This imposing 23-story building is directly across Spruce Street from the entrance to Pace University and it overlooks both City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge.

Erected in 1895 as one of the city’s tallest and largest towers, it was designed by Robert Henderson Robertson and was designated an official individual New York City landmark in 1999. It is one of the earliest steel skeletal frame skyscrapers in the city.

It is clad in rusticated gray Westerly granite, gray Haverstraw Roman brick, and buff-colored terra cotta. It has a u-shaped plan with an exterior light court on the south side.

Its design is a combination of Romanesque and Renaissance Revival styles. Its two main façades are divided into six horizontal sections and a three-story arcade, open at the top story and with winged caryatids at the upper corners, tops the western half of the building and a three-story hipped roof tower rises through the arcade creating an unusual top.

The American Tract Society was founded in 1825 and became one of the nation’s largest publishers of religious literature before the Civil War. This building was originally conceived as a speculative building but the society moved out of it in 1914 when it lost the building through foreclosure.

From 1914 to 1919 the lower part of the building was leased to the New York Sun. At the end of the 19th Century, this neighborhood was the center of the city’s newspaper publishing industry.

The building is notable for its deeply inset windows, the...