Another (unfortunately low-resolution) construction photo, this time of the J. P. Morgan headquarters building at 23 Wall Street. I believe the date is March 1914. The architects were Trowbridge & Livingston, the contractor Marc Eidlitz & Son. This was a top team for a building that is now a local and national monument.
We’re looking southeast. Wall Street is on the left and Broad Street on the right; the New York Stock Exchange is past the right edge of the view, across Broad Street from Morgan. The shingled roof at the lower left is Federal Hall and those shingles are marble and quite large.
Given that the building is only four stories tall, there’s nothing remarkable about the construction progress. What’s remarkable is that the building is only four stories tall. The intersection of Wall Street, Broad Street (south of Wall), and Nassau Street (north of Wall) had at that time the most expensive land value in the city. The response of nearly company that built a building was to build tall, to make money off the location by renting office space. Most companies used only a few floors in the buildings named after them, and the rest of the space was for rent.
In short: you can show off your wealth in Manhattan by building a small building. Morgan didn’t need the rental income and was flaunting that fact.
