New York Terra Cotta
April 30th, 2012 by Control Comments to this post
Exploring the interior of one of NYC’s best maintained, longest standing abandoned buildings.
This building’s interior might not be the most amazing thing to look at, especially in it’s present state – but it’s exterior is a work of art, and it’s historic relevance to NYC on a whole is noteworthy.
History:
From the NYC LPC:
The New York Architectural Terra Cotta Company building is a designated New York City landmark, is listed in the New York State Register of Historic Places, and has been determined to be eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. It was built in 1892 and was the office for the firm that produced much of the terra cotta ornament popular in New York architecture and across the country at the turn of the 20th century. The New York Architectural Terra Cotta Company manufactured ornamental terra cotta for numerous important buildings around the country, including the Plaza Hotel, Carnegie Hall, and the Ansonia Hotel in New York City, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Philadelphia, the Statler Hotel in Detroit, the Municipal Building in Dallas, and the Valley National Bank in Des Moines.
With changing architectural styles, popular demand for carved stone and terra cotta lessened in the 1920s and 1930s. As a result, the New York Architectural Terra Cotta Company went bankrupt in 1932, and the grounds were taken over by the Eastern Terra Cotta Company, which manufactured ornaments for many Robert Moses park projects. By 1950, the property was being used for plastics sorting and the “balling” of waste paper. In 1976, all buildings on the Project Site, except the surviving office building, were torn down.
The office building was tightly sealed with preservation in mind. It’s own terra cotta elements were until recently encased in wood to prevent exposure to the elements and vandals. Its present owners, Silvercup Studios (home to many TV shows, such as 30 Rock) are hoping to build a high rise building on the plot of land immediately behind the office, where the old factory once stood. Perhaps as a goodwill effort, they’ve invested a small sum of cash in a complete interior renovation of the office building, along with a general clean up and shoring up of the building’s exterior.
Adventure
Contractors on this job informed us that the building was accessible from the rear on one particular weekend. This bit of information was of no use though considering the tall fences out front, the busy intersection that the building is situated on, and the power plant next door, which is covered in security cameras. All of this has served to protect the building from being explored, until now. LTV Always Prevails.
Via an unusual nautical methodology we landed behind the facility one dark and rainy summer evening via attack hovercraft. From here a machete would be most handy, as the former factory property is overgrown with tall weeds, cloaking the rubble beneath your feet. Hacking a path through this wet brush, we eventually make our way to the rear of the building. Here lays a filmsy, weathered and battered door, left ajar by our confederate insider.
The interior of the building at this point is straight up worksite. All of the old crossbeams have been removed, and replaced with fresh sturdy lumber. Floorboards are being installed, and very little is left of the original interior. In fact, the only serious elements left intact were the second floor fireplace, a toilet left dangling above a hole in the floor, and an original office door – half frosted glass, half thick wood. While it sucked not to see the original condition of the interior, it was fantastic to see the new work in progress, and the overall stability of such an old, unused building.
If our entry to this location was straightforward, our exit was anything but. The lone viable exit was accessible, but now guarded by a police van. The occupants of this van had no idea we were where we were. We set off no alarms, and they were not there to find us. It was their lunch break, or something. And it was just our luck that they took it at the most unfortunate of locations. There was nothing to do, other than lay in wait.
Seconds turn to minutes, minutes turn to an hour. The van has not moved an inch. Surely there has to be something going on somewhere, no?
After a simply maddening hour and a half of seeing our tax paying dollars used to trap us for the hideous crime of being history nerds, the break lights turn off. The van rolls off the sidewalk and into the street, then off into the distance. We quickly make our way out – happy to be free and enlightened, never having to wonder again ‘what’s inside that place’?
7 Responses to “New York Terra Cotta”
Leave a Reply
Related Posts
- Locations
- NYC Industrial Ruins
- NYC ruins
What is…
Recent Comments
- El Sleaztor on The abandoned Willow Lake trail, in Flushing Meadow Corona Park.
- moe better on The abandoned Willow Lake trail, in Flushing Meadow Corona Park.
- moe better on The abandoned Willow Lake trail, in Flushing Meadow Corona Park.
- Will Wurth on The abandoned Willow Lake trail, in Flushing Meadow Corona Park.
- Carlos R. Edwards on How to signal to an NYC subway to stop (in case of emergency)
Calendar Ov Posts
LTV Press
Featured Press
Anyone know what it is going to be used as?
According to the interwebs: Alan Suna, CEO of Silvercup Studios: “We don’t know what it’s future is right now, but we’re restoring it just the same to make it ready for whatever the future will bring.”
The original job permit for this work states this: CLEAN UP AND REMOVAL OF INTERIOR DEBRIS. NEW WATER SERVICE TO BUILDING. NEW ELECTRICAL SERVICE TO BUILDING. NO CHANGE IN EGRESS, USE OR OCCUPANCY. – at a cost of around $30k. The actual work being performed is more of a gut rebuild and I’d imagine cost a bit more than that.
There was some old debris inside the building – old bottles and bits of terra cotta that so far as we know were preserved or sold off.
Slivercup at one point wanted to get a high rise/studio expansion built behind it where the actual factory stood, but they’ve been talking that up for at least 10 years now.
My gramps worked for silvercup a VERY long time ago….
I got a relative that worked at Kaufman. Since it was an ex-military facility there were apparently some interesting features to the buildings (bunker, stuff behind walls, etc).
the Detroit Statler, huh? interesting!
TFB the benevolent 30-Rock wasnt around then to save the Statler from becoming the blank, futureless hole in the downtown Detroit landscape that it is today.
Wait a minute — you were inside the Terra Cotta building for over an HOUR AND A HALF, and all you took was 9 pictures? Please say you have more!
I have some more but honestly, it wasn’t super awesome in there. Most of the building had no floors, only crossbeams. Much of the old interior was already removed.