The Crest Condominiums

 skyscraper, condominium, NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, Art Deco (architecture), 1929_construction

404-foot, 34-story Art-Deco residential building completed in 1929. Designed by Delano & Aldrich as an office building known as the Wall & Hanover Realty Building, and later the Brown Brothers Harriman Company Building. It was the only skyscraper designed during the firm's career. It has elevations on three streets, with a 5-story stone-clad base, with a tall, buff-colored brick shaft rising to a series of setbacks. The base is organized as a 4-story colonnade of flat ribbed pilasters supporting a 5th story in place of an entablature. The ground floor is faced in light-colored stone blocks, with square windows and storefronts. In the 2nd, 3rd & 4th floors, the windows between the pilasters have spandrels adorned with fasces. Between each 5th-story window is a large stone image of an ancient coin. The corner at Wall and Hanover Streets is chamfered, one bay wide, with a polished bronze door enframed by marble and topped by a triangular pediment. Above, there are square windows at the 4th & 5th floors. A modillioned band course caps the base.

The shaft is organized into bays by wide uninterrupted brick piers; each bay has a pair of windows separated by a narrow, uninterrupted brick pier, and a spandrel in an abstract geometric pattern. The Wall Street elevation is divided into six bays; the almost identical Beaver Street facade has five bays. The long elevation on Hanover Street bends at the corner of Hanover and Exchange Place (which dead ends into the building), and has a deeply recessed setback above the 5th floor. The uppermost floors are slightly set back from the main shaft, and clad in a slightly darker, brown brick. The top floor returns to the same buff-colored brick, and has large octagonal window openings at each bay, set beneath a cornice of typically Art Deco zigzags and projecting geometric gargoyles. Above the cornice, a pitched metal roof rises to a crest of iron finials.

The building was used as offices until conversion to condominiums in 2004 by Avinash K. Malhotra Architects, renamed The Crest. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 16, 2005. An underground parking garage is accessed from Hanover Street.

The ground floor is occupied by a United States Post Office, Thomas Pink apparel, and La Maison du Chocolat.

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