Griffith Thomas was perhaps the most prolific American architect of the mid-19th Century, partnering during the early part of his career with his father Thomas.
Yes. Thomas Thomas.
NYC was Griffith’s most fertile playground and while many of his most stylish if not lavish concoctions like the legendary Hotel Fifth Avenue have been lost to the ages, a dozen still delight the eye, including the Astor Library (now the Public Theatre) and my perennial favorite, the Arnold Constabile Mercantile Exchange.
His contemporary, the fabulously wealthy stockbroker Robert Mortimer, procured Thomas’ services for an office building design in what is today the Flatiron District. In 1860, however, this was a residential neighborhood in flux. Nearby lived the Jeromes and other antebellum wealthy New Yorkers. Postwar fortunes would dwarf the prewar’s and the money marched up the island of Manhattan. As such, the 1862 Mortimer Building was the first erected oh the neighborhood solely for commercial purposes.
Nonetheless, it was a beauty. And ran the length of the block. One of the first to embrace the neo-Itanlianate, its classic proportions, its symmetry, its sultry, earthy palette were everything that continues to bring us back to the Palladian, everything utterly delightful and soothing in substantial architecture. It’s three full facades are a primer in lintels, pediments, and ogees, its row of arched windows a further nod to the Romans, and its cast iron ground floor something of a capitulation to the modern. In 1862, the whole affair must have appeared to magically float on its airy glassy base. (The 1912 addition of a sixth floor doesn’t quite work without ruining it.)
It was home the first offices of the American Institute of Architects, one Griffith Thomas first presiding, to upscale jewelers, dry and goods dealers, makers of elixirs, and to the newest most fashionable, most thrilling business to dot the landscape, the mystical magical photographers.
The Mortimer Building weathered many wars beyond the one in which it was born, a devastating fire, and the war-torn years when its neighborhood fell into decline. But after a recent decades-long stint as Restoration Hardware, its next chapter is perhaps its very most magical: the new Harry Potter retail flagship is set to open next summer.
The community board however just nixed the Potter request to post an enormous dragon outside...
