Navarre Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, skyscraper, Art Deco (architecture), 1930_construction

512-foot, 43-story Art-Deco office building completed in 1930. Designed by Sugarman & Berger, it was originally called the Navarre Building. It was later redeveloped in conjunction with the shorter building that wraps around it, and both were renamed the Millennium Towers in 2000 but has reverted since to it original name.

The building has a 5-story Moderne-style stone-faced base with eight bays on 7th Avenue and five on 38th Street. The bays are separated by brown granite-faced piers with incised vertical lines, rising to tapering ornamental tops. The metal spandrels between the tripartite windows have abstract Moderne ornament. There are two entrance: the one in the 2nd from southernmost bay has a pair of brass doors and brass panels, topped by Moderne-style ornament. Two bays to the north, the other entrance is narrower but taller, recessed up a small set of stone steps, and is topped by elaborate ornamental panels, including gold eagles. The other ground-floor bays have modernized storefronts. The ground floor on the north facade consists mostly of a polished granite wall; it has two wide and low show-windows framed in stainless steel at the east end, with a storefront and recessed freight entrance at the west end.

The upper floors are clad in buff-colored brick. On the east facade, from the 5th-16th floors, the bays have (from south to north) two windows, two windows, four windows, two windows, two windows, two windows, and one window. Above the 16th floor is a setback to the upper tower portion, which has a middle bay of four windows, flanked by a bay of two windows on either side, and further recessed end bays of two windows. The north facade has five bays of three windows and a single-window bay at the east end, with the upper tower portion above the setback having three bays of three windows flanked by end bays of two windows. There is almost no ornament on the upper floors except for projecting rough-faced stone cornices below each window bay at the 6th floor.

The end bays set back again above the 36th floor, with a shallow setback at the middle bays above the 38th floor, and a final setback above the 41st floor. There is some cast-stone Art-Deco ornament at the setbacks. Above the end-bay setbacks, the walls angle at 45-degrees as the top of the tower takes on a semi-octagonal shape. The top floors explode in a display of Art-Deco ornament, with grooves and geometric patterns in the piers and all four sides of the crown. The tower portions of the south and west facades match those on their opposite sides. The ground floor is occupied by Dunkin' Donuts, Sterling National Bank, and Neapolitan Express restaurant.