Downtown learns to run on current
The early named work gathers around Lower Manhattan and Union Square, where private plants, telephones, church work, and skyscraper systems made electricity part of a building's anatomy.
- Office
- Map
- Buildings
- Documents
Business in the city
The work takes an address.
The city path keeps Pattison Brothers concrete. Churches, skyscrapers, libraries, theatres, hospitals, campuses, and civic rooms become places where family work met public need.
Institutions become working plants
Hospitals, universities, theatres, and the new library needed power, motors, lifts, lights, and safety systems to co-operate as one disciplined organism.
The work moves north and continues
By the nineteen-twenties and nineteen-thirties the firm name appears in financial, religious, hospital, and courthouse work as New York's civic geography stretches uptown and into the Bronx.
1895 / Faith and social service
Grace Chapel and Mission Buildings
Grace Chapel is the young firm learning that electricity was not only for offices and factories. It was also for worship, care, parish rooms, and a little institutional city on one block.
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1897 / Tall-building plant
St. Paul Building
The St. Paul Building is the office stepping into height. It is not merely a commission; it is a test of whether a skyscraper can be made orderly inside.
Enter this place1906-1908 / Commerce and exchange
Methodist Book Concern Addition
The Methodist Book Concern is a quieter character: a publisher's building whose machinery had to serve offices, presses, lifts, heat, and institutional continuity.
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1897-1911 / Public house and landmark
New York Public Library
The Library is Frank in public. He is no longer only a consulting name in a trade column; the newspaper lets the family watch him guide hundreds of engineers through a civic machine.
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1909 / Theatre and spectacle
The New Theatre
The New Theatre is beloved family memory meeting the discipline of the record. It keeps the drama, but moves the credit to the right machinery.
Enter this place1904-1914 / Hospital care and power
Harlem Hospital Power House and Addition
Harlem Hospital is the public-health character: a building where electricity is not glamour but reliability, ventilation, heat, lifts, and the daily discipline of care.
Enter this placeReported 1913 / Campus heat, light, power
New York University Heights Power Plant
The NYU plant is a campus heart. Its work was not to be admired from the street but to let a hilltop university live as one connected body.
Enter this place1921-1923 / Commerce and exchange
New York Cotton Exchange
The Cotton Exchange is commerce turned into a building. By the nineteen-twenties, the firm is still present when finance needs elevators, electric work, and mechanical confidence.
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1926 / Church in the vertical city
Broadway Temple
Broadway Temple is a church trying to live in the vertical city. Its engineering story is elevators and current serving a congregation that built upward.
Enter this place1931-1934 / Public house and landmark
Bronx County Court House
The Bronx courthouse is the late witness. It appears after Charles's death and near the end of Frank's working life, showing that the firm name still had professional force.
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