Bar Building to be included in historic walking tour

Real Estate Weekly, May 15, 2002

The Bar Building, 36 West 44th St., was designated as a destination point for a private walking tour of historic West 44th Street, May 2, conducted by "Born in the Thirties," a special interest group within the prestigious Harvard Club, announces Dana Gordon, In House Counsel of The Burak Organization, which manages the building.

Other sites on the tour of the block included the Yacht Club, Algonquin Hotel and the Association of the Bar. The outing culminated in a dinner at The Royalton Hotel.

"We are honored that The Bar Building is considered one of the leading historic buildings in the area and was made a part of this tour," says Gordon, who presented the history of the building to the group. "The building's history is so clearly reflected in the design and character, while at the same time it has a modern infrastructure with DSL, T1 and cable lines. In addition, to highlight its classic ambiance, we have recently begun an afternoon music program in the lobby featuring young, promising student pianists."

Built in 1922, The Bar Building is considered an historic jewel with 14 floors and approximately 186,000 square feet of rentable space, much of which has views of the grand hotels and university clubs of 44th Street, or the sweeping arc of the Grace Building on 43rd Street.

Among the building's outstanding features are vaulted ceilings in the lobby with trompe l'oeil artwork, mahogany paneling and a dramatic entranceway with hand-painted panels displaying historically prominent attorneys, including a former tenant of The Bar Building, Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo. In fact, Justice Cardozo was particularly helpful in the screening process required of early tenants, and supported world-renowned theatrical attorney Fanny Holtzmann when she went before The Bar Building's Tenancy Committee. In addition to being the only woman in her Fordham Law School class of 1923, she was the first woman to have a lease in the building.

After describing her already thriving law practice, Holtzmann promised the committee that she would "never use the men's room." With that solemn vow, she was offered the lease for Suite 914, where she remained for half a century representing such film and theatrical legends as Gertrude Lawrence and Noel Coward.

In the early 1980s, the lobby portraits precipitated a small controversy when it was established that President Woodrow Wilson, featured on one of the panels, was not an attorney. At the time, the vast majority of the tenants were lawyers who felt that the history of the building mandated that the portraits honor prominent leaders in the legal profession. In response to the uproar, the portrait was replaced with one of Aaron Burr, ironically facing the opponent who died at his hands, Alexander Hamilton.