Barnes & Noble (New York City, New York)

 store / shop, bookstore, Queen Anne style (architecture), book café, 1881_construction

6.5-story Queen Anne-style commercial building completed in 1881. Designed by William Schickel as the headquarters of the Century Publishing Company, which published the popular "The Century Magazine" for adults and St. Nicholas Magazine for children, it spans through the block from 17th to 18th Street.

The Century Building is clad in red brick with bluestone and terra-cotta trim. The two street fronts have similar composition, but the Queen Anne style 17th Street elevation which faces out onto Union Square is considerable more ornate. On this side the facade is divided into three bays and is articulated in three horizontal sections: a 1-story base, a 4-story midsection, and a 1.5-story roof broken by a double tier of dormers. The ground floor is faced with stone; the piers are treated as pilasters with high pedestals and impost blocks - the thicker corner piers are rusticated, the narrower inner piers decorated with grotesques. In the westernmost corner is a round-arched entrance to the upper floors. This portal is framed by pilasters and surmounted by a richly carved pedimented overdoor. The rest of the ground floor is given over to a plate-glass and green cast-iron storefront. Thin cast-iron colonnettes with foliated shafts frame the central retail entrance and subdivide the eastern bay into three sections. Above the show windows are transoms, now mostly covered by canvas awnings.

Above the ground floor the red brick facade has stone and terra-cotta trim, with narrow piers subdividing the bays. The main piers are slightly projected and are articulated as superimposed giant pilasters with stone bases and stylized capitals in which terra-cotta panels with floral reliefs are substituted for conventional foliage and volutes. The lower set of pilasters are rusticated and have red terra-cotta panels with sunflower at the top of the 2nd floor. The upper pilasters are channeled and have white terra-cotta panel capitals. Above the windows the brick wall surfaces are articulated by stone string courses and sills which are underlined by terra-cotta moldings.

At the 2nd floor, the pilaster which bisects the center bay is much wider than in the other bays and is distinguished by a richly carved stone Corinthian capital and by a terra-cotta panel depicting a potted sunflower in an arched surround. This pilaster serves as a base for the facade's most imposing feature, a 2-story, projecting elliptical stone oriel which occupies the center bay on the 3rd & 4th floors.

Richly ornamented with classical motifs, the oriel is divided into three bays by pilaster-faced piers and is crowned by a triangular pediment over the slightly projected center bay. The plate-glass and leaded glass transoms in the narrow end bays curve to follow the line of the oriel.

In the outer bays both the 3rd & 4th floor windows have segmental-arched enframements decorated with stone keystones and skewbacks. On the 5th floor the center bay has three segmental-arched window openings with keystones and imposts. In the outer bays there are two flat-arched window openings per bay again decorated with keystones and imposts. Terminating this section of the facade is a Doric entablature, composed of a stone architrave, brick and terra-cotta frieze and stone cornice. In the outer bays these are decorated with sunbursts, in the center bay with wreaths and swags.

Crowning the building on 17th Street is a 1.5-story attic which reads as a gambrel roof from Union Square. It has a double tier of dormers; the lower dormers are brick with stone and terra-cotta trim. The center dormer has two equally-spaced openings, the lower wider outer dormers have three openings consisting of a regularly spaced central light and two narrower sidelights. The stained glass window in the western dormer probably dates from 1888 when there was a fire on this floor. Framing the windows are brick pilasters with plain Tuscan stone capitals. These carry a Doric entablature with a stone architrave and cornice and frieze composed of brick triglyphs and terra-cotta metopes, enriched in the center bays by swags and rosettes. The 2nd tier of terra-cotta-faced dormers dating from 1913 are considerably simpler in design. Divided by piers into a wide central light and narrower sidelights they are articulated with corner pilasters and entablatures. Set between the dormers along the roof line is a brick balustrade with raised terra-cotta panels and a stone coping. Stylized volutes join the balustrade to the center dormer. Molded brick chimney stacks rise from the ridge or gable walls.

On 18th Street the facade is divided into five bays, each three windows wide. As on 17th Street, there is a 1-story base, 4-story midsection, and an attic - here, however, the attic is only one story high and has a flat roof. On the ground floor the bays are separated by banded brick and stone piers. They have stone bases and stone Tuscan capitals which are enriched by egg-and-dart moldings. Iron piers divide each bay into three openings. Like the storefronts on 17th Street these are divided into an iron base, plate-glass windows, and transom. The bases are faced with wrought-iron grilles that conceal basement windows. The western bays have been considerably altered; with red brick infill and a large freight door with a metal roll-down gate.

On the upper floors the composition of the 17th Street facade is also repeated though in simpler form. Capping the midsection is a brick and stone entablature ornamented with paired stone console brackets above the major piers. On the attic floor the major piers are channeled and have stone bases and capitals. Crowning the building is a brick frieze and cast-iron cornice with iron brackets at the corners of the roof.

Specific features of the Century that relate to the Queen Anne style include the two-story oriel window, the asymmetrically placed entranceway, and the giant brick pilasters with floriated relief panel capitals. Other notable features of the facade include the richly carved stonework, featuring 17th and 18th-century motifs including garlands, shells, grotesques, and an overdoor panel depicting feeding birds set amid tendril forms; the delicate ironwork cast by J. B. Cornell and Sons, and the handsome relief panels and moldings in terra cotta, a material that had only just come into use for large-scale commercial and public buildings. Equally impressive is the fish scale-shingled gambrel roof framed by massive chimney stacks and punctuated by dormers, a brick and terra-cotta balustrade, and a cresting of terra-cotta sunflowers.

Initially the dormers were crowned by pedimented tablets, a favorite Queen Anne motif; however, in 1913s Edison Gage added a second tier of dormers repeating the basic articulation of the original dormers, but substituting terra cotta for brick. Aside from this change, the Union Square facade has remained largely intact and is something of a rarity in that it has retained its original cast-iron and plate-glass storefront. Unfortunately, many of the building's small-paned leaded-glass windows, so characteristic of the Queen Anne style, have been lost in recent years. However, there are still leaded-glass transoms in the side bays of the oriel and in all but the westernmost window bay on the fifth floor and leaded-glass upper sashes in the eastern and western sixth floor dormers.

After almost 35 years in the building, The Century Company moved out in 1915. Long term tenants that remained into the 1920s included Johnson & Faulkner, upholsterers, and Earl & Wilson, shirts and collarmakers. The building sat vacant for many years before being restored in 1994–1995 by Li/Saltzman Architects, housing a Barnes & Noble bookstore on four floors.