While this building has not been demolished, I have included it on my site for two reasons; I had lofts in this building and worked there, and all of the steam driven cable car machinery which was the largest in the United States, had been destroyed and removed years before.
18 high pressure Heine boilers, made in St Louis Missouri and (4) 1000 HP Corliss steam engines powered 32 foot diameter driving drums for the cables under the street for the downtown section of the Broadway Cable car line.
The photo below was taken by a professional photographer neighbor of mine at my request, of a circa 1890 water color rendering of the proposed building that once hung in the superintendants office in a gorgeous carved wood frame. We carefully removed the drawing from the frame and shot a roll of large format film in my neighbor's studio on the 9th floor.
Some months later, the painting and other items in the office were stolen. It was increasingly more common for these break-ins despite security which was minimal at best.
Many of the offices, lofts and the numerous garment factories had burglary and theft/run problems from people climbing up the fire escape, or getting in the building and breaking into rooms through the old painted over glass windows in the public hallways, or by removing the hinge pins on the outward opening doors ( a real no brainer there!) In some cases, in the newly divided rooms on the 3rd and 4th floor which only had sheet rock walls- they broke holes in the walls to get in.

In my case I discovered someone had TRIED to rob my room, amazingly enough by crawling along the 7th floor limestone cornice all the way from the fire escape on Houston Street to my windows, lifted out the screen and discovered OOPS, someone is sleeping there!

The 2001 assessed value of the building was listed as $8,919,000 and believe it or not, the real estate property tax bill for the year was $871,207.92
Is NYC an expensive place to own a building??

Below is an image of the exact same corner showing St Thomas Church built n 1824, burned in 1851, rebuilt a year later and then of course demolished circa 1890 for the Cable Building.

Below is a scan of the 1894 Scribners magazine article on this railway, the only photo I have found yet of the actual machinery. I have located another magazine from 1897 which has photos of the actual engine room and have scans on another page after this.

In the 1895 copy of the Heine Safety Boiler handbook I have, there is a photo of the Cable Building's boiler room, below is a scan of the photo which unfortunately is rather poor due to the nature of the original, but it shows part of the original 4,500 horse power bank of 18 boilers!

A photo of lower Broadway looking North around 1903 showing a couple of the cable cars in action.

Below is a photo of one of the sheet copper lions which fell to the sidewalk in a windstorm around 1980 when I was a tenant, I bought it from the superintendant. Lion face measures about 18" high.

Heine Boiler Eagle lamp, cast iron, bought from the building superintendent

The Republican

The Broadway Cable Road.

Two years is a long time in the busy life of the metropolis to be occupied in the work of constructing and putting into operation a single line of cable railway, but this is what now seems certain to be the fact about the Broadway cable road.
The work of construction was begun early in 1891 and everybody still retains a most disagreeable recollection of the impassable condition of New York's leading business street during the summer and fall of that year.
During a greater part of the two preceding years the street was continually in a state of upheaval to allow the frequently needed repairs of the pipes of the steam heating companies, and the burying of the electric wires until the people had become desperate over the situation.
The laying of the cable road conduits and the repaving of the street were finally completed and then the people began to look for the promised improvement in Broadway car travel, which was to compensate them for the months of discomfort which they had undergone.

But the railroad company has only begun its work with the completion of the roadway, and for a year past they have been constructing the necessary power stations along the line of the road, and this work has progressed in a painfully slow fashion. Meanwhile, horses drag the cars over the rails with exasperating slowness, as in former years.
A number of the new pattern of the cars to be used on the road have been built and a few of them are brought into service during the busiest hours of travel. They are much larger than the regulation cars, and teams of four horses are required to draw them. There is little prospect of the cable being put in operation on this line before next spring, while the outlook for the initial trip of the third avenue line is still more remote.

It must be confessed that in the matter of street railway travel, New York is far behind the age. Even in Philadelphia, whose slowness and conservative motions are proverbial, can give New York points about rapid transit on surface lines while many small western cities, whose population does not exceed that of a single ward in this city, display a spirit of enterprise in public improvement, which we might imitate with profit.

Kirke White.

Cable Building sub-page index

Page 3- Engine room photos and article.

Page 4 and 5- Terra cotta and stone carvings on the facade

Page 6- Recollections and comments about the building, and a sketch.

Page 7- Article; THE BROADWAY CABLE RAILWAY, NEW YORK Scientific American, Vol. LXVIII. No. 16. April 22, 1893 with line drawings.

Page 8- Detail views of watercolor of the then proposed building, circa 1890

Page 9- More material and photos.

Updated 9/2/07