Underwood Building

USA / New Jersey / Hoboken / Vesey Street, 30
 office building  Add category

228-foot, 18-story Neo-Classical office building completed in 1912. Designed by Starrett & Van Vleck for the Underwood Typewriter Company, it is clad in brown brick above a tall 2-story base. The broad piers have tall granite bases at the ground floor, with cream-colored stone at the 2nd & 3rd floors, where they terminate with capitals supporting a stone cornice with dentils, modillions, and decorative circles the frieze. The infill in the south facade's three bays, and the west facade's five bays is black cast-iron.

The 3rd floor is transitional, with brick piers decorated with stone panels, and capped by a stone cornice with stone ovals at the piers, which divide the upper floors into bays of paired windows. The 15th-17th floors are framed by dentiled and bracketed cornices, and decorated with white terra-cotta on the piers and spandrels. Round-arches cap the windows on the 17th floor, and the larger, projecting top cornice carries an intricate, green wrought-iron railing around the south and west facades. At the 18th floor, the piers terminate in decorative stone capitals, joined by a stone parapet and coping.

A mechanical penthouse with a sloping, tiled roof rises above, set back from the building line. The north and east elevations lack the terra-cotta detailing and cornices from the more prominent facades. A fire escape winds it way down the north end of the west facade on Church Street.
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Coordinates:   40°42'43"N   74°0'35"W
This article was last modified 11 years ago