56 Pine Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 56 Pine Street by Carter Horsley

This very handsome building was designed by Oswald Wirz and erected in 1894 by James G. Wallace in the Romanesque Revival style. It was designated an official city landmark in 1997 and was converted to 90 condominium apartments in 2005.

It has a fine Lower Manhattan location close to the Art Deco skyscraper masterpiece, the A.I.G. Building at 70 Pine Street, just to the east, and the Chase Manhattan Plaza building, one of the area s most prominent "modern" towers, about a block away to the west. It is a block north of Wall Street and convenient to several subways.

The 15-story building has a warm orange-yellow brick, stone and terra cotta façade and a four-story rusticated base with arched windows on the first and top floors.

The landmark designation provided the following commentary:

"Faced with brick, stone, and terra cotta, the building is distinguished by its Romanesque Revival characteristics, seen in the round-arched openings, the deeply set windows, and truncated columns, and embellished by intricate foliate panels and fantastic heads."

When it was built, it replaced a four-story office building and its twelve stories made it one of the tallest at the time in Lower Manhattan. The highly ornate building has a three-step-up entrance. In 1919, three floors were added in a setback.

The richness of the façade is quite remarkable. There are more than 30 polished granite columns supporting the four arches on the first floor of this relatively narrow building. The second and third floors have very tall and deeply inset windows separated by five rusticated piers. The 4th through the 10th floors have a different fenestration pattern with smaller windows divided into just three vertical tiers.

The building has a private "club," called "TWO," on the second floor for residents that includes a fitness center, a billiards room, a wired conference room available for meetings, a wet bar and a media room. The building has a doorman and concierge and bicycle storage, and high ceilings and individually controlled central heating and air-conditioning. There is private laundry on each floor.

The former office building was partially converted to the Cambridge Club, a furnished rental apartment building in 2000 and all of its apartments were then rented to Salomon Brothers Smith Barney and Lehman Brothers.