770 Broadway is a

landmark A landmark is a recognizable natural or artificial feature used for navigation, a feature that stands out from its near environment and is often visible from long distances. In modern-day use, the term can also be applied to smaller structures ...

ed mixed-use commercial office building in

NoHo, Manhattan NoHo, short for "North of Houston Street" (as contrasted with SoHo), is a primarily residential neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded by Mercer Street to the west, the Bowery to the east, 9th Street to the north, an ...

, in

Lower Manhattan Lower Manhattan, also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York City, is the southernmost part of the Boroughs of New York City, New York City borough of Manhattan. The neighborhood is History of New York City, the historical birthplace o ...

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, occupying an entire square block between 9th Street on the north, Fourth Avenue to the east, 8th Street to the south, and Broadway to the west. The building is owned and managed by

Vornado Realty Trust Vornado Realty Trust is an American real estate investment trust formed in Maryland in 1982, with its primary office in New York City. The company invests in office buildings and street retail in Manhattan. History Two Guys The origins of the ...

. It was completed in 1907 and renovated in 2000 per a design by Hugh Hardy. Major tenants include Wegmans, with an ground floor retail store that opened in 2023,

Meta Platforms Meta Platforms, Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Meta owns and operates several prominent social media platforms and communication services, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads ...

, which occupies and has sole roof access, and

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

, which occupies the fourth, fifth, sixth and ninth floors. The building has one of the largest property tax bills in commercial real estate: $19.6 million in 2022.

History

770 Broadway was built between 1903 and 1907 and was designed by

Daniel Burnham Daniel Hudson Burnham (September 4, 1846 – June 1, 1912) was an American architect and urban designer. A proponent of the ''Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts'' movement, he may have been "the most successful power broker the American archi ...

as an annex to the original

Wanamaker's Wanamaker's was an American department store chain founded in 1861 by John Wanamaker. It was one of the first department stores in the United States, and peaked at 16 locations along the Delaware Valley in the 20th century. Wanamaker's was pur ...

department store in New York, which was across 9th Street to the north. The two buildings were connected by a sky bridge, dubbed the "Bridge of Progress", as well as a tunnel under 9th Street. The building originally included a central court and an auditorium with a pipe organ that hosted top musicians and orchestras, and was also an early television studio. In 1954, Wanamaker's closed as department stores expanded to the suburbs and major retail migrated toward Midtown. The northern lot was sold in 1955. In 1956, a fire gutted the original

department store building while it was under demolition, injuring 77 people. The annex at 770 Broadway survived and was leased up; in 1958, the ground floor was leased to the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...

, in 1959, Manhattan Savings Bank leased space for a branch in the building. In November 1996,

Kmart Kmart ( ), formerly legally registered as Kmart Corporation, now operated by Transformco, is a department-store chain and online retailer in the United States and Territories of the United States, its territories. It operates four remaining Kma ...

opened a store in the ground floor retail space. Two years later in July 1998,

acquired the building for $149 million. In 2000, the building was renovated to a design by Hugh Hardy. In 2007, AOL moved its headquarters to in the building. Vornado obtained a $700 million loan for the building in 2016. Facebook Inc. (later Meta) gradually leased space in the building, occupying most of the structure, or about , by the early 2020s. In July 2021, the

store was closed and the space was leased to Wegmans, which opened a store there in October 2023. The building was refinanced again in 2022 with a $700 million loan. After Meta downsized its space in the building, Vornado agreed in 2024 to lease of office space to

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

. Meta will continue to occupy approximately around 500,000 sq ft of office space in the building.https://nyunews.com/news/2024/11/27/770-broadway-science-and-technology/

References

External links

* {{Broadway (Manhattan) 1907 establishments in New York City 1900s architecture in the United States Astor Place Broadway (Manhattan) Commercial buildings completed in 1907 Office buildings in Manhattan Park Avenue