Battery Tower (Manhattan) facts for kids

Battery Tower was a huge building planned for New York City way back in 1929. It was going to be a mix of a hotel and apartments in the Financial District of Manhattan, right near Battery Park. This building was meant to be the very first hotel-apartment in that area. However, it was one of many tall skyscraper projects that never got finished. Much later, about 60 years after Battery Tower was planned, a whole new area called Battery Park City was built on the same spot.

What Was the Area Like Before?

In the early 1800s, the area where Battery Tower was planned was mostly filled with private homes. It was a fancy neighborhood. Back then, the biggest theaters were downtown, and Battery Park was a popular walking spot for rich people. Even as the neighborhood changed and older buildings became apartments for many families, you could still see hints of their fancy past. They had beautiful doorways, detailed interiors, and special window designs from a long time ago.

Designing a Giant Building

The architects, Thompson & Churchill, drew the plans for Battery Tower. One of them, Henry S. Churchill, said they focused on making the building look strong and solid, without too many extra decorations. The flat outside walls would have cool color differences.

The plans showed that the first six floors would be for stores and offices. The 35 floors above them would be for people to live in. This design meant that the lowest apartments, on the seventh floor, would be quieter and away from street noise. Many balconies were planned to look out over the Hudson River. The stores and offices would have their own separate entrances and elevators.

Besides business spaces, the building was going to have 428 apartment suites and 255 single rooms. The apartments would range from small one-room places to bigger ones with four rooms and two bathrooms. The entire fortieth floor was planned to be one huge apartment with ten rooms and balconies! Each apartment would have radio connections, and some would even have fireplaces.

The building was designed to have lots of cool features:

• Handball courts
• A swimming pool
• A gym in the basement
• A solarium (a sunny room)
• Sun terraces (outdoor areas for sunbathing)

In total, the building was planned to have 52 terraces!

Battery Tower was going to be built completely from brick and steel. The bricks would come in four shades of light brown (called buff) and two shades of red. They would be arranged in vertical lines to create an interesting look. The building was planned to be about 435 feet (133 m) tall. It would sit on a plot of land about 29,000 square feet (2,700 m²) in size. The main part of the building, facing West Street, would be 20 stories high. The tower part would have 7,000 square feet (650 m²) on each floor and be right in the middle of the land. The very top floor, called the penthouse, was meant to hold machinery. This made the building 43 stories tall in total. The penthouse was designed to be made of white brick with a gold cap made of terra cotta, and it would light up at night!

Who Owned the Project?

This huge apartment hotel was started by a company called Downtown Homes, Inc. The project was expected to cost $10,000,000, beginning in 1929. The J.H. Taylor Construction Company and Downtown Homes, Inc., were part of a larger group controlled by General Realty and Utilities Corporation. By October 1929, this group had bought a huge amount of land, about 102,000 square feet (9,500 m²), to build several apartment hotels in an old neighborhood. Other companies, like The Gening Company and A.M. Bing & Son, also joined the project.

Getting Ready to Build

Work to clear the site began on August 12, 1929. Albert Mayer, the president of Downtown Homes, Inc., announced this. The Greenhouse Company, Inc., removed four-story buildings from the site. This included buildings on West Street and Washington Street. The demolition took about 25 days. After that, they did tests on the ground, and then construction work was supposed to begin. Several old buildings, including a five-story one and some apartments, were torn down.

The J.H. Taylor Construction Company started digging the foundations. They hoped to have the building ready for people to move in by the fall of 1930. They used a new method for the foundation that involved interlocking steel sheets. This helped stop water from leaking in. Engineers from Moran & Proctor handled the digging. They dug all the way down to the solid rock underneath, instead of just digging partway and then using special tubes (called caissons) to reach the rock.

Building was tricky because they had to dig through old wooden structures, like parts of old piers and docks, that were buried under the site. Work on the foundations for the West Side Elevated Highway also stopped in December 1929. This happened because workers hit 40 feet of old walls, sunken docks, and even parts of old ships!

An Era of Big Ideas

A newspaper article from February 1930 showed a drawing of Battery Tower. The caption said "still another skyscraper will be added to the famous group at the lower end of Manhattan Island." It was shown next to pictures of the Chrysler Building and other skyscrapers planned for New York City. The years 1929 and 1930 were full of exciting new building ideas.

For example, Louis Adler wanted to build a 105-story building at 80 Wall Street. Another person, Henry Latham Doherty, bought a lot of land near Battery Park in the mid-1920s. He thought about spending nearly $100,000,000 to build a new business center for shipping companies and international businesses. He even imagined Battery Park with two pyramid-shaped skyscrapers, topped with the Cities Service company logo.