1 Wall Street Court

1 Wall Street Court in the Financial District of Manhattan, also known as The Beaver Building and The Cocoa Exchange (as the former home of the New York Cocoa Exchange) is a triangular-shaped building reminiscent of the Flatiron Building. The building, designed by Clinton and Russell and completed in 1904, is located at the intersection of Wall Street, Pearl Street, and Beaver Street.HistoryThe 15-story Beaver Building, designed in the neo-Renaissance style by the well-known and prolific firm of Clinton & Russell and built from 1903 to 1904, was commissioned by the Century Realty Co. as a speculative office building. The steel-framed, flatiron shaped structure occupies a narrow quadrilateral lot at the juncture of Beaver and Pearl Streets near Wall Street. The design has the tripartite arrangement of base-shaft-capital common to many of New York's early skyscrapers, with a stone base, a midsection faced in brick laid in bands of tan and buff shades, and a top section richly ornamented with glazed terracotta in shades of green, cream, and russet, incorporating both classically derived and abstract geometric motifs.The Beaver Building is a notable example of the design solution for turn-of-the-century New York skyscrapers in which each section of the tripartite scheme is differentiated by color and materials. It is also a very early example of the use of boldly polychromatic glazed terracotta, as well as a significant survivor of this period of terracotta development. Carved ornament depicting beavers, representing the name of the building, is found over the Beaver Street entrance and below the primary cornice of the base.