Gillender Building - Demolition

Demolition

Demolition of the Stevens Building commenced in the beginning of April 1910. The contract to demolish the Gillender Building was awarded to Jacob Volk, known for his work on the McAdoo Tunnel, who himself claimed experience in demolishing 900 buildings. Initially, Volk subscribed to complete the job in 35 days and pay a $500 penalty for each day delayed; the schedule was later extended to 45 days. The building's tenants remained in the tower until the wrecking crews arrived on-site. Demolition commenced April 29, 1910, and was officially completed June 16, 1910, one day ahead of schedule. It cost Bankers Trust $50,000 plus $500 for advance completion; the contractor also received all the scrap valued at $25,000.

Demolition was preceded with erection of a massive timber canopy over the sidewalks and a wire mesh over the street to protect people from falling debris. Inside, elevator shafts were converted into garbage chutes for the torn partitions and exterior masonry scrap. By May 2, the top belvedere was dismantled completely and most of the cupola masonry was removed, exposing its steel skeleton. By the end of May, most of the Stevens Building was torn down; the Gillender Building's masonry walls were removed down to the seventh floor and steel skeleton was down to eleventh floor. By June 12, all that remained of Gillender Building was a single level of its steel frame visible above protective scaffoulding. In the following four days, the ground was completely cleared; work on its underground foundations commenced a month later. The granite slabs from the Gillender Building were recycled into tombstones of the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Of the 250 men involved in the demolition project, two Italian workers were injured by falling girders, one of them died in the hospital.

The famous Gillender Building, which when erected twelve years ago on the northwest corner of Nassau and Wall Streets was called the tallest skyscraper in the world, its tower rising some 300 feet above the streets, has gone the way of other landmarks.
- The New York Times, June 17, 1910

The Bankers Trust Company Building, now known as 14 Wall Street, was completed in 1912, then being the tallest banking building in the world. The bank occupied only the three lower floors; its main operations were housed elsewhere in less expensive offices. About 19 years later, Bankers Trust acquired and demolished the adjacent Hanover, Astor, and Pine Street Buildings, and replaced them with an annex to the original Bankers Trust Building, which was completed in 1933 and tripling its rentable area. Helen Gillender Asinari died a year earlier, in 1932.