This high-rise was erected as a headquarters for the venerable Bank of New York, which had occupied the same site on the northeast corner of Wall and William Streets since 1797. The famously conservative institution chose society architect Benjamin Wistar Morris to design a headquarters that would reflect the bank’s eighteenth-century origins.

The building’s exterior is decorated in a Colonial Revival style. Windows set nearly flush with the wall and lightly incised quoins give the limestone an apparent thinness. Morris used a similar design for 25 Broadway. The tower telescopes to a slender spire crowned with a federal eagle.

A marble plaque on the ground story relates back to the building of the bank’s first headquarters on this site. Note also the railings for the subway entrance at the corner, which incorporate complementary Colonial Revival motifs.

The main banking hall, on the second floor, is reached via an elliptical, cantilevered, marble staircase. With its three enormous brass chandeliers and checkered marble floor, the banking hall feels as much like a ballroom as a Wall Street bank. Murals decorating the northern wall depict the bank’s founders. The five murals on the eastern wall represent facets of the bank’s business: Foreign Trade; Agriculture and Mining; National Credit; Transportation; Steel and Electricity. They were painted by J. Monroe Hewlett in 1929.

The Bank of New York left its home of two centuries in 1997 and moved to One Wall Street, which it acquired in a merger with Irving Trust