All text and images ©1998 Museum of the City of New York
BROAD STREET, LOOKING TOWARD WALL STREET
JULY 16, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 149
On the same day she photographed Canyon: Broadway and Exchange Place Abbott captured this view on Broad Street, four blocks away. It is her only depiction in the project of the New York Stock Exchange (with scaffolding, center left) and the U.S. Sub-Treasury (truncated, center right), which stand at the intersection of Broad and Wall Streets. More interested in the environment of Wall Street than its tourist sites, Abbott featured Schwartz's restaurant (left) and the relatively obscure but graceful facade of the Lee-Higginson Bank (1929, right) along Broad Street's gentle curve. A long lens allowed for the inclusion of the stepped pyramid top of Bankers Trust (1912) and the twin towers of the Equitable Building (1915), which stood four blocks away.
Three new sleek office buildings on the west (left) side of Broad Street have made this view more monotonous than it was in Abbott's day.