Stewart, A. T., Company Store
About this property
280 Broadway – also known as the A.T. Stewart Dry Goods Store, the Marble Palace, the Stewart Building, and the Sun Building – is a seven-story office building on Broadway, between Chambers and Reade streets, in the Civic Center neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Built from 1845 to 1846 for Alexander Turney Stewart, the building was New York City's first Italianate commercial building and the first department store in the United States. The building also housed the original Sun newspaper from 1919 to 1950 and has served as the central offices for the New York City Department of Buildings since 2002. It is a National Historic Landmark and a New York City designated landmark. Trench & Snook had designed the original store at the corner of Broadway and Reade Street, as well as two annexes in the early 1850s; further additions were designed by "Schmidt" in 1872 and Edward D. Harris in 1884. The facade is made of Tuckahoe marble and is divided into multiple sections, allowing the various expansions to be designed in a similar style. The ground level contains pilasters and columns, which originally framed plate-glass walls. The facade also contains a four-sided clock and a two-sided thermometer, which were added when the Sun occupied 280 Broadway. When the building was completed, the wholesale and retail departments of Stewart's store were arranged around a central rotunda. The current interior dates to 1884, when the rotunda was destroyed and the building was converted into offices. Stewart's store opened on September 21, 1846, and grew rapidly in the next two decades. The store's retail division moved uptown in 1862, but the wholesale division remained there until 1879. Henry Hilton bought the building from Stewart's widow in 1882 and converted the building to offices. Hilton sold the building in 1908 to Felix Isman, who lost it to foreclosure four years afterward. The newspaper moved into 280 Broadway in 1919 and renamed it the Sun Building in 1928. After the Sun vacated the building in 1950, there were various plans to demolish the building, which did not come to fruition. Instead, the building has been used as city government offices since 1965, and it was rehabilitated from 1995 to 2002.
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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).
Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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Questions about this property
When was Stewart, A. T., Company Store listed on the National Register?
Stewart, A. T., Company Store was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 1, 1978.
What type of historic resource is Stewart, A. T., Company Store?
Stewart, A. T., Company Store is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.
Is Stewart, A. T., Company Store a National Historic Landmark?
Yes. Stewart, A. T., Company Store has been designated a National Historic Landmark (NHL), the highest level of federal recognition for historic properties in the United States.
What is the period of significance for Stewart, A. T., Company Store?
The period of significance for Stewart, A. T., Company Store is recorded as the industrial era.
Can I research the history near Stewart, A. T., Company Store?
Yes. Aubrey Research reports search National Register listings, battlefield records, land patents, and other primary historical sources within any radius of a US address. A report for an address near Stewart, A. T., Company Store will include this listing and all other historical records in the area.
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