 An internal review of the organizational structure found that its New York City operations were housed in multiple buildings across the city, and were thus inefficient.The company's president from 1919 to 1924, Howard Ford Thurber, sought to centralize the company's operations into a single large headquarters to "satisfy the present demands and to reasonably anticipate future requirements".In the early 1920s, the New York Telephone Company started acquiring the entire block between West, Barclay, Washington, and Vesey Streets.