Finance History | 70 Pine Street — Fifteen Million Dollars for the Cities Service Tower

People treat American International Group as a 2008 rescue and a modern Midtown lease.

For more than thirty years the company's name sat on this Art Deco shaft.

Cities Service Company, later Citgo, built the 67-story tower between 1930 and 1932. It opened on 13 May 1932. The cost was 7 million dollars in Depression-era currency, raised by selling shares rather than by taking a construction mortgage.

At completion it was Lower Manhattan's tallest building and the world's third tallest, after the Empire State and Chrysler buildings. Clinton and Russell, Holton and George designed the setbacks, the limestone and brick skin, and the lighted spire.

AIG bought the tower in 1976. Maurice Greenberg later recalled the price as 15 million dollars in 1976 currency, paid because the insurer had outgrown its offices and was willing to bet on downtown New York.

The building became the American International Building. AIG opposed landmark designation while it owned the floors. After the 2008 rescue the firm agreed to sell the tower in 2009 as it repaid public capital.

New York City designated the exterior and the first-floor lobby as landmarks in June 2011. The office floors were converted to apartments in the mid-2010s.

The pin is the public sidewalk on Pine Street. The lobby is a designated interior. Do not treat the conversion as an invitation to wander upstairs.

The mechanism is an insurer that parked its balance sheet inside a Depression-era energy tower, then sold the same tower when the rescue required cash.

Photo: epicharmus, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. 70 Pine Street at dusk, when the building still carried the AIG name.