And in 1936, when the Consolidated Gas Company changed its name to Consolidated Edison, 75 percent of company revenues were from electricity, 4 percent from steam and only 21 percent from gas. A 1928 article in The New York Times said there were 1.1 million gas meters in place but 2 million electric meters. That’s because around 1900 what had started as a gas consortium had begun buying up the competition: electric companies. There was nothing to indicate that the client was the Consolidated Gas Company.
#Con edison 5 irving place ny series#
The giant loggia had a series of lights that washed over the structure in varying colors.Īlthough lighting tall buildings was hardly new, the colored dials and shimmering tints of the tower were unusual at a time when plain old light was generally deemed sufficient for distinction.Īll of it was, of course, electric. Inside the huge lantern at the top were five great beacons, one aiming straight up through a hole in the top and the others coming out the windows. The tower rises 425 feet, ending in a 16-foot-wide clock face repeated on four sides, a recessed loggia of giant columns and then a colossal, crowning bronze lantern. But the smooth limestone shaft is severe, almost modernistic, looking as if it had been stripped in a renovation campaign. For the New York Central Company’s commanding site spanning Park Avenue at 46th Street, they developed a bulbous tower with an intricate lantern at the top, detailed with the intricacy of the Houses of Parliament in London.įor the Consolidated Gas project, the architects worked out a 24-story limestone tower, its corners clad with mock quoining: courses of stone raised to create a column of protruding blocks. The architects, who had started their careers with mansions and clubs for the well-to-do, had been experimenting with tall-building design.įor the Steinway Piano Company, at 111 West 57th Street, they designed a midblock tower all of limestone and topped by a temple, with a sculptural, even funerary, caste. But in the 1920s Consolidated retained Warren & Wetmore, the firm most famous for Grand Central Terminal, to design a tower at the corner of Irving Place and 14th Street. At first the company worked with Henry Hardenbergh, who designed a fortresslike series of 12-story and later 18-story cream-colored office blocks. In 1910, Consolidated Gas began a multiyear building campaign centered on its existing headquarters on Irving Place. Edison’s innovation had the upper hand, and soon after 1900 electric vacuum cleaners, fans, refrigerators, elevators and other devices became common. To fight back, several gas suppliers came together in 1884 to form the Consolidated Gas Company.īut in that same year, The Real Estate Record and Guide predicted the newer form of energy would triumph, saying that in the home “the hue of electric light is cool, like concentrated starlight,” and that gas could “only be used in an upright position, whereas the flame of the electric lamp may be so disposed as to point in any direction.”Īlthough houses and apartment buildings were provided with dual electrical and gas systems into the 1910s, it was clear that Thomas A. Gradually gas lighting became standard, but in 1881 newly developed electrical companies began angling for the same contracts.
So what was this extravaganza of electric light doing on a tower built for a gas company?Ĭoal gas began to replace oil lamps in the early 19th century the New York Gas Light Company was organized in 1823 and provided street and house lighting. Its illuminated, highly colored clock faces, colonnade and Baroque-style lantern make it one of New York’s most memorable skyscrapers. WHAT is now known as the Con Edison tower, built in 1928 at 14th Street and Irving Place, is up for landmark designation.