40 Wall Street

40 Wall Street was originally known as the "Bank of Manhattan Trust Building."  

This buildings beginning are closely linked to that of my favorite building in New York's - The Chrysler Building.  Both 40 Wall street/Bank of Manhattan Trust Building and the Chrysler Building were competing to the world's tallest building.  At the time construction began on 40 Wall Street in 1928, the tallest building in the world was the Woolworth Building which stands at 705 feet.  The Bank of Manhattan building had plans to be 840 feet tall, 2 feet taller than the Chrysler building and 135 feet taller than the Woolworth Building.  However, tycoon Walter Chrysler did not like this plan and have evil plots abounding in his head. By the time the Bank of Manhattan Building/40 Wall Street was completed, it's plans had been changed and it stood at 927 feet, 71 stories.  It had succeeded in being the tallest building in the world.  Except that a few months later Walter Chrysler released his secret weapon - a 125 foot spire.  The spire was built inside the crown of the Chrysler building and erected last minute in secret.  In October of 1929, thanks to the spire being hoisted up from inside the building the Chrysler building surpassed 40 Wall Street as the world's tallest building and the Eiffel Tower as the world's tallest structure.

Naturally, Shreve and Lamb, the consulting architects on the Bank of Manhattan building were livid, even writing articles about how the Chrysler Building's spire shouldn't count.  However, their arguments proved futile as less than a year later, the Empire State Building was completed dwarfing both the Chrysler and Bank of Manhattan Buildings.  (The ESB stands at 1,454 feet tall with the spire, 1250 feet without the spire!)

Never fear 40 Wall Street - you are still the tallest mid-block building in Manhattan!  

The Bank of Manhattan merged with Chase bank, this is what prompted the name change to simply the building's address - 40 Wallstreet.  

In 1982, the building was bought by Ferdinand Marcos, the late president of the Philippines.  (He was married the Imelda Marcos, the woman famous for owning over 3,000 pairs of shoes!)  Ferdinand was removed from power during the "People Power Revolution" which was catalyzed but public outrage over the assassination of Ferdinand arch political rival Benigno Aquino, Jr.  When Marcos was removed from power in 1986, his assets in the U.S. were frozen - this included 40 Wall Street.  The building was therefore placed in limbo for nearly 10 years and fell into neglect.  Then, along came Donald Trump.  Donald Trump bought the building in 1995.  He was hoping to convert half of the building into residential space, but that proved too expensive so the building remained 100% commercial.  He did try to sell the building in 2003, but got no acceptable offers so he holds on to this building to his day.  It is one of his many properties in NYC.  (I have counted 13 properties that Trump owns in NYC, but if you have a different number please let me know!)

FYI - 40 Wall Street is the building with the mint green triangle/pyramid shaped top.  I took this photo on a break while I was working on the boat - so -it's far from coffee table book worthy but you can get the idea!:)