81 Willoughby Street (formerly the New York and New Jersey Telephone and Telegraph Building) is a commercial building in the Downtown Brooklyn neighborhood of New York City. Built from 1896 to 1898 as the headquarters for the New York and New Jersey Telephone and Telegraph Company (later the New York Telephone Company), it is located at the northeast corner of Willoughby and Lawrence Streets. The building is eight stories tall and was designed by Rudolphe L. Daus in a mixture of the Beaux-Arts and Renaissance Revival styles.
The facade is largely clad with limestone on its bottom four stories, as well as brick and terracotta on its top four stories. The Willoughby and Lawrence Street elevations are each divided vertically into three bays and are highly similar in design. The main entrance is through an ornamental arch on Willoughby Street, at the southeast corner of the building. The remainder of the building contains ornamental details such as a curved corner with an oculus window, as well as a deep cornice on the upper stories. The building measures eight stories high with a basement and was largely constructed with a steel frame. When the building was constructed, the entire structure contained various departments, with a telephone exchange on the top floor.
The New York and New Jersey Telephone Company constructed 81 Willoughby Street in 1896 in response to increased business. Plans for the new structure were filed in May 1896, and the building was occupied by early 1898. The company's business grew so rapidly that it moved some operations to another building in 1904 and constructed a six-story annex at 360 Bridge Street between 1922 and 1923. New York Telephone acquired 81 Willoughby Street in 1929 and retained central office equipment there after a new telephone building opened in 1931 at 101 Willoughby Street. In 1943, the company sold off the building, which has remained a commercial structure ever since, accommodating offices, laboratories, and educational institutions. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building as a city landmark in 2004.
Site 81 Willoughby Street is in the Downtown Brooklyn neighborhood of New York City. It occupies a rectangular land lot on the northeastern corner of Lawrence and Willoughby Streets, with an alternate address of 119–127 Lawrence Street. The site has frontage of on Lawrence Street to the west and on Willoughby Street to the south, with an area of . Nearby buildings include the Brooklyner and Brooklyn Commons (formerly MetroTech) to the north; the BellTel Lofts (101 Willoughby Street) and Duffield Street Houses to the east; 388 Bridge Street and AVA DoBro to the southeast; and 370 Jay Street and the Old Brooklyn Fire Headquarters to the west. In addition, entrances to the New York City Subway's Jay Street–MetroTech station, served by the , are just outside the building.
The site was formerly occupied by a stable on Lawrence Street and four houses on Willoughby Street. Before the New York and New Jersey Telephone Company Building was developed at 81 Willoughby Street, the adjacent section of Willoughby Street had largely contained houses. By the 1890s, many of these houses were replaced by commercial buildings.
Architecture Rudolphe L. Daus designed 81 Willoughby Street. The AIA Guide to New York City describes the structure as being in a mixture of the Beaux-Arts and Renaissance Revival styles, but a contemporary publication from 1897 characterized the building as being solely of Italian Renaissance design. The building is eight stories, with a curved corner to its southwest.
Facade The facade is largely clad with tan brick and limestone and is ornamented with terracotta. Limestone was used on the lowest stories, while brick and terracotta were used above. The southern and western elevations of the facade, which respectively face Willoughby and Lawrence Street, are each divided vertically into three bays and are highly similar in design. At the easternmost section of the Willoughby Street elevation is an additional, narrow bay without ornament and clad almost entirely in brick. A curved corner connects the western and southern elevations. The building has stone cornices above the first, fourth, and sixth stories and a copper cornice above the eighth story. The windows all consist of one-over-one sash windows with aluminum frames. There are telephone-related motifs on the curved corner. The juxtaposition of plain facade materials was intended to emphasize the building's ornamentation, while the cornice and the oculus at the corner were intended to draw attention to the building from the intersection of Willoughby and Lawrence Streets.
Ground story
On Willoughby Street, the easternmost bay contains the building's main entrance, a double-height arch with an entablature above. Recessed beneath the center of the archway is a rectangular door frame with molded earpieces, receivers, wires, and other telephone-related motifs. Immediately above this door frame, an entablature runs horizontally across the archway; this is topped by a triangular pediment. The second story of the archway is filled with windows. The archway itself has a coffered ceiling, supported by two columns on either side of the doorway; these columns contain capitals in the Corinthian order. The top of the arch has a keystone. There is a double-height pier on either side of the archway, which has more moldings of telephone-related motifs. These piers support the entablature, which contains the words "Telephone Building". Above the piers, on the third story, are medallions with eagles.
A recessed service entrance is located within the easternmost, narrow bay to the right of the main entrance. The remainder of the facade is clad with rusticated, cement-coated limestone blocks. The center bay on Lawrence Street has another service entrance, placed within an arch that has largely been infilled with cement; this entrance is reached by metal steps. The corner of Lawrence and Willoughby Streets contains a stoop with metal balustrades, ascending to a glass door. All the other openings on the ground story consist of windows with awnings above them. A stone-and-brick cornice runs horizontally above the ground story.
Upper stories
On the second to fourth stories, the facade is clad in brick and contains grooves at regular intervals, which give it a rusticated look. There are three windows per floor in each of the three main bays on Lawrence and Willoughby Streets, as well as on the curved corner. Each of the windows is rectangular, with a stone window sill below and a flat lintel above. The easternmost bay on Willoughby Street contains one window per floor. A protruding cornice runs above the facade on the fourth story, continuing onto the narrow Willoughby Street bay. There are medallions below the cornice between each of the bays on Lawrence and Willoughby Streets, as well as brackets below the cornice along the curved corner.
On the fifth and sixth stories, a pair of engaged columns flanks each of the three primary bays on Lawrence and Willoughby Streets. Within each bay, the central fifth-story window is flanked by colonettes that hold up triangular pediments. Another cornice runs above the sixth story; this cornice protrudes from the facade, except within each bay, where it is recessed between the windows above and below. At the seventh story, the curved corner has an oculus with terracotta decorations and cresting. The primary bays contain arched windows, which are divided vertically into three panes; a keystone tops the center pane, and the entire arch contains ornate moldings. On the eighth story, each of the primary bays has three windows, which are separated by short pilasters. A copper cornice runs above the eighth story, protruding from the facade. Above the cornice was a short penthouse (not visible from the street), which had restrooms and dining rooms.
Interior The building measures eight stories high with a basement. The structure is largely constructed with a steel frame, although the foundations are composed of concrete walls measuring thick. These concrete walls support a grillage from which the beams in the superstructure ascend. The floor slabs are made of hollow brick flat arches and "Columbian fireproof" slabs. The building contained a ventilation shaft that rose above the roof. Air was drawn down the shaft to the basement, passing through several filters, and then was supplied to the offices inside the building via fans and ducts. A separate system of exhaust ducts ventilated the air onto the roof. A set of pipes also carried hundreds of telephone and telegraph cables from the cellar to the telephone switchboards on the top floor.
When the building was constructed, the basement and first four floors were dedicated to various New York and New Jersey Telephone Company departments. The first floor contained the supply department, the second floor contained the repair shop, and the fourth floor contained the general superintendent's office. The fifth floor contained the offices of the general manager and vice president, the sixth floor contained the treasurer's office, and the seventh floor contained the offices of the auditors' department. The eighth floor originally housed the New York and New Jersey Telephone Company's primary Brooklyn exchange and could accommodate 5,000 to 6,000 subscribers when the building opened. This story contained the offices of the "hello girls", the company's mostly female telephone operators.
History The Bell Telephone Company was established in 1877 and merged with the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1879 to form the National Bell Telephone Company. One of the subsidiaries of the combined firm was the New York and New Jersey Telephone Company, which was created in 1883. Originally, the New York and New Jersey Telephone Company operated telephone exchanges in North Jersey, Staten Island, and Long Island, licensing them from National Bell. At its inception, the company had 2,339 subscribers, most of whom lived in Brooklyn. With the growing popularity of telephones, the number of subscribers grew to nearly 20,000 by 1897.
Development
The New York and New Jersey Telephone Company decided in early 1896 to increase its capital stock. That April, the company decided to purchase a land lot on the southwest corner of Willoughby and Bridge Streets, just to the southeast of the site at 81 Willoughby Street. Local media reported shortly afterward that the company had agreed to acquire the northeast corner of Lawrence and Willoughby Streets, on which the company's central office would be constructed. Rudolphe Daus created preliminary sketches for a ten-story, stone-and-brick building in May 1896. At the time, the building was planned to cost between $250,000 and $275,000. Work on the structure was slightly delayed because of difficulties in acquiring a portion of the site.
Excavations were underway by March 1897, when the building had been downsized to eight and a half stories. When the contractors began installing plumbing in the building that August, they hired plumbers affiliated with a labor union in the then-separate city of New York, prompting workers affiliated with the Brooklyn union to go on strike. Union-affiliated roofers, tin workers, and sheet iron workers also went on strike in September to advocate wage increases for the workers who were installing the building's cornices and skylights. When these union workers went on strike again the next month, the workers' bosses decided to complete the cornices and skylights themselves. The building was completed by February 1898, and the company's main telephone exchange opened at the building in November 1899.
Use as telephone office