Fashion Center Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, high-rise, Romanesque (architecture), 1922_construction

244-foot, 22-story Romanesque-revival office building completed in 1922. Designed by Henry Ives Cobb and Henry I. Oser, it is clad in dark-red brick and terra-cotta above a 2-story pink granite base, a result of a late-20th century remodeling. On the 7th Avenue facade the base has five bays, while it spans nine along 38th Street. The main entrance, in the middle bay on the avenue, is recessed in an elaborate, heavy ornamental stone round-arch with Romanesque detail including colonnettes, various detailed moldings, and a wrought-iron screen across the arch. The recessed entry has brass-and-glass doors, and there are round-arched windows in the side walls of the vestibule. Above the outer corners of the arch, there are a pair of square stone panels with inscribed circles and carved heads. The other bays have aluminum, brass, and glass storefronts. There is a freight entrance in the western half of the third bay from the east on 38th Street. The 2nd floor has large, brass-framed tripartite show-windows with very wide center panes. A dark-red band course with rope molding caps the base.

The upper floors have alternating bays of single- and paired window on the west facade, and three windows in each bay on the south facade. The 3rd floor is very elaborate, with slender, spiral Corinthian columns jutting out between the bays, originating from decorative bases, and pedestals at the top of the floor that in turn support carved terra-cotta griffin figures. A terra-cotta spandrel bans runs above the windows, with carved panels of ornate foliate designs, in turn surmounted by a cornice with a rounded, patterned underside. There is visible replacement brick at the upper floors, where the original sills and lintels have been removed from the windows.

A string course runs above the 13th floor, with another above the 16th. At the north half of the avenue facade, and the east two-thirds of the south facade, there is corbelling at the top of the 14th & 16th floors. At the other (corner) bays, the 17th floor has unusual paired sets of ornamental piers leaning out from the facade and supporting an ornamental band course. The next floor above the band course has larger corbelling. There are shallow setbacks every two floors above the 16th, each topped by a corbel course.

The exposed portions of the east elevation is clad in red-painted brick, with several bays of single-windows. The ground floor is occupied by Arno Restaurant, a Duane-Reade pharmacy, Starbucks coffee, and B&J Fabrics.