10 NYC Holdout Buildings that Stood in the Way of Development

Today, we take a look at some of New York City’s most notable holdout buildings – those buildings that refused to be demolished in the face of oncoming development and remain today, curiously and sometimes incongruously in the urban landscape.

1. Macy’s Shopping Bag at 34th Street

The giant shopping bag at the front of Macy’s Herald Square made headlines when it was taken down to reveal the building hiding underneath. This holdout building forced Macy’s to build around rather than over it.

It all started in the 1890s when Macy’s relocated from 14th Street and 6th Avenue to 34th Street and Broadway. Secretly, Macy’s made plans to expand toward 35th Street. Rowland H. Macy, the department store’s owner, had a verbal agreement to pay Alfred Duane Pell $250,000 for the 1,154 square foot corner. All didn’t go according to plan when an agent of Henry Siegel, a partner of the Siegel-Cooper Dry Goods Store, found out about the tentative deal. He made Pell a $375,000 offer for the corner plot which Pell accepted.

Siegel didn’t purchase the land with the intention of putting up a billboard for his own store which competed with Macy’s. One documented plan is that Siegel was going to build a 12-story building devoted to the sale of women’s clothing. This plan wasn’t viable because the plot was too small to hold such a tall building. The realistic plan is that Siegel intended to purchase Macy’s old location on 14th Street and 6th Ave. He suggested giving up his corner plot to Macy’s if Macy’s relinquished their lease on their old store. Macy’s wasn’t swooned by Siegel’s deal because it was about to open a 1.6 million square foot store.

In 1903, a year after the huge Macy’s opened, Siegel razed the corner building and replaced it with a five-story structure which he leased to the United Cigar Store Company for $40,000 per year. It wasn’t until around 1945 that Macy’s began advertising on the structure.

2. The Digital Clock of Water Street

The typical holdout story is of the little guy standing up against the big developer but sometimes holdout buildings are just the result of bad decisions. 200 Water Street is the result of one such miscalculation. The building owner Robert Ardston miscalculated how high a price he could get for his five-story building. With negotiations at an impasse, William Kaufman, the developer of 127 John Street, decided to make the best of the situation. Kaufman carved out the section of his building that wrapped around the holdout buildings and added a touch of whimsy, commissioning a giant digital clock to screen the holdout underneath.

3. 70 Lafayette Street

Sometimes, just being the popular kid on the block is enough to guarantee a building’s existence. With eating establishments occupying the ground floor since its’ opening in 1896, 70 Lafayette Street was a popular lunch spot for the nearby City Hall municipal employees. This gave the building owner sufficient ground to successfully stand up to the 17-story building, now one of NYU’s residential halls, forcing the L-shaped wrap around that exists today.

4. & 5. The Neighbors of 30 Rock

Sixth Avenue’s “Skyscraper Alley” in Midtown is an almost unending stream of International style buildings. The 19-building complex at Rockefeller Center stands at the center of all this, where the flourishes of Art Deco meet the functional lines and geometric simplicity of the International movement. In the midst of the Great Depression, most landlords were pleased or at least amenable to Rockefeller’s offers to buy the land, except for the owners of the two townhouses on either end of 30 Rock.

A Magnolia bakery currently occupies the former Hurley’s, a bar and saloon that opened in the 1890s and later became a famed watering hole for the media industry, ironically based largely in Rockefeller Center. The saloon had also operated successfully through Prohibition where the ground level flower shop led to the more popular speakeasy below. The three Hurley brothers were hardly fazed by Rockefeller, asking for an absurdly high sum to underscore their refusal to leave. As one Hurley said “I’ve seen sonofabitchin’ Rockefellers come and sonofabitchin’ Rockefellers go and no sonofabitchin’ Rockefeller’s gonna tear down my bar.” Less theatrical but equally firm in his refusal to leave, John Maxwell simply refused to negotiate at all, whether in seriousness or not.

Forced to build above and around the two townhouses, the 70-story 30 Rockefeller Plaza remains sandwiched between two three-and-four story structures that are now perhaps the city’s most famous holdout buildings.

6. 134 East 60th Street