Donnie Walks NYC: Downtown Walking Tour Site #5 - 1 Broadway - International Merchantile Maine Building

The current building at 1 Broadway was built as the Headquarters of the International Mercantile Marine Company (IMM). IMM was founded October 1902 by JP Morgan by combining 5 major British and American Lines including the White Star Line and the American Line to compete with the huge Cunard Line.

However, the company was not able to garner much interest in its' securities. It was overleveraged because Morgan had paid too much for some of the lines and overestimated profits. That, and the sinking of the Titanic on 14 April, 1912 lead to its slow demise. It went into receivership in 1915 and by World War II it had divested all of its assets.

1 Broadway was originally occupied by Archibald Kennedy, a Scottish Peer, who built a mansion there in the 1700s. After the Revolutionary War, it was converted into a hotel. In 1884, it was torn down and replaced with an ornate office building called the Washington Building. It is the red building you see to the left in the postcard. In 1919, IMM acquired the building to build a booking hall for its' shipping lines. Because much of the building was already leased out, IMM had the architect reclad the facade and build the booking hall on the main floor.

The building has an ornate entrance on the Bowling Green side and is graced with nautical themes such as coats of arms from major ports. On the Battery Park side it has seperate entrances for First Class and Cabin Class.

One might ask, why build this booking hall if the company was in decline. Well, it had come out of receivership in a better state. But, more importantly, its' competitor, The Cunard Line had just opened it's own booking hall at 25 Broadway and IMM had to answer the challange.

The building is now occupied on the ground floor by Citibank which has kept the character of the booking hall. The famous law firm, Kenyon & Kenyon, occupies the rest of the building.