1932 Spofford and Freedman Supervue of New York City and the Port Authority Building

This is a 1932 Spofford and Freedman Supervue of New York City published by the Port Authority of New York to promote the newly-opened Port Authority Commerce Building. It is the earliest presentation of Spofford's iconic super view we have identified. The Supervue occupies 3/4 of the recto, and information about the Commerce Building occupies the rest of the recto and the entire verso.

The Supervue

In Spofford's inimitable style, the view looks northwards on Manhattan from a presumptive point high above Governor's Island. Coverage stretches as far as Van Cortlandt Park, thus including much of the Bronx and parts of adjacent Queens, Brooklyn, and New Jersey. Important buildings appear in profile, including bridges, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, Grand Central Station, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and more. Neighborhoods are labeled, including Greenwich Village, Little Italy, Chelsea, the Financial District, and the Theatre District. This last area, the Theater District, is further detailed via an inset in the lower left, in which specific theaters are named. Along the Hudson, passenger piers are labeled according to the carrier that operated them: White Star, Red Star, Cunard, Hudson River Night Line, etc.

111 8th Avenue

111 8th Avenue was completed in 1932. This building was designed to alleviate congestion caused by unloading cargo from the Hudson River piers to passenger and freight trains on the West Side Line. When the building opened, the first floor and basement were known as 'Union Inland Termina #1' and were used to transport goods by truck to and from railroad lines and shipping piers on the Hudson River. (The original High Line elevated railway was also built to help alleviate this congestion). Cargo was dropped off on 15th Street, sorted inside the building, and picked up on 16th Street. 800 shipping firms were shipping outbound freight from 111 8th Avenue by the beginning of 1933. The floors above the immense freight terminal were just as important. Commerce Hall, an exhibition hall, occupied the second floor. Some tenants in the offices on the floors above were the New York Trust Company, the Woolworth Company, Rand McNally, and Works Progress Administration (WPA). The Port Authority's offices were on the 15th floor. Commerce Hall closed in 1938 and was converted to commercial use. The building was 95% occupied in 1940, but by the end of the decade, the volume of freight handled through the building had declined drastically due to a shift away from rail to trucks. Other tenants moved out during the 1950s and 1960s, and the Port Authority moved to the World Trade Center in 1973.

Realopco Inc. bought the building in July 1973 for $24 million. The building continued to be a popular base of operations for several companies, with tenants renting between 70 and 90 percent of the space in the 1980s and 1990s. Taconic Investment bought the building in 1997 and sold it to Google for a reported $1.8 billion in 2010. It is now popularly known as the 'Google Building' and is seen as the company's East Coast headquarters.

Publication History and Census

This map was created by Spofford, copyrighted by Samuel Freedman, and published by the Port Authority of New York to promote the newly-opened Port Authority Commerce Building. The features Spofford Superview was used for multiple promotional and real illustrations from 1932 to the 1950s. This variant is the earliest we are aware of. This is the only known cataloged example.