The floors are also unusually strong, designed to carry 200-to-300-pound-force-per-square-foot (9.6 to 14.4 kPa) live loads. Features Īs it was built to house telephone switching equipment, the average floor height is 18 feet (5.5 m), considerably taller than in an average high-rise. Whyte claimed that it features the tallest blank wall in the world. There is a series of large, protruding ventilation openings on the 10th and 29th floors. There are six large protrusions from the rectangular base which house air ducts, stairs and elevators. The exterior walls have no windows (other than the entrance) and are made from precast concrete panels clad with flame-treated textured Swedish granite faces. Its style has been generally praised, with The New York Times saying it is a rare building of its type in Manhattan that "makes sense architecturally" and that it "blends into its surroundings more gracefully" than any other skyscraper nearby. The Long Lines Building was designed by architect John Carl Warnecke in the Brutalist style and completed in 1974. Architecture View looking up from the adjacent street Īfter the destruction of the World Trade Center in the Septemattacks, AT&T Local Services restored lost facilities they acquired from the former Teleport Communications Group based there, to 33 Thomas and 811 Tenth Avenue. The alarms were not detected until it was too late to maintain uninterrupted power. But due to scheduled training, the check was not performed, and one plant went on battery backup. After switching power sources, standard procedure was to check all the equipment power supplies, known as DC plants, for problems. The request was part of a previous load shedding agreement, and the switch had been performed successfully in the past, but on this occasion, it went wrong. The problem arose when the electric utility, Consolidated Edison, asked AT&T to temporarily stop drawing electricity from the grid and instead use the building's on-site generators. More than 5 million calls were blocked, and Federal Aviation Administration private lines were also interrupted, disrupting air traffic control to 398 airports serving most of the northeastern United States. On September 17, 1991, management failure, power equipment failure, and human error combined to disable AT&T's central office switch at 33 Thomas. 33 Thomas is still used for telephone switching, but some of the space is also used for highly secure datacenters. ĪT&T gradually moved switches and other facilities from their former AT&T Long Lines headquarters building at 32 Sixth Avenue, just a few blocks away, completing the move by 1999. The AT&T Long Lines Building is now commonly known by its street address, 33 Thomas Street. The Long Lines Department became AT&T Communications in 1984 after the Bell System divestiture. The building was a core part of the AT&T Long Lines Department, housing solid-state switching equipment that required tight security and ample space. The location was previously the site of cast-iron buildings, typical of the area, the facades of which were preserved before demolition. The building has also been described as the likely location of a National Security Agency (NSA) mass surveillance hub codenamed TITANPOINTE. The CLLI code for this facility is NYCMNYBW. However, it is not used for incumbent local exchange carrier services, and is not a central office. Designed in the Brutalist architectural style, it is a telephone exchange or wire center building which contained three major 4ESS switches used for interexchange ( long distance) telephony, as well as a number of other switches used for competitive local exchange carrier services. It stands on the east side of Church Street, between Thomas Street and Worth Street. 40☄3′00″N 74☀0′22″W / 40.71678°N 74.00610°W / 40.71678 -74.00610ģ3 Thomas Street (formerly the AT&T Long Lines Building) is a 550-foot-tall (170 m) windowless skyscraper in the Tribeca neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States.
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