Skinny and Skinnier

I’ve written a great deal over the past decade about the Gillender Building, an extremely slender skyscraper at the corner of Wall and Nassau Streets that was briefly the fourth tallest ordinary building (as opposed to barely-occupied tower) in the world. Gillender was completed in 1897 and demolished thirteen years later as its lot was combined with a that of a wider and lower neighbor to provide the site for the Bankers Trust building.

The Gillender lot was a not-quite trapezoid, 74 feet, 3 inches long (north-south, along Nassau Street), tapering from about 26 and a half feet on the north lot line to just over 25 feet at the south facade at Wall Street. The building’s height of 273 feet gave it a slenderness of greater than 10, which is an extreme very rarely reached again until tuned-mass dampers became more common in tall buildings after 2000. But here’s a new question: what was on that narrow lot before 1897?

In 1892, it was the Manhattan Trust Company Building. The company itself was founded in 1888, so the company took over an existing building. Here it is in 1894, 6 stories (plus a high basement) and 84 feet high:

That’s a slenderness of 3.2 which is quite high for a masonry-wall building. That building wasn’t there in 1866 in that form, when there was a five-story building on the site:

But look at the pediments on the third story (the second in this view) and the masonry jointing below, and compare to this probably 1880s view:

It looks like maybe the Manhattan Trust grew by two stories at some point, which was certainly a common enough phenomenon. Here it is in 1880 at 6 stories and a basement:

Maybe I’m kidding myself, but I think you can see the scar at the fourth floor where the original cornice was removed. And here’s an unfortunately undated (note to the NYPL: saying “1828 to 1890” isn’t helpful) drawing showing it at four stories plus a basement:

So to recap, my best guess is that sometime before 1866 (possibly in the 1850s based on the architectural style) 20 Wall Street was built as a speculative office building and expanded between 1866 and 1880 due its good location. The Manhattan Trust Company moved in between 1888 and 1892, and then the building was demolished in 1896 for Gillender. Based on the Wikipedia description of the site, Gillender was likely the fourth building on that lot, and Bankers Trust is the fifth. But maybe that could be fifth and sixth. It’s a lot for a little strip of land smaller than some rowhouses.