Amazon New York City Headquarters (New York City, New York)

111-foot, 10-story Italian-Renaissance office and showroom building completed in 1910. Designed by Hale & Rogers (partnership of Herbert Dudley Hale and James Gamble Rogers) as a department store, it has a wider rear facade on 35th Street. An entrance was altered by Starrett & van Vleck. It opened as J.P. McCreery's department store, and later became Orhbach's Department Store. When it was converted to offices, a major tenant was Fairchild Publications. It is a major showroom facility for the tabletop gift industry. The building was renovated by the architectural firm of Fox & Fowle in 1989, and a new main entrance on 34th Street was constructed in 2014.

The building is clad in limestone, with a rusticated grey granite ground floor. The south facade on 34th spans seven bays, while the north facade has bays. The main, south facade has modernized storefront in each of the bays except the center bay, which has a 2-story round-arch with a recessed glass entrance, framed in grey granite.

String courses divide the upper floors, up to a dentiled cornice above the 8th. There are two windows in each bay, except for the center bay which has three. At the 4th floor the piers around the center bay are ornamental carvings, and ornate brackets support a narrow stone balcony spanning the middle five windows at the 5th floor. Breaking the cornice at the 8th floor is another stone balcony, spanning only the center bay, and supported by larger, more elaborate end brackets at the piers. This balcony has a wrought-iron railing, and matching brackets at the end piers. The top two floors are separated by paneled spandrels within the bays, and the end piers have 2-story pendants. At their tops, the piers have stylized capitals, and the facade is crowned by a green copper roof cornice with brackets and dentils.

The rear facade on 35th Street has a 2-story base of rusticated grey stone. Like the south facade it has a wider central bay flanked by three more bays on each side, as well as an additional section of three bays at the west end. These three bays have service entrances, two of them with roll-down metal gates over vehicle entries; a metal cornice covers all three. The other bays have green-painted metal and glass infill, with a few small pedestrian doors. At the 2nd floor, the wider center bay is divided into three parts by green-painted cast-iron fluted pilasters. The rusticated piers are each topped with green copper wolves' heads, and a band courses sets off the upper floors.

The 3rd floor, in limestone, has raised panels on the piers, which stretch across the tops of the windows, creating quasi-surrounds that have keystones. At the center bay and the two end bays (not including the additional western section) there are scrolled brackets supporting stone balconies with balustrades at the 4th floor. The rest of the facade matches that on the south side, with the addition of three extra bays at the west end. The westernmost window openings before the additional bays are filled in at each floor with either metal louvers or stucco.

The western elevation is clad in red brick. Amazon.com is the sole occupant of the building's office space since leasing 400,000sft in 2014 for its 5,000 employees in the city. Its elevators are located on the perimeter as opposed to the core and therefore create a "racetrack" floor plan for easy navigation.

hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.c033529549?urlappend=%3Bseq=173...
www.nytimes.com/1987/11/22/realestate/perspectives-34th...
archive.org/details/followingillustr00amer/page/37/mode...
usmodernist.org/PA/PP-1930-05.pdf
cdm16694.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15052co...
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Coordinates:  40°44'57"N 73°59'6"W
This article was last modified 2 years ago