Corbin Building (New York City, New York)

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135-foot, 9-story Romanesque-revival office building completed in 1889. Designed by Francis H. Kimball, the narrow, wedge-shaped building was restored by the MTA and its base incorporated into the new Fulton Street Transit Center completed in 2014. The building was named for Austin Corbin, a president of the Long Island Rail Road, and is faced primarily in sandstone and brick, with bright-red painted cast-iron and orange terra-cotta ornament.

Most of the building rises eight floors, with a small 1-story pavilion at either end. The narrow Broadway facade has one round-arched opening that is repeated at the far west bay of the John Street elevation, forming an end-piece that is capped by a small cornice (which also runs along the rest of the ground floor). The 2nd-4th floors of this end-piece contain a triple-height round-arch on both facades, that encompasses recessed, bright-red cast-iron angled bay windows with intricate patterns in the spandrels. The inner edge of the arch is equally detailed at the top, and cast-iron emblems decorate the tops of the piers. Here, the sandstone facing of the lower three floors gives way to orange brick on the upper floors.

The center section of the John Street facade has triple windows in the center, and a bay of double windows at each end; those on the 3rd floor have individual projecting sills, while the cornice above the ground floor acts as a continuous sill course. Below the eastern bay of double windows is another round-arch, but this one is wider and more ornamented than the two at the Broadway end. The doorway is recessed back in steps, with angled walls and roof creating a church-like quality. The actual arched portion is flanked by a pair of spiral half-columns, and the areas above the arch feature exquisite carvings. There is an addition bay to the east that mirrors the Broadway end-piece with its 3-story red cast-iron bay windows and 4th-story round-arch (the ornamentation is identical). The ground floor, however, differs. Between the sturdy piers is a service entrance below three smaller windows with round-cornered hoods. The center section of the ground floor was updated for the transit center. It has broad piers of black cast-iron, with recessed storefront-style windows in between. A suspended metal canopy over the middle section has signs that read "FULTON CENTER" and icons for the various train lines served. The upper half of the ground floor consists of grids of metal and translucent glass.

The center area of the John Street elevation's 4th floor has a small cornice serving as a continuous sill course for the intricate terra-cotta round-arched windows (four triple bays in the center, and a double bay at each end, set between the end-pieces). The next three floors contains 3-story round-arched very similar to those on the 2nd-4th floors of the end pieces, with red cast-iron bay windows. These arches, however, are framed in orange terra-cotta, and have an iron emblem between each one, near the tops. The end-pieces on these floors consist of paired 2-story round-arches on floors 5-6, framed in ornate terra-cotta and each containing two square-headed windows with red iron frames and terra-cotta spandrels; and a pair of double round-arches on the 7th floor, again with terra-cotta ornament.

A cornice sets off the 8th floor, which has three square-headed windows in each bay. The roof line has a corbelled cornice, above which rise the two 1-story pavilions at either end, which have five, small round-arched windows in each facade. The pavilions are capped by dentiled cornices and steeply-sloped, red metal roofs.

Upon completion, Corbin’s bank moved into the ground floors while the upper stories were leased. In August 1907 the Corbin Banking Company failed, to be replaced on the first floor by The Chatham National Bank of New York. In 1937 the building was owned by the Collegiate Reformed Dutch Church. In May of that year it leased the entire building to Herman A. Groen, a wholesale jeweler, for a term of 21 years. In 2003, the MTA began its plans for a new transportation hub on the block. By 2004, the Corbin Building was added to the State and National Registers of Historic Places and the MTA agreed to incorporate it into the transit hub.

The renovation began in 2012, and was completed two years later. The first floor was restored to its 1917 appearance and original features such as the boiler are visible to the passing subway passengers.

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