a name as any, although, like Raymond Hood‘s work, it’s off-center for that style. Ralph Walker, the building’s architect, designed a number of stocky little mountains in the New York streetscape – 32 Sixth Avenue and 60 Hudson Street are the most famous – and the design of Irving Trust is largely one of those mountains stretched vertically and turned pale gray. (About twenty years ago, the owners added antennas to 32 Sixth that greatly resemble massive TV rabbit ears. I’m sure they serve a purpose, but improving the appearance of the building is not it.) The most striking exterior detail, visible in the photo if you look closely, is that the facade is scalloped, so that it projects out slightly between each pair of windows. That detail, combined with the chamfered corners, could have made it looks like a misshapen fluted column, but fortunately Walker was too good a designer for that.
The banking hall at the base is covered in red and gold mosaic, and the board room at the top (50th) floor has a triple-height ceiling with one huge window on each facade. In short, this was always meant as a showcase building. Irving Trust as a company disappeared in a merger more than 30 years ago, and the building is in the last stages of conversion to apartments.
I can make all sorts of arguments about why this building is so good: taking advantage of the Trinity churchyard to create views up and down Broadway, the way the scalloping gives scale to the very tall and slender tower, the overwhelming intensity of the banking hall, but they’re all rationalization. My real reason can be summed up as “Just look at it.”
