Woolworth Building

| references =

The Woolworth Building is a residential building and early skyscraper at 233 Broadway in the Tribeca neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Designed by Cass Gilbert, it was the tallest building in the world from 1913 to 1929, and it remains one of the United States' 100 tallest buildings .

The Woolworth Building is bounded by Broadway and City Hall Park to its east, Park Place to its north, and Barclay Street to its south. It consists of a 30-story base topped by a 30-story tower. Its facade is mostly clad with architectural terracotta, though the lower portions are limestone, and it features thousands of windows. The ornate lobby contains various sculptures, mosaics, and architectural touches. The structure was designed with several amenities and attractions, including a now-closed observatory on the 57th floor and a private swimming pool in the basement.

F. W. Woolworth, the founder of a brand of popular five-and-ten-cent stores, conceived the skyscraper as a headquarters for his company. Woolworth planned the skyscraper jointly with the Irving Trust, which also agreed to use the structure as its headquarters. The Woolworth Building had originally been planned as a 12- to 16-story commercial building but underwent several revisions during its planning process. Its final height was not decided upon until January 1911. Construction started in 1910 and was completed two years later. The building officially opened on April 24, 1913.

The Woolworth Building has undergone several changes throughout its history. The facade was cleaned in 1932, and the building received an extensive renovation between 1977 and 1981. The Irving National Exchange Bank moved its headquarters to 1 Wall Street in 1931, but the Woolworth Company (later Venator Group) continued to own the Woolworth Building for most of the 20th century. The structure was sold to the Witkoff Group in 1998. The top 30 floors were sold to a developer in 2012 and converted into residences. Office and commercial tenants use the rest of the building. The Woolworth Building has been a National Historic Landmark since 1966, and a New York City designated landmark since 1983.

Architecture

Cass Gilbert designed the Woolworth Building in the neo-Gothic style. F. W. Woolworth, who had devised the idea for the Woolworth Building, had proposed using the Victoria Tower as a model for the building; he reportedly also admired the design of Palace of Westminster. Gilbert, by contrast, disliked the comparison to religious imagery. The architect ultimately used 15th- and 16th-century Gothic ornament on the Woolworth Building, along with a complementary color scheme. Though the building's steel frame was uncommon to neo-Gothic structures, its facade emphasizes vertical design elements, similarly to other neo-Gothic buildings.

thumb|The building's crown

The Woolworth Building was designed to be high but was eventually raised to . Several different height measurements have been cited over the years, but the building rises about above the lowest point of the site. The Woolworth Building was 60 stories tall when completed in 1913, The building is assigned its own ZIP Code, 10279; it was one of 41 buildings in Manhattan that had their own ZIP Codes .

Form

The building's tower, flush with the main frontage on Broadway, joins an office block base with a narrow interior court for light. The base occupies the entire lot between Park Place to the north, Broadway to the east, and Barclay Street to the south. Above the 53rd floor, the tower tapers into a pyramidal roof. Each panel was of a slightly different color, creating a polychrome effect. The facade appeared to have a uniform tone, but the upper floors were actually darker and more dense. Behind the terracotta panels were brick walls; the terracotta pieces are attached to the brick walls by metal rods and hangers.

The Atlantic Terra Cotta Company provided the original terracotta cladding. The panels were manufactured in shades of blue, green, sienna, and rose. The terracotta panels were partially vitrified, allowing them to bear large loads. Gilbert also asked that John Donnelly and Eliseo V. Ricci create full-size designs based on Atlantic Terra Cotta's models. In 1932, Atlantic Terra Cotta carried out a comprehensive cleaning campaign of the Woolworth's facade to remove blackening caused by the city's soot and pollution. The Ehrenkrantz Group restored the building's facade between 1977 and 1981. 4,400, or 5,000 windows. Windows were included for lighting and comfort; because the Woolworth Building was built before air conditioning became common, every office is within of a window.

Strongly articulated piers, which carry right to the pyramidal cap without intermediate cornices, give the building its upward thrust. This was influenced by Aus's belief that, "From an engineering point of view, no structure is beautiful where the lines of strength are not apparent." The copper roof is connected to the Woolworth Building's steel superstructure, which serves to ground the roof electrically. The Gothic detailing concentrated at the highly visible crown is over-scaled, and the building's silhouette could be made out from several miles away. Gilbert's choice of the Gothic style was described as "an expression of the verticality of the tower form", and as Gilbert himself later wrote, the style was "light, graceful, delicate and flame-like". Gilbert considered several proposals for exterior lighting, including four powerful searchlights atop nearby buildings and a constantly rotating lamp at the apex of the Woolworth Building's roof. Ultimately, the builders decided to erect nitrogen lamps and reflectors above the 31st floor, and have the intensity of the lighting increase with height.

Structural features

Substructure

In contrast to other parts of Manhattan, the bedrock beneath the site is relatively deep, descending to between on average. or 69 massive caissons that descend to the bedrock. The caissons were both round and rectangular, with the rectangular caissons located mainly on the southern and western lot lines. The caissons are irregularly distributed across the site, being more densely concentrated at the northeastern corner. This is because the building was originally planned to occupy a smaller site at the corner of Broadway and Park Place; when the site was enlarged, the caissons that had already been installed were left in place. The two basement levels, descending , Where the columns of the superstructure did not match up with the caissons, they were cantilevered above on plate girders between two adjoining caissons. These girders are extremely large; one such girder measures deep, wide, and long.

For the wind bracing, the entire Woolworth Building was considered as a vertical cantilever, and correspondingly large girders and columns were used in the construction. There are water tanks on the 14th, 27th, 28th, 50th, and 53rd floors. Although the water is obtained from the New York City water supply system, much of it is filtered and reused. A dedicated water system, separate from the city's, was proposed during construction, but workers abandoned the plan after unsuccessfully digging into Manhattan's bedrock. The walls of this intersection vault are laid out in an octagonal shape, with mailboxes at the four intercardinal directions.

thumb|upright=0.8|alt=Photograph detailing one of the lobby's grotesques|Detail of grotesque

Veined marble from the island of Skyros in Greece covers the lobby. Edward F. Caldwell & Co. provided the interior lights for the lobby and hallways. Patterned glass mosaics that contain blue, green, and gold tiling with red accents decorate the ceilings. There are other Gothic-style decorations in the lobby, including on the cornice and the bronze fittings. Twelve plaster brackets, which carry grotesques depicting major figures in the building's construction, are placed where the arcade and the mezzanine intersect. These ornaments include Gilbert with a model of the building, Aus taking a girder's measurements, and Woolworth holding nickels and dimes. Two ceiling murals by C. Paul Jennewein, titled Labor and Commerce, are located above the mezzanine where it crosses the south and north wings, respectively.

The staircase hall is a two-story room located to the west of the arcade. It consists of the ground level, which contains former storefronts, as well as a mezzanine level above it. The mezzanine contains a stained-glass skylight surrounded by the names of several nations. The skylight contains the dates 1879 and 1913, which respectively signify the years of the Woolworth Company's founding and the building's opening. The skylight is also surrounded by sculpted grotesques, which depict merchandising activities in the five-and-dime industry. Heinigke and Brown manufactured the leaded glass of the mezzanine ceiling, as well as the barrel vault of the lobby.

There is a smaller space west of the staircase hall with a one-story-high ceiling. This room contains a coffered ceiling with a blue-green background. The crossbeams contain Roman portrait heads, while the cornice contains generic sculpted grotesques. The lobby also contains a set of German chimes designed by Harry Yerkes.

Basement

The basement of the Woolworth Building contains an unused bank vault, restaurant, and barbershop. and the Woolworth Building's vault was converted into a storage area for maintenance workers. There is also a basement storage room, known as the "bone yard", which contains replacement terracotta decorations for the facade. Another entrance led to the City Hall station one block north, now served by the , but this was closed in 1982 because of concerns over crime. The area in front of the former entrances was used as a bike-storage area by the 2010s. Proposed as early as 1910, the pool measured but was restored in the mid-2010s as part of the conversion of the Woolworth Building's upper floors into residential units.

Offices

At the time of construction, the Woolworth Building had over 2,000 offices. The usable-space consideration affected the placement of the columns in the wings, as the columns in the main tower were positioned around the elevator shafts and facade piers. Each of the lowest 30 stories had 31 offices, of which ten faced the light court, eight faced Park Place, eight faced Barclay Street, and five faced Broadway. Above the 30th-story setback, each story had 14 offices. For reasons that are unknown, floor numbers 42, 48, and 52 are skipped. At some point, Woolworth replaced the portrait of Napoleon with a portrait of himself. There were 26 Otis electric elevators with gearless traction, as well as an electric-drum shuttle elevator within the tower once construction was complete. Of these, 24 were passenger elevators, which were arranged around cruciform elevator lobbies on each floor. Two freight elevators and two emergency staircases were placed at the rear of the building.

The elevators are accessed from bays in the eastern and western walls of the arcade. The walls are both divided by two bays with round arches, and there are four elevators on each wall. The elevator doors in the lobby were designed by Tiffany Studios. He first came to New York City in 1886 and became successful because of his "Five-and-Dime" (5- and 10-cent stores). He began planning a new headquarters for the F. W. Woolworth Company in 1910. Around the same time, Woolworth's friend Lewis Pierson was having difficulty getting shareholder approval for the merger of his Irving National Bank and the rival New York Exchange Bank. Woolworth, who was looking for funding, mentioned his plans for the building at a lunch with Pierson. Woolworth offered to acquire shares in New York Exchange Bank and vote in favor of the merger if Pierson agreed to move the combined banks' headquarters to the F. W. Woolworth Company's new headquarters.

Having received a commitment from the banks, Woolworth acquired a site at the corner of Broadway and Park Place in Lower Manhattan, opposite City Hall. The entire footprint of the current building, a rectangular lot, had been acquired by April 15, 1910, at a total cost of $1.65 million (about $ in ). By 1910, the plans called for a building with a 20-story base and 10-story upper section. Woolworth then wanted to surpass the nearby New York World Building, which sat on the other side of City Hall Park and stood 20 stories and . A drawing by Thomas R. Johnson, dated April 22, 1910, shows a 30-story building rising from the site. Because of the change in plans, the organization of the Broadway-Park Place Company was rearranged. Woolworth would be the major investor in the Broadway–Park Place Company, contributing $1 million, and the bank would contribute the other $500,000. The Irving Bank would take up a 25-year lease for the ground floor, fourth floor, and basement.

By September 1910, Gilbert had designed an even taller structure, with a 40-story tower on Park Place adjacent to a shorter 25-story annex, yielding a building. The next month, Gilbert's design had evolved into a 45-story building roughly the height of the nearby Singer Building. Referring to the revised plans, Woolworth said, "I do not want a mere building. I want something that will be an ornament to the city." That month, Woolworth and Hogan acquired the final site for the project. In total, the site had cost $4.5 million (about $ in ) and measured on Broadway, on Barclay Street, and on Park Place. In a New York Times article two days later, Woolworth said that his building would rise to its tip. These plans called for a 30-story base and 25-story square tower above it.

Construction

thumb|upright=0.8|left|alt=Black-and-white photograph of the Woolworth Building's ironwork being erected, taken in April 1912|Photograph of the Woolworth Building under construction in April 1912

In September 1910, wrecking crews demolished the five-and-six-story structures which previously occupied the site. Construction officially began on November 4, 1910, with excavation by the Foundation Company, using a contract negotiated personally by Frank Woolworth. The start of construction instantly raised the site's value from $2.25 million to $3.2 million. The company was paid $300,000 for their oversight and management work, despite Woolworth's attempts to get the company to do the job for free due to the prestige of the project. The steel beams and girders used in the framework weighed so much that, to prevent the streets from caving in, a group of surveyors examined them on the route along which the beams would be transported. The American Bridge Company provided steel for the building from their foundries in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh; manufacturing took over 45 weeks.

thumb|upright=0.8|alt=Photograph of the Woolworth Building topped out|The Woolworth Building topped out on July 1, 1912

The first above-ground steel had been erected by October 1911, The building rose at the rate of stories a week and the steelworkers set a speed record for assembling 1,153 tons of steel in six consecutive eight-hour days. By February 18, 1912, work on the steel frame had reached the building's 18th floor. By April 6, 1912, the steel frame had reached the top of the base at the 30th floor and work then began on constructing the tower of the Woolworth Building. Steel reached the 47th floor by May 30 and the official topping out ceremony took place two weeks ahead of schedule on July 1, 1912, as the last rivet was driven into the summit of the tower. After the building was topped out, Gilbert initially told Woolworth that he thought the building was about tall, but Woolworth's own engineers found the true height to be . The skyscraper was substantially completed by the end of 1912.

Woolworth operation

Opening and 1910s

The building opened on April 24, 1913. Woolworth held a grand dinner on the building's 27th floor for over 900 guests, and at exactly 7:30 p.m. EST, President Woodrow Wilson pushed a button in Washington, D.C., to turn on the building's lights. Attendees included: Francis Hopkinson Smith, who served as toastmaster; author William Winter; businessmen Patrick Francis Murphy and Charles M. Schwab; Rhode Island Governor Aram J. Pothier; Judge Thomas C. T. Crain; US Senator from Arkansas Joseph Taylor Robinson; Ecuadorian minister Gonzalo Córdova; New York Supreme Court Justices Charles L. Guy and Edward Everett McCall; Commissioner of Education of the State of New York John Huston Finley; Collector of the Port of New York William Loeb Jr.; naval architect Lewis Nixon; Rear Admiral Charles Dwight Sigsbee; Commissioner of Docks and Ferries of the City of New York R. A. C. Smith; Colonel William Conant Church; United States Representative from New York Herman A. Metz; New York City Police Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo; banker James Speyer; former Lieutenant Governor of New York Timothy L. Woodruff; writer Robert Sterling Yard; Admiral Albert Gleaves; and reportedly between 69 and 80 congressmen who arrived via a special train from Washington, DC. Additional congratulations were sent via letter from former President William Howard Taft, Governor of New Jersey James Fairman Fielder and United States Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels. To attract tenants, Woolworth hired architecture critic Montgomery Schuyler to write a 56-page brochure outlining the building's features. Schuyler later described the Woolworth Building as the "noblest offspring" of buildings erected with steel skeletons. On completion, the Woolworth Building topped the record set by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower as the world's tallest building, a distinction it held until 1929.

1920s to 1960s

thumb|upright=0.8|alt=Photograph of the Woolworth Building and those surrounding it|Woolworth Building c.1913

During World War I, only one of the Woolworth Building's then-14 elevators was turned on, and many lighting fixtures in hallways and offices were turned off. This resulted in about a 70% energy reduction compared to peacetime requirements. The building had more than a thousand tenants by the 1920s, who generally occupied suites of one or two rooms. By this point, the building was worth $10 million and grossed $1.55 million per year in rent income. The Broadway-Park Place Corporation agreed to sell the building to Woolco Realty Co., a subsidiary of the F. W. Woolworth Company, in January 1924 at an assessed valuation of $11.25 million (about $ in ). The company paid $4 million in cash and obtained a five-year, $11 million mortgage from Prudential Life Insurance Company at an annual interest rate of 5.5%. The sale was finalized in April 1924, after which F. W. Woolworth's heirs no longer had any stake in the building.

In 1927, the building's pinnacle was painted green, and the observation tower was re-gilded for over $25,000 (about $ in ). The Atlantic Terra Cotta Company cleaned the Woolworth Building's facade in 1932. and the observation deck was closed after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. The next year, the building's owners replaced the elevators and closed off the building above the 54th story. The structure was still profitable by then, although it was now only the sixth-tallest building, and tourists no longer frequented the Woolworth Building. The Woolworth Company had considered selling the building as early as the 1960s, though the planned sale never happened. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) considered giving the Woolworth Building official city-landmark status in 1970. The commission ultimately declined to give the Woolworth Building a designated-landmark status because of the company's opposition to such a measure, as well as the increased costs and scrutiny. The lobby was cleaned in 1974.

The F. W. Woolworth Company commissioned an appraisal of the building's facade in 1975 and found serious deterioration in the building's terracotta. Many of the blocks of terracotta had loosened or cracked from the constant thermal expansion and contraction caused by New York's climate. The Woolworth Company still occupied half the building; its vice president for construction said "we think the building merits the investment", in part because F. W. Woolworth had used his own wealth to fund the building's construction. Initially, the company had considered replacing the entire terracotta facade with concrete; this was canceled due to its high cost and potential backlash from preservationists. The renovation, carried out by Turner Construction to plans by the New York architectural firm Ehrenkrantz Group, involved the replacement of roughly one-fifth of the building's terracotta. Since there were so few remaining terracotta manufacturers, so Woolworth's replaced 26,000 of the tiles with concrete lookalikes; many of those tiles had to be custom-cut. The estimated cost of the project had risen from $8 million to over $22 million. The LPC again considered the Woolworth Building for landmark designation in early 1982, shortly after the renovation was completed. Upon the request of the building's lawyers, the LPC postponed a public hearing for the proposed landmark designation to April 1982. That year, the building's entrance to the City Hall subway station was closed because of fears over crime. Venator formally placed the Woolworth Building for sale in April 1998.

Witkoff Group ownership

Sale and initial plan

thumb|upright=0.8|alt=Photograph of the Woolworth Building in 1985 with several sky scrapers, including the towers of the former World Trade Center in the background|The Woolworth Building in 1985, right, the former World Trade Center in the background

Venator Group agreed to sell the building in June 1998 to Steve Witkoff's Witkoff Group and Lehman Brothers for $155 million (about $ in ). Before the sale was finalized in December 1998, Witkoff renegotiated the purchase price to $137.5 million (about $ in ), citing a declining debt market. Venator shrunk its space in the building from eight floors to four; and Witkoff indicated that he would sell the upper half of the building as residential condominiums. That October, the company proposed a two-story addition to the 29th-floor setbacks on the north and south elevations of the tower, to be designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, who were also leading the renovation of the building. The LPC denied the proposal.

The company unveiled an ambitious plan in November 2000 that would have converted the top 27 floors of the building into 75 condominiums, including a five-story penthouse. The plan would have included a new residential lobby on Park Place, a 100-space garage, a 75-seat underground screening room, and a spa in the basement. The developers planned to spend $60 to $70 million on the conversion and to be ready for occupancy by August 2002.

Security increases and new plan

Prior to the September 11 attacks, the World Trade Center was often photographed in such a way that the Woolworth Building could be seen between the complex's twin towers. After the attacks occurred only a few blocks away, the Woolworth Building was without electricity, water and telephone service for a few weeks; its windows were broken, and falling rubble damaged a top turret. Increased post-attack security restricted access to most of the ornate lobby, previously a tourist attraction. New York Times reporter David W. Dunlap wrote in 2006 that a security guard had asked him to leave within twelve seconds of entering the Woolworth Building. However, there was renewed interest in restoring public access to the Woolworth Building during planning for its centennial celebrations. The lobby reopened to public tours in 2014, when Woolworth Tours started accommodating groups for 30- to 90-minute tours. The tours were part of a partnership between Cass Gilbert's great-granddaughter, Helen Post Curry, and Witkoff's vice president for development, Roy A. Suskin.

In June 2003, Credit Suisse First Boston provided $201 million in financing for the property spread across a $125.4 million senior loan, a $49.6 million junior interest and a $26 million mezzanine loan. In April 2005, Bank of America provided a $250 million (about $ in ) commercial mortgage-backed security interest-only loan on the office portion of the building. At the time, the building was 96% occupied, appraised at $320 million, and generated almost $18 million a year in net operating income.

By 2007, the concrete blocks on the Woolworth Building's facade had deteriorated because of neglect. A lack of regular re-surfacing had led to water and dirt absorption, which stained the concrete blocks. Though terracotta's popularity had increased since the 1970s, Suskin had declined to say whether the facade would be modified, if at all.

Mixed-use conversion

Sale and partial residential conversion

On July 31, 2012, an investment group led by New York developer Alchemy Properties which included Adam Neumann and Joel Schreiber, bought the top 30 floors of the skyscraper for $68 million (about $ in ) from the Witkoff Group and Cammeby's International. The firm planned to renovate the space into 33 luxury apartments and convert the penthouse into a five-level living space. The lower 28 floors are still owned by the Witkoff Group and Cammeby's International, who planned to maintain them as office space. The project was expected to cost approximately $150 million including the $68 million purchase price.

When the sale was first announced in 2012, the developers expected the building's conversion to be complete by 2015. A new private lobby was also built for residents and the coffered ceiling from F.W. Woolworth's personal 40th floor office was relocated to the entryway. Thierry Despont and Eve Robinson designed the building's new interiors with Miele appliances and custom cabinetry. Each unit also received space in a wine cellar, along with access to the restored private pool in the basement. After a soft launch in late 2014, units at the building were officially listed for sale in mid-2015. Alchemy initially intended to leverage an in-house sales staff and hired a director from Corcoran Sunshine to lead the effort. However, the new sales director left at the end of 2015 for Extell Development Company amid rumors of slow sales at the project. Following his departure, the company hired Sotheby's International Realty to market the units. The building's penthouse unit, dubbed "The Pinnacle", was listed at $110 million, the highest asking price ever for an apartment in downtown Manhattan. If it had sold at that price, the unit would have surpassed the record $50.9 million penthouse at Ralph Thomas Walker's Walker Tower, and even the $100.5 million record price for a Manhattan penthouse set by Michael Dell at Extell's One57 in 2014; the penthouse ultimately sold for $30 million in 2023.

Post-conversion

In 2015, The Blackstone Group provided a $320 million loan on the office portion of the building to refinance the maturing Bank of America loan from 2005. United Overseas Bank of Singapore provided a $220 million (about $ in ) construction loan for the residential conversion in June 2016. Due to delays, the conversion was expected to be completed by February or March 2019, about six and a half years after Alchemy bought the property. By February 2019, only three of the building's 31 condos had been sold, since the developers had refused to discount prices, despite a glut of new luxury apartments in New York City. The still-vacant penthouse's asking price was reduced to $79 million.

By 2021, Alchemy had sold 22 condominiums to tenants such as entrepreneur Rudra Pandey. At the time, 84 companies occupied 92% of the building's office portion, of which four tenants occupied 40% of the building's entire floor area. The office stories were refinanced again in 2025 with a $279 million loan from Blackstone.

Tenants

Early tenants

thumb|alt=Photograph of the tower from the east|Seen from the east

On the building's completion, the F. W. Woolworth Company occupied only one and a half floors. In 1931, the company relocated their general, out-of-town, and foreign offices from the Woolworth Building after building their own headquarters at 1 Wall Street. Columbia Records was one of the Woolworth Building's tenants on opening day and housed a recording studio in the skyscraper. In 1917, Columbia made what are considered the first jazz recordings, by the Original Dixieland Jass Band, in this studio.

Shortly after the building opened, several railroad companies rented space. The Union Pacific Railroad and Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad occupied the ground floor retail space with ticket offices. Other railroad companies that leased office space included the Alton Railroad, on the 13th floor; the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (Milwaukee Road), on the 14th floor; the Canadian Pacific Railway, Great Northern Railway, and New York Central Railroad on the 15th floor; the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, on the 17th floor; the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company, on the 19th floor; the Canadian Northern Railway; the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad; the Pennsylvania Railroad; the Atlanta, Birmingham and Atlantic Railway; the Kansas City Southern Railway; and the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad.

The inventor Nikola Tesla also occupied an office in the Woolworth Building beginning in 1914; he was evicted after a year because he could not pay his rent. The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America was present at the building's opening, occupying the southern half of the 18th floor after signing a lease in January 1913. Other early tenants included the American Hardware Manufacturers Association headquarters, the American Association of Foreign Language Newspapers, Colt's Manufacturing Company, Remington Arms, Simmons-Boardman Publishing headquarters, the Taft-Peirce Manufacturing Company, and the Hudson Motor Car Company.

Later 20th century

By the 1920s, the building also hosted Newport News Shipbuilding and Nestlé. The regional headquarters of the National Labor Relations Board also moved into the building in 1937, shortly after its founding in 1935. During World War II, the Kellex Corporation, part of the Manhattan Project to develop nuclear weapons, was based here.

During the early 1960s, public relations expert Howard J. Rubenstein opened an office in the building. In 1975, the city signed a lease for state judge Jacob D. Fuchsberg's offices in the Woolworth Building.

Higher education

The structure has a long association with higher education, housing a number of Fordham University schools in the early 20th century. In 1916, Fordham created "Fordham Downtown" at the Woolworth Building by moving the School of Sociology and Social Service and the School of Law to the building. The Fordham University Graduate School was founded on the building's 28th floor in the same year and a new Teachers' College quickly followed on the seventh floor. In September 1920, the Business School was also established on the seventh floor, originally as the School of Accounting. By 1929, the school's combined programs at the Woolworth Building had over 3,000 enrolled students. Between 1916 and 1943 the building was also home at various times to the Fordham College (Manhattan Division), a summer school, and the short-lived School of Irish Studies. In 1943, the Graduate School relocated to Keating Hall at Fordham's Rose Hill campus in Fordham, Bronx, and the rest of the schools moved to nearby 302 Broadway because of reduced attendance because of World War II.

The New York University School of Professional Studies' Center for Global Affairs leased on the second, third, and fourth floors in 2002 from defunct dot-com startup FrontLine Capital Group. The American Institute of Graphic Arts also moved its headquarters to the Woolworth Building.

21st-century tenants

By the early 2000s, the Woolworth Building was home to numerous technology tenants. Digital advertising firm Xceed occupied across four floors as its headquarters, Organic, Inc. took , and advertising agency Fallon Worldwide used two floors. Xceed terminated its lease in April 2001 during the midst of the Dot-com bubble collapse in order to move to smaller offices in the Starrett–Lehigh Building. One month after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) Northeast Regional Office at 7 World Trade Center was destroyed in the September 11 attacks, the commission's 334 employees moved into across five floors of the Woolworth Building. The SEC left for a larger space in Brookfield Place in early 2005. The General Services Administration took over the commission's space on November 1, 2005 and used it as offices for approximately 200 staff of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts and U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services System.

The New York City Police Department pension fund signed a lease for on the 19th and 25th floors in April 2002. The pension fund renewed their lease for another 20-year term in October 2010. Starbucks opened a location on the ground floor in the spring of 2003. In 2006, Levitz Furniture moved its headquarters to the 23rd floor from Woodbury, Long Island, after declaring bankruptcy a second time. The design firm Control Group Inc. leased an entire floor in 2006.

, the Lawrence Group handles leasing at the Woolworth Building. In May 2013, SHoP Architects moved the company's headquarters to the entire 11th floor, occupying of space. In February 2016, the New York City Law Department leased the entire fifth floor for the Department's tort office. Joseph Altuzarra's namesake fashion brand, Altuzarra, signed on to occupy the 14th floor in June 2016. In November 2017, Thomas J. Watson's Watson Foundation signed a lease to relocate to the 27th floor. In 2017, the New York Shipping Exchange moved into the 21st floor. In May 2018, architecture and design firm CallisonRTKL signed a lease for the entire 16th floor. The Vera Institute of Justice left the building's 12th floor a few months later for a larger space in Industry City, Brooklyn. , NYU was the building's largest tenant, followed by the government of New York City, the NYPD Pension Fund, and SHoP Architects. Richard Berenholtz wrote in his 1988 book Manhattan Architecture that, at the Woolworth Building, Gilbert "succeeded in uniting the respected traditions of architecture and decoration with modern technology".

In recognition of Gilbert's role as the building's architect, the Society of Arts and Sciences gave Gilbert its gold medal in 1930, calling it an "epochal landmark in the history of architecture". On the 40th anniversary of the building's opening in 1953, one news source called the building "a substantial middle-aged lady, with a good income, unconcern over years—and lots of friends".

Media

The Woolworth Building has had a large impact in architectural spheres, and has been featured in many works of popular culture, including photographs, prints, films, and literature. One of the earliest films to feature the skyscraper was Manhatta (1921), a short documentary film directed by painter Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand. Since then, the building has made cameo appearances in several films, such as the 1929 film Applause. It was also the setting of several film climaxes, such as in Enchanted (2007), as well as the setting of major organizations, such as in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016). The television show Ugly Betty used the Woolworth Building as the 'Meade Publications' building, a major location in the series, while one of the vacant condominiums was used in filming the TV series Succession in 2021. The building has also appeared in literature, such as Langston Hughes's 1926 poem "Negro" and the 2007 novel Peak.