The last time anyone made a fuss over the architecture of the New York Times’ headquarters was in the first decade of the 20th century. Then Cyrus Eidlitz, with Andrew C. MacKenzie, designed the Times’ offices, completed in 1905, for a new location far removed from its old home amid a cluster of newspaper buildings down by City Hall.
In an essay in RECORD, in 1903, Montgomery Schuyler, a staff member of the Times from 1883 to 1907 and a frequent contributor to RECORD, lauded the new Italian Renaissance-style tower going up on Longacre Square, at the crossroads of 42nd Street, Broadway, and Seventh Avenue. Indeed, the trapezoidal site presented an opportunity for a skyscraper to be seen in the round from many vantage points, unlike so many other high-rises embedded in the blocks of New York City’s grid. Because of its island-like site and its 363-foot-height for the 25-story building, Eidlitz conceived it as a campanile on a base, eschewing the oft-favored typologies of the mansard- roofed chateau or a rectangular tower. When it was built, the Times tower was the second tallest building in Manhattan (next to R.H. Robertson’s 391-foot-high Park Row Building of 1899).
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