Standard Arcade Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, Neoclassical (architecture), 1927_construction

448-foot, 37-story Neo-Classical office building completed in 1927. Designed by Severance & Van Alen, it is clad in brick, with limestone and terra-cotta trim by the Federal Terra Cotta Co. It is arranged as a 4-story base with a 13-story shaft leading into a recessed tower above. The limestone base has four 4-story tall fluted piers with Corinthian capitals, which create two narrow side bays and one large central bay, originally the entrance to a bank. Though the 3-story area around the entrance has been altered with metal and glass infill, the original entrance survives, with its frieze and triangular pediment. In the 4th floor, above the central entrance, the windows are separated by sculpted panels. Each side bay has an entrance at the ground floor, with the northern one now serving a storefront. Both have friezes adorned with swags and the numeral "50".

The 5th floor, also faced in stone, is transitional, and set off by stone band courses, with dentils on the lower one. Above this, the shaft rises for 12 floors as a series of vertical window bays, separated by uninterrupted brick piers. The shaft, like the base, is divided into two narrow side bays and a wide center bay. The side bays each have a pair of windows, separated by a narrow brick pier; the central bay has four windows, separated by wider piers. The main setback of the shaft is marked by a projecting cornice, with the floors directly above continuing in a series of setbacks to a narrow, 3-bay-wide tower on the south end of the building.

The New Street elevation is substantially shorter than the Broadway elevation, and differs in design, though it too is classically-inspired. Above its ground floor, with storefronts, there is a 3-story, stone-faced base divided into narrow side bays and a wide central bay by stone piers - a more modest version of the base of Broadway. Above a stone-faced, transitional 4th floor, the building rises as a brick-faced shaft, with a series of setbacks at odd angles leading to the narrow, 3-bay wide tower.

The ground floor on Broadway is occupied by Pret A Manger restaurant, and City Sports.

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