At the time of its completion in 1897, the Gillender Building was, depending on ranking methods, the fourth- or eighth-tallest structure in New York City.

The building contained a fully wind-braced steel frame with masonry infill, and included twelve columns atop three caisson foundations.

The Gillender Building was occupied by financial firms through its uneventful 13-year existence and was perceived as economically obsolete from the start.

In 1718, most of the present-day block was sold to a church congregation, while the corner lot, cut into narrow strips, remained in possession of the de Peysters and the Bayards.

[3][7][8] Charles Frederick Briggs and Edgar Allan Poe operated the offices of the Broadway Journal on this site from 1844 until 1845.

[1] The Gillender Building's articulation consisted of three horizontal sections similar to the components of a column (namely a base, shaft, and capital).

Starting from the ninth floor, it gradually re-acquired ornaments and arched windows as if in anticipation of the ornate Italian Baroque cupola above.

[23][4] These caissons consumed the underground space that could be otherwise used by bank vaults or retail storage, further reducing the building's value.

The caissons contained air chambers, above which were placed steel foundation grillages composed of 20 I-beams, and then a series of brick piers laid atop Portland cement.

[10] One observer, writing about the building's frame upon its demolition, said that "the quality of paint and the application of the same were decidedly inferior", and fireproofing was provided mostly by the terracotta cladding.

[20] During the late 1890s, Helen L. Gillender Asinari was the owner of a six-story office building on the corner of Wall and Nassau Streets, having inherited ownership of the land from her grandfather George Lovett, who had purchased the site in 1849.

[3] In 1896, Gillender Asinari decided to replace it with a 300-foot (91 m) tall tower, capitalizing on a tenfold increase in land value.

[29] Advertised as fully fireproof and as the most modern tower on the market,[15] the Gillender Building was occupied by financial firms through its short lifetime and was perceived as economically obsolete from the start.

[9] Bankers Trust, which was established in 1902, had been a tenant at the Gillender Building for six years[31][32] and their choice of site was motivated by its location near the New York Stock Exchange.

[31] The company, with J. P. Morgan on the board,[31] grew rapidly and intended to land itself permanently in the "vortex of America's financial life".

[9] Later, it was disclosed that the trust had been negotiating purchase of the Gillender Building since April 1909;[22] the deal would have consolidated enough land for a new tower, with a roughly square footprint measuring about 100 by 100 feet (30 by 30 m).

[3] The Engineering News-Record said that "the case is the more notable because the Gillender Building is of unusual proportions, being very narrow and for its width exceptionally high.

Openings about 10 feet (3.0 m) square were cut through the floors of all stories above the fourth, allowing demolition contractors to deposit garbage.

[10] Most of the steel in the Gillender Building was found to be relatively free of oxidation, with a few exception, as the frame was protected by the exterior terracotta cladding.

[15][47] The New York Times described the demolition thus:[47] The famous Gillender Building, which when erected twelve years ago on the northwest corner of Nassau and Wall Streets was called the tallest skyscraper in the world, its tower rising some 300 feet above the streets, has gone the way of other landmarksThe work was timed so that the deconstruction of the steel frame was no more than two stories behind that of the brickwork.

[43] By June 12, all that remained of the Gillender Building was a single level of its steel frame visible above protective scaffolding.

[51] Demolition was officially completed June 16, 1910, one day ahead of schedule,[47][44] although work on its underground foundations did not commence until a month later.

[1][53] The Gillender Building is the site of a final scene in Jed Rubenfeld's The Interpretation of Murder, a 2006 novel reconstructing Sigmund Freud's 1909 visit to New York.

The narrator and Nora Acton (linked to Freud's case study of Dora) meet for the last time in the Gillender cupola, watch the New York skyline, well aware that the building will be soon torn down.

[54] In M. K. Hobson's Hotel Astarte, The Warlock "had his fingernails polished by a mute Chinese woman he kept in locked in a small room in his office on the top floor of the Gillender Building on Wall Street".