International Telephone Building
433-foot, 35-story Art-Deco office building completed in 1928. Designed by Buchman & Kahn for Abraham Lefcourt, it quickly became the International Telephone & Telegraph Company, it has a 3-story base of rusticated limestone, which centers on three enormous round-arched entrances, one in the center of the Broad Street facade, and one in each of the chamfered corners on South William and Beaver Streets. The Broad Street arch has a large console bracket keystone, and is flanked by bronze torch-like light fixtures. It is flanked on either side by four 1-story rectangular openings with storefronts. Over the openings on either side of the main entrance are panels supported by sculpted angel-like figures inscribed "INTERNATIONAL TELEPHONE BUILDING". Above each opening is a group of three narrow rectangular windows. An addition was later designed by Louis S. Weekes.
A projecting band course sets off the 3rd floor, in which each bay consists of a group of three windows. It is capped by a dentiled cornice. The arch in the chamfered corner on South William Street has two entrances, each set within a rounded metal frame adorned with classical colonnettes, with a decorative metal grille above. In the apse is a polychromatic mosaic showing the eastern and western hemispheres of the globe, and an angel, clouds, sun and stars which unites the world with electricity. Below this are ornamental bands with alternating images of a human figure and a telephone pole.
Above the 3rd floors, on all three elevations, the tower rises as a brown brick shaft with a variety of setbacks, and windows set in vertical bands. In the central area of the shaft, the brick is quite plain, but at the corners the setbacks create towers in which the windows are separated by brick spandrels in typically Art-Deco abstract geometric patterns. Similar geometric patterned brick occurs in the upper stories, especially at the setbacks, where the building's massing and ornament becomes more elaborate.
During World War II the building was a hub for communications with American submarines operating in the Atlantic Ocean. ITT moved out long ago, and over the years 75 Broad became a multi-tenant office building. The building was taken over in default in the late 1980s, when the future of office properties in the downtown area seemed bleak. In the early 2000s was to returned back to a block dedicated mainly to hi-tech telecoms tenants. Millennium High School, founded in 2002, occupies the 11th, 12th & 13th floors. The ground floor is occupied by Wong's Custom Tailor, Barclay Rex Smoking Lounge, a Wells Fargo bank branch (ATM only), and a Duane-Reade pharmacy.