U.S. Express Building

 office building, skyscraper, 1907_construction

341-foot, 23-story neo-Renaissance office building completed in 1907 for the United States Express Realty Company. Designed by Clinton & Russell with G. Harold Mansfield, the building has a U-shaped plan with tall wings arranged around a light court. Faced in white terra-cotta on three facades, it has a 5-story base (on Greenwich; because the site slopes, it is 4 stories on Trinity Place), a transitional 6th floor, a 13-story shaft, another transitional floor, and a 6-story upper section with modest setbacks above the 20th & 22nd floor.

The base is rusticated, and features an arcade of double-height round-arches on the south and east elevations, supported on polished granite plinths. The three southern bays on the Trinity Place facade have half-circle panels filling the tops of the arches, ornamented with medallion carvings. The bottom two have walls deeply recessed behind the arcade, while the third has a storefront at the building line. The more northern arches are also filled with storefront, and have smaller double-arched segments below the main arch in each bay. At the far north bay is a simple, smaller round-arch. The southern facade has the same arcade design as the southern bays on the east elevation, totaling six bays, with the plinths growing taller as the site slopes downward.

Above the arches are paired, square-headed windows. Each pair is recessed in elaborately carved terra-cotta surrounds, with joined dentiled sills and small Corinthian colonnettes separating the windows. A dentiled band course with a fret-pattern sets of the two upper floors of the base, the lower floor with paired square-headed windows, and the upper floors with paired round-arched windows. A wider band course caps the base.

Above, the rustication ends, and the transitional 6th floor has simple terra-cotta surrounds around each pair of square-headed windows, with carved panels between each bay. A dentiled cornice sets off the shaft, which continues the division of paired windows and simple surrounds. The shaft is unadorned until a dentiled cornice underlines the upper transitional floor, which has large eagle sculptures adorning the piers.

The top seven floors have classically-inspired terra-cotta ornament on the piers and spandrel panels between windows. The 20th floor, the last one before the first setback, has round-arched windows, as does the top floor, which is slightly further set-back. The northern elevation is partially visible above the shorter neighboring building, but plainly designed. The ground floor is occupied by a grocery store, a convenience store, Stapleton Shoe Co., Berlitz Language Center, City Blossoms florist, Greenwich Jewelers, and a small gift shop.

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