At the time Ab. Cahan and the comrades of the Forward Association were plotting the height of the building, another Lower East Side enterprise was also planning a new corporate headquarters.  Sender Jarmulowsky announced plans for a twelve-story building for his bank at the corner of Orchard and Canal Sts., a mere two blocks away from the Forward's property on East Broadway. Talk of Jarmulowsky's intentions must have circulated around the neighborhood and may have contributed to the Forward Association's decision to go ahead with the taller of the two building plans under discussion. In addition, the bank building of M. and L. Jarmulowsky,  Sender's sons, at 165 East Broadway, only a few doors away from the Forward - seven stories tall and crowned by a clock tower - already dominated the skyline near Rutgers Square. The Forward Association surely would not have wanted bank buildings, ultimate symbols of capitalism, to dwarf its newspaper building. The Forward published a drawing of the proposed building on its front page on April 22, 1911. This drew an immediate response from the Groyser Kundes, a Yiddish periodical devoted to humor and satire. Kundes wags portrayed Karl Marx standing over the ten-story building lamenting the Forward's conversion to a capitalist enterprise, as exemplified by plans for such an imposing building.
 
The demolition of the two small buildings owned by the Forward Association at 173 and 175 East Broadway began in July 1911. Despite the setback to the building plans caused by difficulties capping the spring unearthed in August, the cornerstone laying took place on November 25, 1911. The ceremonies in honor of the occasion were lengthy and impressive. A crowd of 25,000 cheering people filled Rutgers Square and Seward Park. Prominent socialists of the period addressed the assemblage. The skeleton of the building was decorated with red banners and flags of the socialist and workers organizations in the city.  The band played the "Marseillaise." The cornerstone, decorated with socialist and American flags, descended from the top of the building, to the great enthusiasm of the crowd, who had waited eagerly for the event all day. Ab. Cahan was made an honorary member of the Bricklayers' Union and was accorded the honor of setting the cornerstone, which held an issue of the Forward and a copy of the Forward Association's constitution, in place.

The offices of the Forward moved into the new building on May 6, 1912, although the building was not completely finished until October.  The date of the move may have been influenced  by Sender Jarmulowsky since his new bank building opened for business on May 6 as well.  In his memoirs, Cahan described his great pride when he finally saw the completed Forward building, the tallest on the Lower East Side.  True, he admitted, there was another tall building, Sender Jarmulowsky's bank, but it was on a hidden corner in contrast to the Forward building's  impressive site, and  although Jarmulowsky's was twelve stories high, the Forward building was equally tall since some of its stories were really twice the height of ordinary floors. Although the Lower East Side skyscraper race essentially ended in a neck and neck tie, ultimately the socialist newspaper proved the more successful business enterprise. The Bank of  M. & L. Jarmulowsky ceased operation in 1914 and its seven-story building was cut down to three stories in 1918. Sender Jarmulowsky's bank failed in 1917 and many depositors lost their savings. The bank building on Orchard and Canal Sts., however, endured. The street level of the former bank is now an Internet cafe. Steam ventilation pipes at several of the upper windows may be evidence of sweatshops within.
 
In an age when building synagogues was the rage, a sign that Jews were staking a claim on the New York landscape, the Forward erected a secular Jewish center which it viewed in an almost messianic light.  Ab. Cahan's editorial of October 29, 1912, "Unzer Tempel" (Our Temple) reads in part:

. . .Years ago when a group of Jewish immigrants settled in America with the idea of founding colonies, the oldest of them, the religious, before anything else, would build a cabin and place an ark with a Torah scroll there.  That was their synagogue.  That was the center of their spiritual life . . .
 
The overwhelming majority of our immigrants slave in factories.  Socialism is the Torah of today's worker, and the Jewish worker considers this religion holy.
 
Our old religious Jews here have their synagogues.  Where is the synagogue of our Jewish workers?  Where is the temple of freedom, of equality, of brotherhood?  The Forward building will be the home of the Jewish socialist movement.  The Forward building is the temple of the workers' religion.

From our ten-story building will not only be published the daily Forward, the monthly Tsukunft, and books and brochures which will help spread education and light . . . Our Jewish immigrant population holds the new religion dear.  It built a temple.  It built a Forward.   It created a Workmen's Circle with hundreds of branches, which spread light; a Bays ha-Mikdash (ancient Temple in Jerusalem) was built.  The home of the Bays ha-Mikdash is the radiant ten-story building, whose dedication was celebrated last Shabbes.
 
The New York Times took note of the opening of the building and described it in what proved to be prophetic terms: "The new Forward building, a handsome ten-story structure, faced with marble and white terra cotta, towers far above its neighbors and forms a new and easily recognized landmark in that section of the east side." The building did become, as Cahan had hoped, a center of socialist activity. The building itself is a monument to socialism and displays the movement's emblem, a hand holding a torch, above the entrance in blue and gold, and as a decorative motif on the facade of the building. The faces of four socialist leaders, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and  Ferdinand LaSalle, are engraved in medallions  above the entrance.  The identity of the fourth figure requires further investigation and is most likely either Friedrich Adler or Karl Liebknecht. The Forward and the Workmen's Circle occupied  the building until 1974, when  both organizations moved to E. 33rd St. The building at 173-175 E. Broadway was utilized until 1998 by another type of temple, a Chinese religious organization. The Forward building was designated an official New York State landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in March 1986 in recognition of the building's significance as a socialist symbol and the Forward's role in the history of the Jewish immigrant community and the labor movement in the twentieth century. The former Forward building is currently being renovated into luxury condominiums. The facade has been cleaned and restored. The faces of the socialist leaders, hidden for many years by Chinese signs, have been revealed. Imagine the reactions of Marx and Engels to gracing the facade of a luxury building!