Tower 270 (also known as 270 Broadway, Arthur Levitt State Office Building, 80 Chambers Street, and 86 Chambers Street) is a 28-story mixed use building in the

Civic Center A civic center or civic centre is a prominent land area within a community that is constructed to be its focal point or center. It usually contains of one or more dominant public buildings, which may also include a government building. Recently, ...

and

Tribeca Tribeca ( ), originally written as TriBeCa, is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. Its name is a syllabic abbreviation of "Triangle Below Canal Street". The "triangle" (more accurately a quadrilateral) is bounded by Canal Str ...

neighborhoods of

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. Completed in 1930 to designs by E.H. Faile & Company, it has of floor space, on a plot with facing Broadway to the east and on Chambers Street to the north. Tower 270 is just west of

New York City Hall New York City Hall is the Government of New York City, seat of New York City government, located at the center of City Hall Park in the Civic Center, Manhattan, Civic Center area of Lower Manhattan, between Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway, Park R ...

, near several other structures, including the Broadway–Chambers Building, 280 Broadway, and the Tweed Courthouse. It housed the first headquarters of the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the ...

in 1942–43.

History

The building was erected in 1930 on the southwest corner of Chambers Street and Broadway by developer Robert E. Dowling at a cost of $2.5 million. It was designed by E.H. Faile & Company, and replaced the headquarters of

Chemical Bank Chemical Bank, headquartered in New York City, was the principal operating subsidiary of Chemical Banking Corporation, a bank holding company. In 1996, it acquired Chase Bank, adopted the Chase name, and became the largest bank in the United Stat ...

(which had been built in 1907 to replace a building opened in 1850).

The Manhattan Project

The building's location gave its name to the

, which during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

developed the

atomic bomb A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear expl ...

, and whose first headquarters were on the 18th floor. At the time, in 1942, it was a federal office building, where the North Atlantic Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was located. The Corps was to coordinate all United States military construction in the Northeast as well as all of

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

, and it provided administrative support for the project. The name initially proposed was "Laboratory for the Development of Substitute Materials". Fearing the name would draw undue attention, the project's military leader, General Leslie Groves, changed it to "Manhattan Engineer District", which was eventually shortened to Manhattan Project. Coordination for the project moved to

Oak Ridge, Tennessee Oak Ridge is a city in Anderson County, Tennessee, Anderson and Roane County, Tennessee, Roane counties in the East Tennessee, eastern part of the U.S. state of Tennessee, about west of downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, Knoxville. Oak Ridge's po ...

in 1943, but the name stuck.

Post World War II

After the war, the building was acquired by the New York state government for $3.7 million. "Master builder"

Robert Moses Robert Moses (December 18, 1888 – July 29, 1981) was an American urban planner and public official who worked in the New York metropolitan area during the early to mid-20th century. Moses is regarded as one of the most powerful and influentia ...

had one of his three offices in the building. It became the Arthur Levitt State Office Building providing New York City offices for members of the

New York State Assembly The New York State Assembly is the lower house of the New York State Legislature, with the New York State Senate being the upper house. There are 150 seats in the Assembly. Assembly members serve two-year terms without term limits. The Ass ...

and

New York State Senate The New York State Senate is the upper house of the New York State Legislature, while the New York State Assembly is its lower house. Established in 1777 by the Constitution of New York, its members are elected to two-year terms with no term l ...

. In 2000 it was sold for $33.6 million in a sealed bid transaction that at the time was the highest-valued property sale ever consummated by the State of New York. The building is owned by RAL Companies of

Hempstead, New York The Town of Hempstead is the largest of the three towns in Nassau County (alongside North Hempstead and Oyster Bay) on Long Island, in New York, United States. The town's combined population was 793,409 at the 2020 census. It occupies the s ...

, of which Robert A. Levine is the principal. Mark Groblewski of RAL was the only civilian given direct access to 270 Broadway, 86 Chambers Street, and 80 Chambers Street to continue construction in these buildings, in the restricted area surrounding

Ground Zero A hypocenter or hypocentre (), also called ground zero or surface zero, is the point on the Earth's surface directly below a nuclear explosion, meteor air burst, or other mid-air explosion. In seismology, the hypocenter of an earthquake is its p ...

, after the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

. Groblewski also worked as a civilian volunteer assisting and directing industrial earth-moving equipment at Ground Zero. Floors 16 to 28 were converted to 39 condominium apartments in 2003 ranging in size from . Floors 2 through 7 comprise office space and 48 rental apartments occupy floors 8 through 15. The office space entrance is at 86 Chambers Street, and there are two residential entrances – on Broadway for the condominiums and on Chambers Street for the rental apartments.

References

{{Authority control Office buildings in Manhattan United States Army Corps of Engineers Manhattan Project sites 1930 establishments in New York City 1930s architecture in the United States Buildings and structures completed in 1930 Broadway (Manhattan) Tribeca Civic Center, Manhattan