Union Square contains several landmark buildings. One of these is Tammany Hall, built in 1929 on the site of the seven story Westmoreland Hotel, across 17th Street from the twenty story Mansard-roofed Germania Life Insurance Company. Tammany Hall, the former abode of the Boss Tweed Ring, was originally located on East 14th Street, before being replaced by the Con Edison building. The party built its base through assistance to newly arrived immigrants, and helped establish the Free Academy, the forerunner of City College.
The 1929 building, at the southeast corner of 17th Street and Fourth Avenue, was designed by architects Thompson, Holmes and Converse, and Charles B. Myers, who had recently completed the Commerce Building for City (now Baruch) College on East 23rdStreet. Within a few years of its completion, Tammany became mired in corruption, leading to the resignation of Mayor Jimmy Walker and the reforms initiated by Fiorello Laguardia with the assistance of Governor Alfred Lehman and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was sold in 1943 to the International Ladies Garment Workers Union .
It was designed in a neo-Federal style inspired by the former Federal Hall built in 1700 and demolished in 1812. Referred to by contemporary critics as “exceptionally charming and a real adornment to the neighborhood,” it is more of a pseudo Federal style with a pastiche of theatrical classical details that lack any relevance to the early 20th Century, but perhaps appropriate for its current use as a theater. While some impassioned preservationists laud its “Mansard” roof, the Landmarks Preservation Commission in its 2013 Designation Report refers to it as a “slate covered hipped attic roof largely screened from view by a brick and stone balustrade.” In fact, it is merely a screen to hide the utilities resting on the building’s flat roof.
The Mansard roof was originally developed by Francois Mansart in Paris as a way of getting around building wall height restrictions, by sloping the upper illegal wall extensions, cladding them in slates and calling them roofs. Artists who tended to live in these attics where they painted the more gritty edges of the city were known as “mansards”. New York City builders did the same to get around building height restrictions, which related maximum building height to the width of the street. Tammany Hall, only a modest four stories, had no need of this subterfuge of a Mansard roof.
Michael Buckley, Managing Principal of the current owners, Edifice Real Estate Partners, said at a meeting with BKSK Architects, members of the Union Square Community Coalition and Community Board Five, that they had a long term commitment to theater, but that ground floor retail, with offices above, would best meet the potential of this historic building. While the zoning law would allow an additional 42,000 square feet to the top of the existing 37,000, the architects propose only two partial floors of 11,000 square feet contained under an unusual partially transparent dome which turns up at the edges to admit daylight and views to and from Union Square.
“The concept came to us in a flash,” said the architects Harry Kendall and Todd Poisson. The original Tammany Hall had a statue of Chief Tamamend of the Leni-Lenapi Tribe, the patron saint of Tammany Hall, with his foot on a turtle shell, recalling Venus emerging from a sea shell. Tammany Hall members consisted of 13 tribes, each headed by a chief or Sachem, who formed the board of directors of Tammany. This shell inspired the dome with which BKSK decided to cap the roof of the two additional partial top floor offices, which would float over the roof edged by waist high railing overlooking the views.
“When we looked at expansion of this historic building, we looked at its history,” added architect Harry Kendall. Months of analyses of domed buildings throughout history are shown on scores of elevations, including the Pantheon in Rome and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. Each shows a complete circle whose center is contained within the facade. The singularity of this revived Tammany Hall is apparent in the power and whimsy of the new dome, lifted off the roof and presenting Union Square’s diverse building styles. Characterized by the Venetian Decker Building along the west side to the Queen Anne Century Book building on the north, to the mammoth Germania Life Building with its massive Mansard roof on the north east, to the Corinthian capitals of the Union Square Savings Bank along the west side by Henry Bacon, (architect for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.,) Union Square has no unity of style or roofline. Instead it is an eclectic chorus of somewhat discordant show-offs. The new Tammany Hall follows that tradition in an exuberant, joyful, somewhat playful manner. We all should celebrate this latest arrival.
