4 Irving Place - Cons Edison (a.k.a Consolidated Gas) Building - by Warren & Wetmore

[antinimby]

CONSOLIDATED GAS COMPANY
(now Consolidated Edison Company)
4 Irving Place
Architects: Henry Hardenbergh; additions, Warren & Wetmore and Thomas E. Murray, Inc.
1910-14; additions, 1926-29


nyc-architecture.com


nyc-architecture.com


nyc-architecture.com

The Consolidated Gas Company was formed in 1884 with the merger of six of the city's independent gas companies. This merger took place, in part, as a response to the threat created by the formation of the Equitable Gas Light Company, backed by William Rockefeller, and in part in response to the "threat" posed by electricity. The new company established its headquarters at 4 Irving Place in the offices of the old Manhattan Gas Light Company.

This was a handsome Italianate brownstone building erected for the companyÕs use in 1854. The Consolidated Gas Company continued to grow in the late 19th century, eventually allying itself with various electrical companies, notably the New York Edison Company. The firm outgrew its headquarters building and began an expansion project that lasted for almost 20 years. Major buildings were erected on virtually the entire block bounded by East 14th and 15th streets, Irving Place, and Third Avenue.

The expansion began in 1910, when Consolidated Gas decided to build a new 12-story headquarters on Irving Place and 15th Street. The prominent architect Henry Hardenbergh, best-known for such buildings as the Dakota Apartments, Plaza Hotel, and Hotel Martinique, was commissioned to design the new structure. Since the company did not wish to disturb the ongoing work of the office, construction was planned in two sections. A 12-story building was erected at the rear of the lot, behind the old office.

This was completed in 1911, the offices were moved, and the old headquarters building on the corner demolished. By this time, however, the firm had decided that a 12-story building would be inadequate. More land was purchased to the east, and Hardenbergh was requested to design and 18-story building for the entire site. There was no problem in constructing the structures for the east and west sides of the lot, but the original 12-story central section did not have a structural system that could support extra floors.

The solution was to build the end wings and then construct girders between them and suspend the additional stories. As completed in 1914, the Consolidated Gas CompanyÕs building was a Renaissance Revival skyscraper clad in limestone with an Ionic entrance portico and enormous cornice crowned by acroteria.

With the increasing use of electricity, Consolidated grew rapidly and on 10 April 1926, announced plans for a tower to be erected on the site of the old Academy of Music on the corner of 14th Street and Irving Place. The architectural firm of Warren & Wetmore designed the new tower in conjunction with the engineering firm of Thomas E. Murray, Inc. Although Warren & Wetmore is best known for its work on Grand Central Terminal and other imposing early-20th-century Beaux-Arts monuments, during the 1920s the firm designed the Heckscher Building and Aeolian Building, both on Fifth Avenue, the New York Central Building on Park Avenue, and this prominent office tower on 14th Street.

Much of the 14th Street elevation of the new building was designed to copy Hardenbergh's original structure. However, for the corner, Warren & Wetmore designed a 26-story tower that would be a prominent landmark as it rose above the low buildings of its neighborhood and would be a visible symbol of the utility company. The tower is faced with limestone and has a three-story Doric colonnade at the base. the tall shaft is set back from the colonnade and rises uninterrupted 21 stories to a modest cornice, above which are four clockfaces and four corner urns. Near the top, the tower sets back slightly and takes the form of a temple capped by a pyramidal roof that is crowned by a 38-foot-high bronze lantern.

This tower was planned to be dramatically lighted at night, advertising the wonders of the electricity that the company sold. Known as the "Tower of Light," this was memorial to the companyÕs employees who had died in World War I. The building was well-received upon completion; an editorial published in The Architect commented that "the new tower-building designed by Warren and Wetmore...is, to our mind, a building of unusual merit and distinction."

Since it was built for the country's leading utility company, the tower also had an influence on the design of electric-company buildings in other cities; for example, John Russell Pope's Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company Building (1930) is a light-colored stone building with a Doric base on which sits a setback tower crowned by a pyramidal roof. Lighted at night, the Con Edison tower is now a potent symbol of the corporation.

In 1928, Consolidated Gas again exploded, purchasing the Tammany Hall building on 14th Street. Warren & Wetmore's addition, built in 1928-29, simply extends the earlier 14th Street elevation.

Source: http://www.preserve2.org/gramercy/pr...marks/4irv.htm

[antinimby]

Shockingly, I did a little checking up and find out that this building is NOT landmarked yet!

Here's some more images...


preserve2.org






jglsongs

[NoyokA]

Anyone know if there are any plans for the Con-Ed parking lot on 14th and 3rd Avenue?

[brianac]

ConEd Building On Road To Landmark Status

by Eliot Brown | June 26, 2008

nyc-architecture.com

The Consolidated Edison building at 4 Irving Place, the limestone-clad onetime home to ConEd’s headquarters just east of Union Square, is up for landmark designation as the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission added the building to its calendar for review.

The 26-story building, designed by Henry Hardenbergh, who designed the Plaza and the Dakota, and Warren & Wetmore, was built in stages between 1910 and 1929.

In a statement of significance about the building, the LPC hailed the structure’s distinct architecture, saying, “As completed, the Consolidated Edison Building is a monumental presence on 14th Street and on the Manhattan skyline.”

Also now being considered for designation is the Museum Building, Fountain of Life sculpture, and the Tulip Tree Allee at the New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx.

Buildings that are "calendared" by the LPC typcially are designated as landmarks

http://www.observer.com/2008/coned-b...andmark-status

© 2008 Observer Media Group

[TREPYE]

How is it that the architectural trash known as One Chase Plaza got landmark designation before this. Illogical, as usual.

[Derek2k3]

I can't believe this building wasn't landmarked either.

[antinimby]

There are actually quite a few exquisite gems in this city that are still not landmarked yet.

Not all of them are prominent in the skyline. Most are not large. Many are hidden away behind larger buildings or on smaller streets but they are just as fine in details as some of the better known landmarks.

The only time it seems like we hear or learn about them is when they are up for demolition.

Luckily, contrary to popular belief, not all landlords in this city are money-hungry Moinians and Macklowes constantly looking for every opportunity to "cash in."

Some do have taste and a regard for architectural beauty so some of these gems will live on despite not having protection.

[brianac]

Streetscapes | 14th Street and Irving Place

A Beacon of the Changing Times


Left, Architect/Office for Metropolitan History; Right, Michael Falco for The New York Times

BRIGHT IDEA The Consolidated Gas Company building, above in 1929, was designed with a 24-story limestone tower, known today as the Con Edison tower. Its colored lighting was unusual for the time — and it was electric-powered.

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY
Published: September 12, 2008

WHAT is now known as the Con Edison tower, built in 1928 at 14th Street and Irving Place, is up for landmark designation. Its illuminated, highly colored clock faces, colonnade and Baroque-style lantern make it one of New York’s most memorable skyscrapers.

So what was this extravaganza of electric light doing on a tower built for a gas company?

Natural gas began to replace oil lamps in the early 19th century; the New York Gas Light Company was organized in 1823 and provided street and house lighting. Gradually gas lighting became standard, but in 1881 newly developed electrical companies began angling for the same contracts. To fight back, several gas suppliers came together in 1884 to form the Consolidated Gas Company.

But in that same year, The Real Estate Record and Guide predicted the newer form of energy would triumph, saying that in the home “the hue of electric light is cool, like concentrated starlight,” and that gas could “only be used in an upright position, whereas the flame of the electric lamp may be so disposed as to point in any direction.”

Although houses and apartment buildings were provided with dual electrical and gas systems into the 1910s, it was clear that Thomas A. Edison’s innovation had the upper hand, and soon after 1900 electric vacuum cleaners, fans, refrigerators, elevators and other devices became common.

In 1910, Consolidated Gas began a multiyear building campaign centered on its existing headquarters on Irving Place. At first the company worked with Henry Hardenbergh, who designed a fortresslike series of 12-story and later 18-story cream-colored office blocks. But in the 1920s Consolidated retained Warren & Wetmore, the firm most famous for Grand Central Terminal, to design a tower at the corner of Irving Place and 14th Street.

The architects, who had started their careers with mansions and clubs for the well-to-do, had been experimenting with tall-building design.

For the Steinway Piano Company, at 111 West 57th Street, they designed a midblock tower all of limestone and topped by a temple, with a sculptural, even funerary, caste. For the New York Central Company’s commanding site spanning Park Avenue at 46th Street, they developed a bulbous tower with an intricate lantern at the top, detailed with the intricacy of the Houses of Parliament in London.

For the Consolidated Gas project, the architects worked out a 24-story limestone tower, its corners clad with mock quoining: courses of stone raised to create a column of protruding blocks. But the smooth limestone shaft is severe, almost modernistic, looking as if it had been stripped in a renovation campaign. The tower rises 425 feet, ending in a 16-foot-wide clock face repeated on four sides, a recessed loggia of giant columns and then a colossal, crowning bronze lantern.

Inside the huge lantern at the top were five great beacons, one aiming straight up through a hole in the top and the others coming out the windows. The giant loggia had a series of lights that washed over the structure in varying colors.

Although lighting tall buildings was hardly new, the colored dials and shimmering tints of the tower were unusual at a time when plain old light was generally deemed sufficient for distinction.

All of it was, of course, electric. There was nothing to indicate that the client was the Consolidated Gas Company.

That’s because around 1900 what had started as a gas consortium had begun buying up the competition: electric companies. A 1928 article in The New York Times said there were 1.1 million gas meters in place — but 2 million electric meters. And in 1936, when the Consolidated Gas Company changed its name to Consolidated Edison, 75 percent of company revenues were from electricity, 4 percent from steam and only 21 percent from gas.

What became known as the Con Ed tower is now one of a string of romantic nighttime skyscraper tops, reaching from the financial district to the north, starting with the American International Building, at 70 Pine Street — its cubic glass pinnacle topped by red — and going on to the ethereal Citicorp tower and other structures beyond.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission has proposed the tower for designation, and Robert McGee, a Con Ed spokesman, says it has no objections.

Con Ed has been selling off some of its real estate, like the old power plants on First Avenue just south of the United Nations, and one reason it is unperturbed by landmark designation is that its immense parking lot, 100 by 200 feet fronting on Third Avenue, is a separate piece of property.

Thus, designation of the tower should have no impact on that site, should another more modern tower — symbolizing another form of energy — arrive there.

E-mail: streetscapes@nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/re...ref=realestate

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company