1940: 40 Wall Street sold in largest foreclosure auction
The most expensive auction sale to date in New York City was held for the Manhattan Company Building in the Financial District for $11.5 million, 68 years ago this month. The building was completed in 1930 at a cost of at least $17 million, shortly after the 1929 stock market crash. Throughout its first decade, the 72-story building faced the strain of the Great Depression, which led to many broken leases.
The owner, a syndicate that included Wall Street financier George Lewis Ohrstrom and the Starrett Corporation, had trouble making mortgage payments. The building was foreclosed on in August 1940.
The first mortgage fee trustees, Marine Midland Trust Company, bought the building for $11.5 million, an amount representing the principal outstanding on the bonds.
The building was conveyed in December 1940 to 40 Wall Street Building Inc., and by the end of World War II it was nearly fully leased. In 1959 the building, then valued at $32 million, was again put up for auction. It changed hands several times before Donald Trump bought the leasehold for the tower in 1995 for less than $8 million. Trump spent $200 million on renovations, according to his Web site.
The 927-foot-tall building was planned to be the world’s tallest tower, but the Chrysler Building, also completed in 1930, edged it out at 1,046 feet. The Chrysler Building was subsequently topped by the Empire State Building in 1931.
1920: Emergency rent laws passed during housing crisis
New York’s state Legislature and governor approved rent laws 88 years ago this month that would be the predecessor to rent regulation, as governed later by the city’s Rent Guidelines Board. The rules helped tenants squeezed by 1 percent vacancy rates and rampant evictions.
The Emergency Rent Laws of 1920 immediately brought to a halt an estimated 100,000 evictions that were under way, as landlords sought higher rents in a tight market. In the first eight months of 1920, there were 87,442 dispossession proceedings.
The low vacancies were a result of post-World War I population growth in New York City and limited apartment construction because materials had been diverted to the war effort. There were only 89 tenements, with 1,481 apartment units, built in 1919.
The new laws put New York courts in control of rents by asking judges to review requests by landlords for increases on a standard of reasonableness.
The 1 percent vacancy rate remained from 1920 to 1924 but began to increase with new construction spurred by development incentives, such as property tax exemptions for new apartments built until 1932 and the exemption of new buildings from rent control.
The emergency rent laws were ended in 1929 after vacancies crept up to 8 percent, following a high of 107,185 new units built in 1927.
In 1969, after vacancies had plummeted once again, the Rent Guidelines Board was created to regulate rents. Although the goal of rent stabilization remained the same, the new legislation differed from the 1920 law by creating a board that determined the permitted increase in an annual meeting.
1889: NYC’s first skeleton-frame tower built
Manhattan’s first high-rise building constructed with a metal skeleton was completed at 50 Broadway 119 years ago this month, despite an initially skeptical public that doubted the safety of the structural system essential to the skyscraper’s creation.
The system used in the 11-story Tower Building allowed developers to create more value from the land by constructing taller structures with more open floor plates.
In the traditional masonry system of construction, the weight of the building rests on the walls, which were becoming progressively thicker with taller buildings. The Tower Building was erected on a site only 21 feet wide, so by using traditional architecture, much of the floor space would have been taken up by support walls to build to 11 stories.
The Department of Buildings was skeptical of the plan submitted by architect Bradford Lee Gilbert and sent it to the Board of Examiners before finally giving its approval.
Despite the historical significance of the Romanesque-style building, it was demolished in 1914 and replaced in 1927 by a 37-story structure.
ompiled by Adam Pincus