Deep in the Financial District at the corner of Broad and Pearl Streets is a 22-story brick citidel known by its mailing address, 4 New York Plaza.
Fortress-like and impenetrable at the tip of Manhatan, it’s not the loveliest building downtown by any means.
But architectural firm Carson Lundin & Shaw, which designed it in 1969 for banking giant Manufacturers Hanover Trust, was apparently inspired by the data processing tool of the era: the punchcard.
You can see the resemblance in the the small windows along the facade, irregularly placed and slot-like.
Supposedly this punchcard design won awards.
The punchcard era is long over, but 4 New York Plaza remains, surviving massive flooding and damage thanks to Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
Here’s a more inspiring view of 4 New York Plaza, taken by Lucia M. in 2008, with the walkups on Pearl Street lending it some of their beauty and charm.
[Top photo: Emporis]
Tags: 4 New York Plaza, Broad Street NYC, Brutalism New York architecture, building looks like a punchcard, Financial District architecture, Pearl Street NYC, punchcard building NYC, Unusual New York City buildings
Ephemeral New York 
February 2, 2015 at 9:57 am |
What memories you’ve brought back, not of the building but my first job! Punch card op, outting cards in a machine to sort under co-ordinates given by the computer programmers.
The building does have a sort of charm of its own.
February 2, 2015 at 3:33 pm |
I suppose it’s all a matter of taste but I find this massive wall passing as building, totally lacking in any sort of “charm.” I also seem to remember IBM punch cards as having a more irregular pattern of holes and buff colored.
February 3, 2015 at 4:50 pm |
hey, i’m inside it right now. yikes! thanks for doing my building, but it’s not any better on the inside. ugh.
February 5, 2015 at 4:37 am |
I know, it’s like a tomb!
December 18, 2017 at 7:41 am |
[…] Yorkers—like this one on East 51st Street (top photo), swathed in glass with what looks like a giant punch card over the […]