Otis Elevator Building

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7-story Italian Renaissance-revival office building completed in 1912. Designed by Clinton & Russell for the Otis Elevator Company. It is clad in brown brick with bays separated by vertical brick piers. There are large, single window openings in each bay of the ground floor, and two rectangular windows with limestone sills in each bay of the 2nd through 6th floors. At the top floor, there are three rectangular windows in each bay. All the windows are slightly recessed in brick enframements.

A decorative brick belt course runs between the 1st and 2nd floors, topped with deeply projecting, denticulated limestone sills under second floor windows. There are limestone cartouches and a denticulated belt course between the 6th and 7th floors, and limestone bands on the brick piers between the 2nd and 3rd floors, and between the 5th and 6th as well. The south, west and north facades are all crowned by a deeply-projecting copper roof cornice with dentils and brackets.

The building originally housed the pioneering elevator manufacturer's corporate headquarters as well as a regional sales office and repair and manufacturing facility. Over the course of the 20th century, Otis would provide elevators to a series of buildings vying for the height record—the Manhattan Company Building (1929-30), the Chrysler Building (1928-30), the Empire State Building (1930-31), the twin towers at the World Trade Center (1966-73), and the Sears Tower in Chicago (1970-73), were all equipped with Otis elevators. The Otis Elevator Company expanded their West Chelsea operations in 1928, acquiring an adjacent factory building at 549 West 26th Street. The firm retained its headquarters in the neighborhood until 1974, when it sold its West Chelsea property and moved to leased office space in East Midtown.

The building at 260 Eleventh Avenue was subsequently sold to a series of real estate investors and leased out as speculative office space. For a time during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the building also was home to the Les Mouches supper club.

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