The former A. T. & T. Building at 195 Broadway was declared the city?s 1,142nd individual city landmark yesterday by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which also designated its lobby as the city?s 107th official interior city landmark.

The building, which fronts on Broadway and Dey and Fulton Streets, overlooks St. Paul?s Episcopal Church to the north.

The office building was designed by William Welles Bosworth, who also designed the gardens and garden structures at Kykuit, the Rockefeller family estate in Pocantico Hills, N.Y.

?This magnificent building melds extraordinary architecture with an equally high caliber of painting and sculpture,? declared Robert B. Tierney, the commission?s chairman. ?This building remains a singular achievement to this day, and we are thrilled about this designation,? he added.

The designation is a bit late, however, as its greatest feature, the city?s most famous skyline ornament, ?The Spirit of Communications,? a very tall and dramatic gilded statue by Evelyn Longman Batchelder, was whisked away when A. T. & T. abandoned the building and Lower Manhattan in 1983 for a new Post-Modern office building at 550 Madison Avenue designed by Philip Johnson. Mr. Johnson designed a very large, gilded, vaulted lobby to house the famous statute that had perched since 1916 atop the western end of the roof of 195 Broadway.

Caged but visible, the extremely impressive sculpture was the city's finest and most elegant skyline ornament since August St. Gaudens's great gilded statue of Diana that had stood atop the tower of the old, demolished Madison Square Garden on Madison Avenue and 26th Street.

Affectionately known as ?Golden Boy,? it was eventually removed from 550 Madison Avenue by A. T. & T. to its headquarters in rural New Jersey when it turned over the building to Sony, its major tenant now.

In January, 2000, A. T. & T. offered to return "Golden Boy" to New York, but in April, 2000 announced it had decided to keep it. A spokesman for the company, John Heath, was quoted in an article by Shaila Dewan in the April 4, 2000 edition of The New York Times as stating that "We were not able to find a suitable home for him elsewhere."

The same article quoted New York City Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern as stating that the city would "put him on a pedestal with the Statue of Liberty" and that the city had offered A. T.& T. three sites, one at the Washington Market Park, one atop 195 Broadway, its original home, and one at 346 Broadway that had once been topped by a large bronze eagle.

The designation report notes that ?the western portion of the building, which housed A. T. & T.?s executive offices, is capped by a golden orb that once supported the gilded bronze figure of ?The Genius of Electricity.?

The Broadway building was built in three stages between 1912 and 1922 and according to the landmarks commission?s designation the building ?was inspired in part by the contemporary excavation of the Temple of Sardis. ?The facades of the 27-story office tower, which are detailed with swags, wreaths, lion heads and frets, are clad in Vermont granite, and defined by Ionic colonnades and Doric columns that recall the Athenian Parthenon. Relief panels designed by sculptor Paul Manship that depict the Four Elements (Earth, Air, Fire and Water) are set into the bronze spandrels above the entrances to the Broadway side of the building. Inside lies a serene forest of 43 cream-colored marble Doric columns....Manship designed the marble frieze that runs above the elevators along the Dey Street side of the lobby."

A. T. & T. sold the Broadway building to Peter Kalikow, a former publisher of The New York Post and the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The present owner of the property is L & L Holding Company of which David W. Levinson is the chairman.