View from West Street

The folks at BNY (they dropped the Mellon this summer) gave me a tour of the plaza they are developing on the corner of West and Murray — named for Alexander Hamilton, who founded the bank in 1784. When finished by the end of the year, there will be an undulating path from Murray to West, gardens, more trees and seating along the edges and at freestanding tables.

This is a sort-of exchange for the privately owned public space (POPS) that they convinced the city to remove in 2021. I am not sure that was a fair deal — after all, when the building was built, they removed the street grid that was Park Place between Greenwich and West. That said, the plaza will be a big improvement over what was on that corner — a stretch of asphalt and a Citi Bike station that rendered the plaza unusable. (The Citi Bike station will stay on Murray.)

The plans call for replacing the sidewalk there, preserving the four existing trees in the plaza and the five along Murray, and adding six more trees on the west side and 11 in the planting beds. The pavers will be concrete. They graded the space so it will open on the west side as well as the north side.

The plaza will have 10 tables and 38 chairs as well as seating on the edges of the planting beds, which adds up to 180 feet.

They said they weren’t sure about staffing, UPDATE: the bank will be staffing the plaza but I hope they will consider that as well as create a decent ongoing budget for landscaping. (They do have a vendor in place.) Without that, it may just become a junky open space on the highway. They are adding cameras, though that only helps after the fact.

There is another give-back plaza across the street at 111 Murray that has struggled to be of use to the community, as well as with some unwelcome uses; perhaps this one, which is much more prominent and open, will have better luck.

View from Murray Street

A little background on that lot: It was originally part of the Washington Street Urban Renewal Area from 1960. In 1980, the city leased the site to Irving Trust Company, which built the building we see now — 23 stories and nearly 1 million square feet by Skidmore Owings & Merrill. At that time the CPC approved a special permit for height and setback waivers – and designated the lobby as a public area and also anticipated a public walkway going north-south on the second floor, along with bridges that would span both Barclay and Murray and connect to the buildings to the north and south. In 1989, CPC eliminated both bridges from the plan with the plans for 7 WTC.

BNY moved to the building in 2002. Then, in 2018, the bank purchased the land under the building from the city and that summer moved global headquarters to 101 Barclay, or 240 Greenwich. They are now rebranding the headquarters at 240 Greenwich with a grander entrance and have plans to redevelop the corner with Greenwich after the city finishes the construction there.