A Bit of Gothic Flair Returns to a Tower on 42nd Street
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A third-floor window overlooking 42st Street. The entire floor was once part of the International Buyers’ Club, opened in 1917. CreditPablo Enriquez for The New York Times
Long before the World Trade Center rose downtown, Irving T. Bush tried to create one just a few steps from Times Square.
His Bush Terminal International Exhibit Building — or Bush Tower — was a slender 30-story skyscraper that shot up like a great Gothic arrow at 130 West 42nd Street. Finished in 1918, it was meant to be an indispensable hub where buyers from stores everywhere could see the latest wares of hundreds of manufacturers, all under one roof.
By no coincidence whatsoever, many of those manufacturers were also tenants of the 200-acre Bush Terminal complex (now Industry City) in Sunset Park. Buyers with neither the time nor the inclination to shuttle among 140 buildings on the Brooklyn waterfront could come instead to a tower in the heart of Manhattan, where they would be cosseted in Jacobean splendor at the three-story Buyers’ Club before going upstairs to see the goods…
A Bit of Gothic Flair Returns to a Tower on 42nd Street
