For all the talk about converting New York City’s languishing office buildings into housing, just one neighborhood has done it on a large scale: the financial district.
In the past few years, luxury apartments have been carved out of a 1907 office tower at 84 William Street and an Art Deco skyscraper at 1 Wall Street that was once the Bank of New York’s headquarters. Five other office buildings are being gutted and turned into residences, including a project that is the largest such conversion in the United States.
But the high-rise conversions are just part of a wave of modifications in the area that started decades ago with the transformation of low-rise buildings and continues today with enormous glass and steel towers.
The financial district name has become something of a misnomer as the neighborhood, once derided as a desert after the bankers commute home, becomes a vibrant…
