Manhattan skyline 1902 – Park Row building at center
by Alon Gibely Jex
15 Park Row! For those of you unfamiliar with this building I need to ask where you’ve been for the past 118 years??? That’s right, completed in 1899, for more than a century 15 Park Row has been an integral part of New York City’s skyline and today it’s still going strong! While presently its impressive twenty-nine stories may seem less so with the proximity to the Financial District and its mammoth skyscrapers, but for nine years after the completion of The Park Row Building (as it was known then) it was the tallest building in the world! That’s right, not just in the Financial District, or Tribeca (neither terms being applicable at the time of course), or Lower Manhattan, or the entire island of Manhattan, or the entire City of New York, or the… well you see where this is going.
Sadly, in 1908 the completed construction of the nearby Singer Building, at 47 stories, took the title of the world’s tallest. If you’re looking for the Singer Building these days though you won’t find it, as it was demolished in 1968 (take that Singer Building!), and these days that space is occupied by One Liberty Plaza.
In the early twentieth century 15 Park Row occupied a portion of Park Row that was then known as Newspaper Row, it being the center of the New York City newspaper industry at the time, and the building even housed one of the first offices of the Associated Press. Other notable tenants over the years include the headquarters of the IRT (Interborough Rapid Transit), the original operator of the New York City subway system, as well as most recently the offices and retail space of J&R Music World, the famed New York City music and electronics retailer.
These days the building has been converted to a luxury residential building. In 2001 the top half of the building was converted into residential units, and since 2014, the bottom half, from floors 3 to 8 were converted to residential units as well. Currently there are over 300 apartments at 15 Park Row, and the building is presently working on restoring the lobby to its former early-twentieth century glory, as well as adding some more modern touches like a large gym, yoga studio, a residents lounge and children’s playroom, bike storage, cold storage, and an immaculate roof deck as well. For over 100 years 15 Park Row has and continues to prove itself as a bastion of the neighborhood that surrounds it, whether that’s Tribeca, the Financial District, or whatever they may call it in the future.
This certainly won’t be the only blog about 15 Park Row that NY Living Solutions will bring you, but if you’re interested to learn more about the architecture and history of 15 Park Row then check out the link below to the Wikipedia article:
