In the 1956 Harrison & Abramovitz designed Socony-Mobil Building on East 42nd Street (just east of Madison) — formerly the only centrally air-conditioned building in the world and the first to be clad entirely in pleated stainless steel panels (and still the largest of that type in the world) — resides the disgraced Wells Fargo Bank company.
Disgraced, because for more than a decade, until 2015, in order to boost the bank’s stock price, Wells Fargo’s top executives pressured low-level employees to secretly create more than two million unauthorized and false checking and credit-card accounts. Tried. Guilty. Fined 180 Million dollars.
Disgraced a second time because of ‘fraudulent’ loans and sales. Tried. Guilty again (2020). Fined 3 Billion dollars.
A truly unruly, wild west barroom type of scofflaw, Wells Fargo appears to be.
Anyway, in the lobby of this super New York skyscraper is, appropriately, a Wells Fargo stagecoach — an original, the real thing — in blood red livery with olive green velvet/velour upholstery, minus the dust and the four horses that pulled it, and the driver and shotgun armed escort — Wyatt Earp was a Wells Fargo rider and maybe escorted this very coach.
For those to whom a Wells Fargo stage coach symbolizes the wild west and its Indian wars, this is a must see especially if you know John Ford’s 1939 western ‘Stagecoach’, which introduced John Wayne to the world.
Worth a peak when you’re sightseeing the Chrysler Building, Grand Central, the Chanin Building and environs like Library Way and ‘Alice and Olivia’.