552-554
Broadway
New York, New York
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Figure 1. A cast-iron storefront was
added to 552-554 Broadway in 1897. The storefront included
a fifty-four foot long assembly of cast-iron vault lights set
in the sidewalk. Glass lenses in the panels allowed light to
enter the basement area, increasing rentable space for the
building owner.
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Beginning in the 1850s, sidewalk vault lights became a
common feature amidst the burgeoning manufacturing districts of
America’s urban streetscapes.
These cast-iron panels, fitted with clear glass lenses, were set into the
sidewalk in front of building storefronts. They permitted daylight to reach
otherwise dark basements (or “vaults”) that extended
out beneath the sidewalks, creating more useable or rentable space
for building
owners.
Vault
lights typically extended four to five feet out from the
building line toward the curb. Each panel was screwed to
a
cast-iron saddle and the iron
framework that spanned the basement vault. They were cast with molded iron
knobs set around each lens to protect the glass and improve the footing
of passers-by. Originally simple glass lenses were set in the panels,
usually
with a cement grout. Advances in daylighting technology including the development
of prismatic glass pendants that refracted the sun’s rays further
into basement areas, and the use of reinforced concrete panels made vault
lights
popular through the 1930s (see
vault light history and concrete vault light sidebar).
Located
in New York City within the SoHo Cast-Iron Historic District,
552-554 Broadway is a six-story loft building detailed
with
Italianate ornamentation
on the upper floors (see figure 1). Designed by the architect John B. Snook
and originally constructed in 1855 as two separate buildings, 552 and 554
Broadway were joined internally and unified in 1897 with a new two-story,
cast-iron storefront and sidewalk vault installation. It is likely that
the building’s basement was used historically for a combination
of light manufacturing and storage.
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Figure
2. The building’s cast-iron
and glass vault lights at the outset of the restoration project.
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The
original vault lights stretched approximately fifty-four feet
across the full width of the ground-floor storefront. They were
made up of twenty-one
individual panels extending five feet from the building line and varying
in width from 1’10” to 2’8” (see figure 2). The cast-iron
panels were fitted with 1-1/2” diameter glass lenses. Raised lettering
on the panel frame, “Jacob Mark, 7 Worth Street, New York,” indicated
the foundry’s name and address in Manhattan. Over one hundred years
of pedestrian traffic, deliveries and environmental exposure took a toll
on the vault lights at 552-554 Broadway. With use of the basement for
merchandise storage, the current ground-floor retail tenant initiated
a vault-light
restoration program in 2002 to return the historic sidewalk feature to
its original function
and appearance.
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