These sturdy, colossal women flank an entrance to this McKim, Mead, & White beauty, on Broadway and Houston Street.
Opened in 1893, The Cable Building served as a power plant for the city’s growing cable car system—but its technology was obsolete just a decade later.
Now, it houses offices, the Angelika Film Center, and Crate & Barrel.
Tags: Angelika Film Center, buildings designed by Stanford White, McKim Mead & White, New York City in 1893, NoHo landmarks, sculpture on city buildings, Stanford White, The Cable Building
September 19, 2010 at 10:30 pm |
I am always walking around New York as if I were a tourist. I can’t take my eyes off of the decorative stonework that graces some many buildings. Even the lowliest factory loft building of a certain era has something astonishing gracing its facade. I wonder what the builder was thinking because the designs can be wildly grandiose. And you have to look up to see them. Were people building monuments to themselves or were they honoring New York? Maybe both.
September 20, 2010 at 12:21 am |
This is great! Which side of the building is it on/what street does this face? I’ve walked past this building so many times but somehow haven’t noticed it.
September 20, 2010 at 2:23 am |
It faces Broadway, right above Houston. I walked by it for years too and suddenly saw it and couldn’t believe I’d missed it all this time.
September 23, 2010 at 4:09 pm |
One of my favorites, I have painted the ladies of the Cable Building and they will be on view in my upcoming exhibit “Florin at Warburg”, opening September 30th. For more info check out sjfnewyork.blogspot.com
April 10, 2012 at 12:47 pm |
I worked on the 7th Floor of the Cable Building from around 1968 to 1976. I believe that the information about the building being the “power plant” for the cable car system is incoreect. Actual steel cable was fed from the building through underground passages and these cable literall pulled the cable cars along their tracks. P.S. an interesting not, Robert DeNiro’s mother had a typing service in the building on the 2nd floor.
April 10, 2012 at 12:49 pm |
Sorry, typed too fast…litteraly and note
June 25, 2012 at 5:16 am |
[...] share of elaborately carved ladies. Two more women are part of the facade of the Cable Building, building just up the street on Broadway and Houston. Like this:LikeBe the first to like [...]