Seaman's Bank for Savings Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, 1927_construction

264-foot, 20-story office building completed in 1927 as the headquarters of the Seamen's Bank for Savings, a mutual bank formed to encourage thrift by seafaring men. Designed by Benjamin Wistar Morris, with an addition at 73 Pine Street designed by Voorhees, Walker, Smith & Smith and completed in 1957. The original building is faced almost entirely in rusticated granite blocks. It has a 3-story base, with a shaft rising above to modest setbacks and a short tower. The Wall Street elevation is laid out asymmetrically, reflecting its dual purpose as banking hall and office building. The westernmost portion, with the original round-arched office entrance, is set apart from the grander and larger round-arched banking hall entrance. That entrance is deeply recessed, and outlined with a spiral molding and a series of sculpted stone squares with maritime images. It is flanked by elaborate light fixtures. The entrance is also flanked on either side by a storefront and a modern double-height window, each surmounted by a large stone panel with a sculpted sailing ship.

Above rises a 10-story shaft in four unequal bays, with two windows in each of the western bays and the far eastern bay, and a 5-window bay in between. The bays are separated by projecting, uninterrupted granite piers. At the 4th floor, where the shaft begins, the windows are round-arched, with ornamentally carved stone panels below them and stone shields above their arches. The windows on the upper floors are square-headed, except for several windows at the top of the shaft. Additional panels with maritime imagery at located at the top of the shaft. The granite surrounding the windows is darker in color than the uninterrupted granite piers.

Set back from the top of the shaft are tower-like forms with ornamental arches and octagonal piers. The Pearl Street elevation is seven bays long at the base, but in the upper floors the bays are arranged as a 9-window central bay, with a pair of 2-window bays on either side. The double-height windows over storefronts are similar to those on Wall Street, and the upper floors are similar in treatment as well.

The 14-story addition on the north side of the lot is clad in plain tan brick, with simple rectangular windows, and setbacks above the 7th & 11th floors. It has loading bays on Pearl Street, and a long window and entrance at the westernmost end on Pine Street. A skybridge connects the upper stories with 70 Pine across the street.

archive.org/details/forgingmetropoli00dolk/page/50/mode...
usmodernist.org/AF/AF-1928-06-1.PDF
www.americanbuildings.org/pab/app/pj_display.cfm/879156