Well it looks like it is to late. A testament to how stupid people can be. Thebuilding is entirely gone. Picture taken April 4th, 2008. Sad.

50 Trinity Place

The building has a highly detailed Terra Cotta facade in excellent condition, with grand proportions connecting us to New York's old European past. This beautiful piece of architecture is quite unique and given its good condition (intact above first floor) we see it as a kind of an urban crime to demolish it. Lets hope those plans change, that the owners will show some taste and the demolition plans will be scrapped.

An excellent deli serving the neighborhood for many block radius has been forced to shut down, creating a deafening thump in the life of nearby residents who are interested in neighborhood reinforcing measures rather than the bulldozing of money speculators.

If the building will be razed, we expect that this website will serve as a memory of how heavy handed ignorance of the qualities of our great New York City are displayed. If the structure is left intact, the building has great potential as a landmark address, with its generous windows and ornate detailwork. And most of all, its service-functionality to Trinity Place.

One can only appreciate its handsome scale and proportion, hard to comprehend unless you stand near it, fitting in quite well with the neighborhood. Its an old-timer scale-wise built like a smaller version of the uberscaled yet not so big JP Morgan close by. Certainly not an architecture masterpiece by rigorous architectural standards, 50 Trinity Place was built with some ambition and a particular taste.

It most likely is far better than whatever will be built on the site, considering the invasion of pathetic brick tortes and nowhere land street insensitive structures, popping up like pound on the chest "We Need Rebuilding"-cancer all over downtown with doormen behind large sheets of glass ready to thwart your smallest curiosity. Now it appears the building will be collapsed by an actual inside job, a downtown building bonanza that seems to carry a careless attitude for the neighborhood and the history that belongs to the area, truly unique to the history of The United States.

For Trinity church across the street, a tall structure will cast a shadow on the very old cemetery trees in the sun starved Trinity grave yard. Over the corner of 50 Trinity Place today actually shines the good old SUN to daily bathe the graveyard in a healthy afternoon light. A tall building here may do great disservice to the unique downtown graveyard.

Close up of facade

Here is a close up image of the facade work. Click for a higher resolution. Quite beautifully detailed building and actually irreplaceable considering todays building standards.