The American Bank Note Company Printing Plant is a repurposed printing plant in the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx in New York City, United States. The main structure includes three interconnected buildings. The Lafayette wing, spanning the south side of the block, is the longest and tallest, incorporating an entrance at the base of a nine-story tower. The lower, more massive Garrison wing is perpendicular. These two were built first, and constitute the bulk of the complex. Prior to the American Bank Note Company purchasing the property, the land on which the printing plant was built had been part of Edward G. Faile's estate.
The plant was built in 19091911 by the American Bank Note Company contemporaneously with their corporate headquarters at 70 Broad Street, Manhattan. The design by Kirby, Petit & Green (who also designed the Broad Street building) incorporated advanced engineering ideas such as the sawtooth roof and large windows for improved lighting, unit drive electric motors in lieu of line shafts, and increased electrical capacity; layout was based on a design philosophy of specifying the production lines first, followed by the building which could enclose them. A small detached garage at the rear of the block was added in approximately 1911 and the Barretto wing was added to the east side of the property in 1912. Several building expansions took place between 1912 and 1928.
A wide variety of financial documents, including international currency, were printed at the plant. At one point, over five million documents were produced per day, including half the securities being traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Although the plant printed money for countries around the world, it was best known for producing currencies for countries in Latin America. The plant also housed a research department which worked to improve materials and processes to deter forgeries.
The plant was the target of a terrorist bombing in 1977 with the site chosen specifically because it was printing currency for Latin American countries. The facility was used by American Bank Note until about 1984 after which the property has changed hands several times, undergone a series of renovations, and been designated a New York City landmark. , it has been subdivided, with major tenants including the John V. Lindsay Wildcat Academy Charter School and the New York City Human Resources Administration.
Previous land use
Until the late 19th century, the land where the plant stands was part of the village of West Farms in Westchester County. The area that is now the Barretto Street block was part of the estate of wealthy tea merchant Edward G. Faile, where the Faile Mansion (known as Woodside) was built in 1832.
The area was annexed to New York City in 1874. In 1904, the estate was sold to the Central Realty, Bond & Trust Company for about $1million (equivalent to $ in ), including 1,299 lots "bounded by Dongan Street, Intervale Avenue, Southern Boulevard, Longwood Avenue, Lafayette Avenue, Hunt's Point Road, Gilbert Place, and the Bronx River". In September 1908, a portion of the estate comprising "over 400 lots" was acquired by the George F. Johnson's Sons Company, a real-estate developer building two-family houses in the Bronx. In November of that year, 123 lots were resold to American Bank Note, including: all the property on the northerly side of Lafayette Ave, from Manida St. to the tracks of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad... all the property on both sides of Garrison Ave, from Manida St. to Lafayette Ave... all the property between these boundaries except eighteen lots on Manida Street... upon which two-family houses are being erected. In 1910, the size of the Barretto Street block was increased as a result of a land swap between American Bank Note and the city government. The block gained a strip of land on the northeast side of the property and Barretto Street was moved slightly north of its original location.
Land acquisition and construction The American Bank Note Company was formed on April 29, 1858, when seven large engraving firms (Toppan, Carpenter & Co.; Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson; Danforth, Perkins & Co.; Jocelyn, Draper, Welch & Co.; Wellstood, Hay & Whitney; Bald, Cousland & Co.; and John E. Gavit) merged. The combined company's first printing plant was at Wall and William Streets, Manhattan, in a building which would later become the United States Custom House and eventually National City Bank. They moved to 142 Broadway in 1867 and to 86 Trinity Place in 1884. By 1908 they had plants on Trinity Place, on Sixth Avenue, and other locations in Manhattan as well as in Boston and Philadelphia.
In 1908, American Bank Note built a new building at 70 Broad Street, Manhattan, into which they moved their administrative and sales offices. In parallel with this effort, the company was looking for a separate location into which they could move their production facilities; they felt that housing administration and production in separate locations would increase efficiency. The search culminated in the 1908 purchase of a large tract of land including the Barretto Street block from George Johnson. In his 1913 history of the Bronx, Harry Cook noted that "The choice of its present site in the Hunt's Point section of the Bronx was the result of a [thorough] canvas of all the available sections in Greater New York". One factor in the site selection was proximity to the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad line; discussions were held with the railroad to ensure they would be able to handle the plant's "considerable freight delivery needs" totaling per year of paper and other supplies.
The sale closed on November 20, 1908. The New York Times wrote that they expected the Trinity Place plant would be sold once the new Bronx facility was in operation. The total cost for the project was to be greater than $2million ($ in ), with American Bank Note having a current capitalization of $10million ($ in ). Wages for most employees were to be $40 to $75 ($ to $ in ) per week for "the highest class of skilled labor", and construction plans included housing for the workers. Robert E. Simon of the Henry Morgenthau Company estimated that within two or three years of American Banknote's relocation, taxable values in the neighborhood would increase by $5million ($ in ). It was anticipated that 2,500 to 3,000 people would be employed initially, with the plant being sized to accommodate growth to 5,000.
American Bank Note engaged the architecture firm of Kirby, Petit & Green (who also designed the company's downtown headquarters) for the building design. Kirby, Petit & Green designed several printing plants around this time, including San Francisco's Hearst Building in 1908, housing the printing plant for the San Francisco Examiner, and a plant in Garden City, Long Island, for the Country Life Press in 1910. The firm was preparing preliminary plans before the land purchase was completed.
Design evolution The New York Times reported on May 23, 1909, that construction was "about ready to begin", describing a design which was abandoned before the end of that year. This initial design included a long wingSources variously refer to the main portion of the site as a single building with three wings (Lafayette, Garrison, and Barretto), or three distinct but interconnected buildings. The Landmarks Preservation Commission report, for example, uses both terms (p.6: "Primary entry into the complex of buildings is via the west facade of the printing-press wing"). In this article, the terms wing and building are used interchangeably. running the length of the Lafayette Avenue frontage, where the engraving and lithographing departments would be housed. Two additional wings, running along the Tiffany and Garrison sides of the property, would enclose a storage building in the V-shaped central area. Each of these wings was an independent structure, with all four buildings interconnected. By this time, a large-scale model had already been constructed based on this initial design although the Times said that the design represented by the model might still "be subjected to some minor changes".
A 1909 article published in Printing Art (reprinted in The Cement Age), described a prototype design for "an ideal printing plant". The final design appears to have been influenced by this, as the constructed plant more closely resembles this "ideal" design than the original one shown in the New York Times article. The design change was driven by the tenets of the newly emerging field of industrial engineering; rather than build standardized buildings which were then filled with machines, the machine spaces were designed to optimize production, and then the buildings were designed to enclose the production lines.
The original plan provided for a single entrance to the building complex, about which the Times wrote, "This, of course, is made necessary by the character of much of the company's business; but an entire block of buildings without a rear entrance or a side door is certainly entitled to rank as a structural novelty." In contrast to the Times, the Landmarks Preservation Commission noted in their 2008 report that this single-entrance configuration, "though characteristic of nineteenth-century industrial design, was not particularly adapted to the needs of the American Bank Note Company operation." As built, the Tiffany Street entrance is recessed behind four arched openings on the west façade, which also includes a loading dock spanning most of the west side of the building.
Initial configuration
The initial 1911 construction consisted of only two buildings: the long and tall but narrow office wing along Lafayette Avenue, and the large press building at right angles to it. Several additions were made over the next few years. Typical of printing plants, the buildings have an open plan, concrete floors, and high ceilings to accommodate large presses. Column spacing is in places, with floors typically rated for live loads. Some areas have ceilings. The buildings sit on a roughly pentagonal block bordered by Garrison Avenue, Tiffany Street, Lafayette Avenue, and Barretto Street, with Barretto curving to form two sides. In 1913, Harry Cook described the plant as "mammoth".The New York Times wrote in 1992 that the site had an "unabashedly industrial look" and noted that Architecture & Building Magazine had referred to its "arsenal-like appearance with a pervading sense of strength and security". The site included 200 presses, a private restaurant, hospital, laundry, machine and carpenter shops, and laboratories where special inks were formulated.
The electrical requirements were exceptional for the day, and required special provisioning by the New York Edison Company. In addition to lighting, loads included 500 motors (compared to 300 at the Trinity Place plant) driving the presses, pumps, and other machinery. The switchgear was in the basement. The plant was designed to use individual electric motors to drive each press ("unit drive"), as opposed to the drive line shafting system in common use. Unit drive was an advanced technology for the time, only becoming widespread in the 1920s. The design of the building included a large amount of conduit and wiring to support the motors' electrical feeds.