Cunard Building (New York City)
building in New York City
The Cunard Building, formerly the Standard & Poors Building, is a 22-story office building at 25 Broadway, across from Bowling Green Park, in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The Cunard Building was designed in the Italian Renaissance style by Benjamin Wistar Morris, in conjunction with consultants Carrère & Hastings. The Cunard Building's facade and principal first-floor interior spaces are New York City designated landmarks, and the building is also a contributing property to the Wall Street Historic District, a National Register of Historic Places district created in 2007.
The Cunard Building's main facade, on Broadway, is made of limestone and consists of three horizontal sections. The design employs setbacks and open "light courts" as mandated by the 1916 Zoning Resolution. The structure was designed around an irregular street grid and is located directly above a subway line that crosses the building site diagonally. The first floor interior contains an elaborately decorated lobby, as well as a similarly opulent Great Hall, which extends 185 feet (56 m) with a 65-foot-tall (20 m) dome. The remaining floors contain various offices and school spaces.
The Cunard Building was erected for the New York City office of British steamship operator Cunard Line; construction started in 1920 and the building was completed the next year. Upon completion, the Cunard Building's exterior and interior designs received critical acclaim, and the building was almost fully leased to tenants in various industries.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Cunard Building (New York City)” as building in New York City. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as building in New York City. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1143904. Authority coordinates are 40.706, -74.014. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2007, 1916 and 1920.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Cunard Building (New York City)”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Cunard Building (New York City) primary sources, Cunard Building (New York City) archive and Cunard research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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- Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
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This entry incorporates text from “Cunard Building (New York City)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.