When you mention a place like New York City, people typically think of Wall Street, the Skyline, Broadway, the New York Stock Exchange and views of the Statue of Liberty. New York City is an incredible place with constant activity. At the heart of it all is Lower Manhattan, an area filled with landmark structures such as Trinity Church, 911 Museum, the Charging Bull on Wall Street, the Staten Island Ferry and the Brooklyn Bridge along with numerous high rises and busy streets. Surrounding the buildings and legendary structure is the former Western Union Building at 60 Hudson Street. OceanTech recently completed a decommissioning project for one of our Fortune 500 clients at the 60 Hudson Street Data Center facility. Over the years, we’ve done a number of projects in New York and we’ve had multiple decommissioning assignments in the 60 Hudson Data Center but every trip to NYC is unique.Designed to be the headquarters for Western Union, the building was constructed from 1928 to 1930. The 60 Hudson Street building was the New York City hub for worldwide communications during the heyday of the telegraph serving as Western Union’s home for 43 years. The brick structure was pretty typical for construction projects from that time. The New York City landmark goes from dark brick on the bottom to lighter bricks at the top with Art Deco detailing. The entrance lobby was reminiscent of a church with the large windows above the entrances. The 24-story building was designed with lots of floor space for offices. The original structure also had its own cafeteria and a gymnasium along with classrooms so the Western Union messengers could continue their education. Oh, and the building had about 70 million feet of cable which is the equivalent to 233,333 football fields or roughly 13,250 miles of wire. In 1973 Western Union moved its headquarters to New Jersey, but the building stayed in the world of communications becoming a telecom hub for AT&T and others.Then, with the explosion of the internet, 60 Hudson Street would continue its proud history of being a leader in the telecommunications industry by becoming one of North America’s premier colocation centers.Currently, the flagship facility for Digital Reality, a real estate investment trust that invests in carrier-neutral data centers and provides colocation and peering services, 60 Hudson Street now houses more than 100 domestic and global telecommunications companies and has been billed as one of the most important colocation and interconnection facilities in the entire U.S.Digital Reality, has built what they call the “NYC Trifecta,” 60 Hudson Street Data Center, 32 Avenue of Americas Data Center and 111 8th Avenue Data Center, three strategically placed colocations which are directly linked to each other, thus providing seamless connectivity for its tenants.OceanTech again worked in a live environment where we decommissioned high-end gear for a client that was migrating their network from 10Gb to 100Gb. The project included the after-hours removal of multiple large networking devices. The 60 Hudson Street facility is an excellent space to work in with premier air-conditioned space, state-of-the-art access control and surveillance systems that exceed industry standards.So, from its beginning in 1928 to today, 60 Hudson Street has stayed true to the Western Union motto: “Connecting families around the world.”