page_title: Cunard Building (New York City)
section_title: Usage
hierarchical_section_title: Cunard Building (New York City) / History / Usage
caption_attribution_description: English: A sign for the Léman Manhattan Preparatory School at the Cunard Building on Morris Street and Trinity Place in the Financial District, Manhattan.
context_page_description: The Cunard Building, also known as the Standard & Poors Building, is a 22-story office building located at 25 Broadway, adjacent to Bowling Green Park in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The Cunard Building was designed in the Italian Renaissance style by Benjamin Wistar Morris, in conjunction with consultants Carrère & Hastings.
  The Cunard Building's main facade, on Broadway, is made of limestone and consists of three horizontal sections. The design employs setbacks and open "light courts" as mandated by the 1916 Zoning Resolution. The structure was designed around an irregular street grid and is located directly above a subway line that crosses the building site diagonally. The first floor interior contains an elaborately decorated lobby, as well as a similarly opulent Great Hall, which extends 185 feet with a 65-foot-tall dome. The remaining floors contain various offices and school spaces.
  The Cunard Building was erected for the New York City office of British-American steamship operator Cunard Line; construction started in 1920 and the building was completed the next year.
context_section_description: At opening, the Great Hall was the home of Cunard and Anchor Lines, which occupied the Great Hall, first three stories, basement, and top floors. The remaining floors housed numerous other tenants, including Atlas Portland Cement Company, Anaconda Copper, Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation, Consolidated Steel Corporation, International Motor Truck Company, and Atlantic, Gulf & West Indies Steamship Lines. A branch of the Mechanics and Metals National Bank was located at the first floor, within the retail space on the northeast corner. Even before the Cunard Building's official opening, it was almost fully leased, with only 24,000 square feet (2,200 m²) remaining unused by April 1921. Factors in the Cunard Building's near-complete occupancy included relatively low rents, the inclusion of 21-year leases, the timely completion of the project, and a shortage of available office space in the Financial District. In later years, other industries moved into the Cunard Building as well, such as attorneys, railroad and steamship companies, shipbuilding companies, brokers, engineers, and raw materials companies. These included the New York Central Railroad, which moved into the building in 1946.
  To pay for the building's mortgage, its owners were given a loan of $8 million in 1930, and another $2.82 million in 1944. In subsequent years, the assessed taxes for the Cunard Building was reduced multiple times. The New York Supreme Court gave the building's owners tax reprieves in 1946, 1948, and 1950. In 1955, the owners completed a $3 million project to add air conditioning to the Cunard Building, one of the largest such retrofits in an existing structure in the city.
  Ashforth, Todd & Company purchased the building in 1962. The Cunard Line continued to operate the ticket hall until 1968, when it moved to 555 Fifth Avenue; the vacant space was then leased by brokerage company Francis I. duPont Co. The building was sold again in 1971, this time to the Cementation Company of America, a subsidiary of Trafalgar House Investment Group. Initially, the owners had difficulty finding tenants for the Great Hall due to its vast size. The United States Postal Service leased the Great Hall in 1974, intending to relocate its post office from the nearby Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House two years later. By 1977, the USPS had moved into the Great Hall, and Standard & Poor's had signed a 20-year lease for space at the Cunard Building. The building was sold to Zev W. Wolfson for $15 million by 1979. The City College of New York's Center For Worker Education was established on the seventh floor of the Cunard Building in 1981.
  In 1995, the exterior and the first floor interior of the Cunard Building, along with several other buildings on Bowling Green, were formally designated as New York City landmarks. Two years later, S&P vacated its spaces at the Cunard Building, as well as at 26 Broadway directly to the east, when the company started leasing space at nearby 55 Water Street. The post office closed in 2000. Afterward, the Great Hall went unused again for over a decade. The New York Times cited the hall's landmark status as a factor in the difficulty of leasing the space. The doors were locked, barring visitors from entering the Great Hall. During the mid-2000s, the Sports Museum of America considered opening within the Great Hall, but the museum ultimately opened in 2008 at 26 Broadway. In 2014, the Great Hall was leased to Cipriani S.A. for the operation of an event venue.
  The upper floors remained in use by multiple tenants, including school and college campuses. In 2002, Deloitte leased three floors of the Cunard Building after its previous offices at the World Trade Center were destroyed in the September 11 attacks. Léman Manhattan Preparatory School moved to the Cunard Building in 2010, occupying the top four floors for its middle and high school campuses. Relay Graduate School of Education, a private graduate school for teachers, moved into the building in 2019.
caption: Léman Manhattan Preparatory School sign outside the Morris Street entrance
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