McGraw-Hill Building

 office building, skyscraper, Art Deco (architecture), 1931_construction

485-foot, 33-story Art-Deco/Early-Modern office building completed in 1931. Designed by Raymond Hood, this is the second McGraw-Hill Building; the first was located at 469 Tenth Avenue. The third and current building to house the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company HQ offices is at 1221 Avenue of the Americas (6th Avenue), in the Rockefeller Center and was built between 1969-1972.

Located on West 42nd Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, one of the two blocks that also houses the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the McGraw-Hill Building had been the tallest building in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood for decades. It lost that status with the building of One Worldwide Plaza. It is still visible from a distance, but is dwarfed by the newly constructed Orion building on the same block, a 58-story tall residential complex.

The exterior walls of this building are panels of blue-green terra-cotta ceramic tiles, alternating with green-metal-framed windows, with a strongly horizontal orientation. The building was the only New York building shown in the influential International Style exhibition in 1932, and it's also been cited as a landmark of Art-Deco design. The main, north facade has seven bays, and the rear, south facade is slightly wider with eight.

The building has setbacks at the 11th, 16th, 32nd ,and 34th floors on the north and south sides, with an additional setback at the 7th floor on the south. From the east and west the setbacks produce a stepped tower profile, but from the north and south they are invisible, giving the building the illusion of being a slab. Each story comprises a horizontal band of windows having the appearance of "ribbon windows" but actually composed of seven sets of four double-hung windows each, separated by painted metal strips. At each floor the window bands are separated by continuous courses of blue-green terra-cotta blocks, the varying size and tone of which produce a somewhat shimmering effect. The ground level on West 42nd Street comprises two storefronts, each three bays wide, flanking the entrance in the central bay. The eastern store originally housed the McGraw-Hill Book Store, and the western one a bank. Immediately above the ground floor, in place of the terra-cotta tiles, runs a blue metal course with silver painted bands. Letters superimposed over this course spelling out "McGRAW-HILL" have been replaced with the letters "GHI," the emblem of the building's more recent owner. The entrance walls curve in from the main front, and are finished in alternate dark blue and green steel bands separated by silver and gold colored metal tubes. These bands are carried into the lobby of the building on green enameled steel walls. The 32nd and 33rd floors are set back and apart from the main tower of the building; they originally housed the executive offices. The eastern and western ends of the 34th and 35th floors are covered with a series of horizontal ribs, fanning a pylon-like crown for the east and west fronts of the building.

The lobby was altered in the 1980's by Valerian Rybar who was known as the world's most expensive decorator. It was subsequently gutted in 2021 to the dismay of preservationists.

www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-old-mcgraw-hill-buildin...
usmodernist.org/AF/AF-1931-03-2.pdf