Clock Tower Building Condominium (New York City, New York)

 office building, high-rise, NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, 1890s construction, Renaissance Revival (architecture)

270-foot, 12-story Renaissance-revival office building completed in 1898 as an office building. Designed by Stephen D. Hatch, and McKim, Mead & White, it was originally the home office of the New York Life Insurance Company, which moved to Madison Square in 1928. The original building was actually completed in 1870. Stephen Decatur Hatch was hired to expand it eastward to Lafayette Street, but died before construction could be completed. The firm of McKim, Mead & White took over the work, and completed the extension in 1894, following Hatch's design. The company then decided to replace the original building as well, and McKim, Mead & White provided an Italian Renaissance-Revival style "palazzo-like" design with a clock tower whose clock was manufactured and installed by the E. Howard Clock Company.

The result is a long, narrow structure with end pavilions, faced in white Tuckahoe marble except on the Catherine Lane elevation, which is of light-colored pressed brick with terra-cotta moldings. The Broadway tower pavilion, in smooth, rusticated marble three bays deep and three bays wide, has a monumental portico entrance with a crowning clock and bell tower. The 3-story base is surmounted by a heavily modillioned cornice with an ornate bronze railing. The entrance has a recessed, 2-story semi-circular vestibule with a screening colonnade of four pilasters and two central columns of polished pink granite, which support a balustrade. The capitals, an inventive elaboration of the Ionic style with swags and rosettes characterize the entire tower pavilion. Decorative acanthus foliate panels appear between the windows that flank the vestibule. The 3rd-story windows are round-arched and lion heads with suspended garlands of fruit are applied to the intervening walls. Cartouches accent the corners. The vestibule contains two round-arched, double-height doorways with acanthus foliate and scallop shell detailing. These flank a central doorway with elaborate cast bronze window enframements above modern single-story replacement doors. A richly coffered ceiling enframes a central carved eagle.

Handsome secondary cornices divide the shaft of the tower pavilion at the 4th, 6th, 7th, 9th & 10th floors, forming a 1-2-1 rhythm, and decorative panels with cartouches adorn the walls at the 7th and 10th floors. Acanthus foliate panels appear beneath the square-headed windows of the upper floors. The upper two floors are visually unified by arches and carved garlands beneath a rich modillioned cornice.

Rising above is an attic story topped by a balustraded parapet with four impressive large stone eagles, the emblem of New York Life. The clock tower rises an additional two floors. The 4-sided clock has 12-foot faces with Roman numerals. Originally the clock tower was topped by a bronze sculptural group with four kneeling figures supporting a skeletal globe, surmounted by an eagle. Designed by the well-known architectural sculptor Philip Martiny, the group was removed sometime after 1928.

The eastern pavilion, five bays wide and four deep, has a central, low round-arched entrance, flanked by paired columns. A balustrade appears above the entrance and continues above the paired windows to each side. At the 2nd & 3rd floors the central windows have depressed arches and are divided in three by colonettes. The flanking windows at the 2nd floor are round-arched with colonettes forming a Palladian motif. Paired round-arched windows appear at the 4th, 5th, 11th & 13th floors. The remaining floors have square-headed windows. These floors are articulated by band courses and cornices that conform to those of the side elevations, and wall surfaced are ornamented with broad pilaster-like panels. A 1-story secondary clock tower rises above the roof parapet. The clock has one face and the tower a copper dome.

The north elevation has a large central projecting entrance pavilion with a double-height round-arched doorway, flanked by two sets of superimposed, paired 1-story pilasters. Round-arched windows with colonettes and balustrades appear at each side of the doorway. The entry pavilion is three bays wide and at the upper stories follows the configuration of the overall elevation except that the central bay contains triple rather than paired windows.

There are nine bays to the west and seven to the east of the pavilion. To the west at the 1st and 2nd floors square-headed paired windows separated by by semi-detached composite columns appear in each bay. The bays at all other floors are separated by pilasters. The 3rd & 4th floor have round-arched windows as do the 10th and uppermost floor. The remaining floors all have square-headed windows.

The bays to the east follow the same configuration (except that the gradient allows for an additional story), which is interrupted by large double-height windows at the 1st & 2nd floors, reflecting the double-height interior general office. These windows are separated by paired semi-detached columns with composite capitals and a balustrade appears at the level of the interior balcony.

The southern elevation between the end pavilions is organized in a regular series of bays with paired square-headed windows separated by pilasters similar to those on the eastern pavilion. The central three bays project slightly. There are nine bays to the west and seven to the east. A modillioned cornice separates the top two floors from those below and round-arched windows appear at the uppermost story beneath a balustrade.

The Clock Tower Building continued to be used as an office building, housing some city agencies as early as 1939. The City of New York bought the building in 1967 and moved the Criminal Court, Summons Part here, along with several city agencies. Offices included the Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services (CASES). The city retained use of the building until the early 2010s, when it sold the building to Elad Group and the Peebles Corp. The site will be converted into condominiums and the former landmarked interior banking hall will be reused as an event space set to complete in late 2019.

108leonard.com/
www.nyc.gov/html/dcas/html/about/man_clocktowerbldg.sht...
s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/1513.pdf
www.nytimes.com/2018/11/23/realestate/act-iii-for-a-low...
newyorkyimby.com/2018/09/inside-look-at-historic-108-le...
www.tribecatrib.com/content/firefighters-battle-2-alarm...