The Building That Spurred Skyscraper Zoning Gets A $50 Million Restoration

The Building That Spurred Skyscraper Zoning Gets A $50 Million Restoration

Forbes

When it was completed in 1915, New York’s Equitable Building was the largest building in the world. Located at 120 Broadway in Manhattan’s financial district, it is 40 stories tall, with 1.2 million square feet of floor space on a plot that measures less than one acre. One of the city’s noteworthy Beaux Arts masterpieces, the Equitable Building features vaulted ceilings, gold leaf accents, marble floors and hand-carved architectural detailing. It spans an entire city block and historically acted as a pass-through from Broadway to Nassau Street. Now dwarfed by taller buildings, it still has a distinctive personality.

“We worked to restore the original design to the elevators while meeting today’s codes,” Cardoso says. “One of the biggest challenges was to create chandeliers like the ones that originally graced the lobby.”

For this, he called on Rambusch, a company that has been creating lighting fixtures in New York since 1898.

“We had historic photos of the turn-of-the-century lobby, which helped to zero in on scale and mounting locations,” says Edwin Rambusch who, with his brother, is the fourth generation Rambusch to head up the firm.