CEDAR
STREET FROM WILLIAM STREET
MARCH 26, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 91
On March 26, 1936, Abbott made two attempts--on Cedar Street and nearby Pine Street --to capture the cavernous spaces between skyscrapers along the narrow streets of the financial district. From William Street, the light caught the decorative corner entrance to the 1897 Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York Building. A block away at the end of the Cedar Street "tunnel" was Chase National Bank (1928) and the gigantic mass of the Equitable Building, the 44-story behemoth that filled an entire city block and inspired the 1916 zoning law regulating the height and mass of New York skyscrapers. Abbott did not mind that a curious policeman (lower right) walked into the frame during exposure.
Today, this entire block of Cedar Street lies within Chase Manhattan Plaza, the 1960 box-and-plaza by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which brought the International Style to the financial district. Jean Dubuffet's whimsical Group of Four Trees (1972), a monumental bronze which looks like papier-mâché and dominates the Cedar Street side of the plaza, stands near the site occupied by the ornamental doorway in Abbott's photograph.