page_title: Equitable Life Building (Manhattan)
section_title: Destruction
hierarchical_section_title: Equitable Life Building (Manhattan) / History / Destruction
caption_attribution_description: English: Equitable fire from Singer building on January 9, 1912
context_page_description: The Equitable Life Assurance Building, also known as the Equitable Life Building, was the headquarters of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, at 120 Broadway in Manhattan, New York. The building was designed by Arthur Gilman and Edward H. Kendall, with George B. Post as a consulting engineer. The Equitable Life Building was made of brick, granite, and iron, and was originally built with seven above-ground stories and two basement levels, with a height of at least 130 feet. An expansion in 1885 brought the total height to 155 feet and nine stories.
  Construction started in 1868 and was completed in 1870 under the leadership of Equitable's president Henry Baldwin Hyde. It was the world's first office building to feature passenger elevators and consequently became successful with many tenants. The Equitable Life Building was expanded numerous times; after the construction of annexes during the late 1880s, the building occupied its entire block, bounded by Broadway and Cedar, Pine, and Nassau streets. While touted as fireproof, the Equitable Life Building burned down in a fire in 1912, which killed six people.
context_section_description: The Equitable Life Building, described as fireproof, was destroyed by a massive fire on January 9, 1912. The fire started in the basement at about 5:00 a.m. EST, but quickly spread to the rest of the building, exacerbated by the presence of open stairway and elevator shafts. Fire crews from Manhattan and Brooklyn were called to put out the blaze, holding up traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge and nearby streets. The outside temperature at the time was 18 °F (−8 °C), causing the water from the fire trucks to freeze on the building. The tower's height was a disadvantage: fire trucks' ladders could not reach the upper stories, and lifelines from nearby buildings snapped before they could be secured onto the building. There were several high-profile rescues, including that of William Giblin, president of major tenant Mercantile Safe Deposit Company, who had been trapped in a vault. The fire was brought under control at about 9:30 p.m. EST. Smoke continued to billow from the site two days later, and two of the outer structural walls remained standing after the blaze.
  Six people died, including five employees and one firefighter. Three of the victims had been trapped on the roof while trying to escape. The money in the vaults, appraised at $385 million, was unscathed. Though the building was not covered by insurance policies, Equitable suffered relatively little losses, since the building was valued at less than $3 million, the amount that the company had saved by self-insuring its properties. Damage was estimated at $2 million, but the structure was considered "no asset"; namely, it was worthless because of the high demand for vacant land in the Financial District. Most of the losses were in the value of the building's law library. The land was actually worth more after the fire than beforehand.
  Equitable quickly set up temporary quarters at the City Investing Building. The society also sold the land to T. Coleman du Pont in October 1912 for $13.5 million. Du Pont developed the present Equitable Building, designed by Ernest R. Graham & Associates, on the same plot between 1913 and 1915. The massive bulk of the newer building was a major impetus behind the city's 1916 Zoning Resolution, which placed limits on building height and shape.
caption: 1912 fire
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