New York City landmarks

This photograph looks west across Broadway toward the twin neo-Gothic towers of the Trinity Building (111 Broadway, left) and the U.S. Realty Building (115 Broadway, right), with the probable  excavation for the new Equitable Building in the foreground. Both towers were designed by Francis H. Kimball and completed between 1904 and 1907 for the United States Realty and Construction Company. Their Gothic ornament in Indiana limestone was a deliberate response to their neighbor immediately to the south, Richard Upjohn’s Trinity Church, whose churchyard is partially visible at lower left. The skybridge connecting the two buildings across Thames Street, also by Kimball, was added in 1912, which helps date the photograph. 

The large excavation in the foreground occupies the site of the old Equitable Life Building at 120 Broadway, which had burned in a catastrophic fire on January 9, 1912. The blaze killed six people and destroyed what had been, when it opened in 1870, one of the first buildings in the world to feature passenger elevators. The site was cleared and sold to T. Coleman du Pont, and excavation for the replacement began in June 1913, reaching bedrock eighty-three feet below street level by January 1914. The state of the work visible here is consistent with that period. The new Equitable Building, designed by Ernest R. Graham, opened in 1915. Its massive, setback-free bulk so alarmed New Yorkers that it became a direct catalyst for the city’s pioneering 1916 Zoning Resolution, which for the first time placed limits on building height and shape. Both the Trinity and U.S. Realty buildings survive and were designated New York City landmarks in 1988. 

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