Metropolitan Savings Bank
- Year
- 1867
- Style
- Second Empire
- City
- Manhattan, NY
The Metropolitan Savings Bank Building opened May 30, 1867, at what was originally 10 Cooper Institute, designed by architect Carl Pfeiffer in the Second Empire style. It was built for the Metropolitan Savings Bank, chartered in New York in 1852, and cost $150,000 to construct — considered at the time one of the most finely built structures in the city, "from garret to basement."
the building
Fireproof construction. No combustible materials were used in the building, either internally or externally, making it fireproof at a time when that was a genuine selling point for a bank vault.
Marble and mansard. The four-story building is 45 feet wide and 75 feet deep, its facades composed of white marble, with the upper floor enclosed by a mansard roof typical of the Second Empire style.
the style
The building is a Second Empire design, recognizable by its mansard roof and formal marble facade — a style borrowed from the France of Napoleon III that signaled financial solidity to depositors.
More on Second Empirethe architect
Carl Pfeiffer designed the building; no further biographical detail is documented here.
significance
The bank itself moved headquarters to 754 Broadway in 1935, then merged in 1942 into the Manhattan Savings Bank, which was later bought by Edmund Safra's Republic National Bank in 1990 and then HSBC in 1999. The building was designated a New York City Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
nearby
- St. George's Church
- The Public Theater building
- Astor Place
- Hamilton Fish House
- Ottendorfer Library
- Ottendorfer Public Library and Stuyvesant Polyclinic Hospital