Cushman Building (New York City, New York)

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161-foot, 12-story Beaux-Arts office building completed in 1898. Designed by C.P.H. Gilbert, its ground floor is clad in black marble, with brass capitals on the piers and framing the show windows. The ground floor is capped by a dentiled limestone cornice. Above, the Maiden Lane elevation is divided into four bays by wide piers and the Broadway elevation has two bays, with double windows up to the 7th floor. On Maiden Lane, the two outer bays have single windows, with double windows in the center bays.

The 2nd floor is clad in buff-colored brick with horizontal terra-cotta bands on the piers. The upper floors each have a continuous stone sill course at the base of the windows, wrapping around the corner. Much of the brick on the corner has been replaced by a lighter shade. Each window has a splayed stone lintel. Above the 7th floor, the Broadway facade's double windows become single windows. A cornice between the 8th & 9th floors expands into a narrow balcony in front of the center two bays on Maiden Lane, supported by ornately brackets. There used to be a similar balcony in front of the two Broadway-side windows, but it is now missing; the remnants of the brackets remain.

A broadly projecting metal cornice tops the 10th floor, with brackets and dentils and a deep fascia board. A smaller modillioned metal cornice caps the 11th floor, which has two additional outer windows on the Broadway elevation. Above this rises the steep copper mansard roof. There are two dormers with tall rounded pediments on the Maiden Lane elevation, with a single dormer and pediment on both of the narrower elevations. A metal fire escape runs down the easternmost bay of the Maiden Lane facade.

Many of the most prominent American jewelers and clockmakers of the time first set up shop on Maiden Lane, including William Barthman Jewellers, whose bronze and glass clock still tells the correct time to this day from where it lies embedded in the sidewalk, in front of the Cushman Building's corner.

Barthman Jewelers occupied the ground floor continuously from the time of completion until the 1990s, when they moved into the building next door at 176 Broadway. The ground floor is now occupied by The Vitamin Shoppe.

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