Trinity Building

The Van Cortlandt sugar house and the New England Hotel at 111 Broadway were destroyed in 1852.

The Old Trinity Building, at 111 Broadway, was erected next to the Trinity Churchyard and fronting three streets: Broadway, Thames and Trinity Place. It was owned by Horace Brigham Claflin (1811-1885), head of the largest wholesale dry goods house in the United States and one of the founders of the Continental Bank and Trust Company. The Trinity Building, adjacent to the churchyard of Richard Upjohn's neo-Gothic Trinity Church, replaced an 1853 Upjohn structure of the same name.

Designed in neo-Gothic style to harmonize with nearby Trinity Church, this building is noted for the limestone facade and carefully detailed ornamented towers. Among the first Gothic-inspired skyscrapers in New York.

A dry goods merchant, H.B. Claflin, together with associates, replaced the sugar house and hotel with a large building, five neo-Romanesque stories of yellowish brick with terracotta trim, except the basement, which was cut brownstone. By the end of May, 1853, nearly all the space was let, despite high rentals.

From 1892 the New York Real Estate Salesrooms had quarters in the basement of the Trinity Building. In its room all the court and the majority of other auction sales in that time were held. The real estate business of Peter F. Meyer & Co. – Richard Croker and Peter F. Meyer – had offices in the building almost continuously for 43 years. Many prominent lawyers had offices there, too. When the building was finally emptied on April 30, 1903, a list of individuals and firms was published with their new addresses; it comprised more than 130 names, mostly lawyers and real estate businesses.