The Epic

 skyscraper, apartment building

615-foot, 59-story Postmodernist mixed-residential and office building completed in 2007. Designed by Schuman, Lichtenstein, Claman & Efron, and Fxfowle Architects for Durst Fetner, the tower is mid-block, and has base elements extending to both 31st and 32nd Streets. On the 31st Street side is the main entrance to the tower, set back from the sidewalk with a tall lobby and facade of grey granite, glass and silver metal. On the lobby roof is a terrace garden used by the friars of the Franciscan Friary attached to the building. The Friary was built to replace the old one at the same site, owned by the St. Francis of Assisi Church next door. The friars bought adjoining land and invited developers to come up with plans, which became the mixed-use development that exists today.

On 32nd Street the tower is set behind a 7-story base, which has a setback above the 5th floor. This base is occupied by the headquarters for the American Cancer Society and the Hope Lodge treatment center and hospice. The Hope Lodge provides free housing for cancer patients, with 60 rooms. The friars and the American Cancer Society own their portions of the building, and the friars also have part-ownership of the apartments, which provides the church with regular income. The façade on 32nd Street incorporates an expansive glass and shadow box curtain wall to give the Society its own strong identity.

Most of the ground floor is deeply recessed and clad in grey granite, except for a glass-and-metal storefront near the center, which is occupied by an AT&T Device Support Center. On either side, a large metal column supports the upper floors of the base. To the left are entrance/exits for the underground parking garage, and service entrances, and to the right is the entrance to the American Cancer Society space, topped by a large granite band interrupting the glass curtain wall above the ground floor. At the 5th-floor setback the curtain wall is topped by a metal railing, and another marks the 7th-floor setback to the main tower. The west elevation of the base is clad in grey brick.

The tower is mostly clad in a curtain wall of glass with dark-grey metal mullions and light-grey spandrels dividing each floor. The exceptions are a strip of beige pre-cast concrete at the east elevation that has a single narrow window at each floor, and two narrow concrete strips running up the east facade. To the south of the western-elevation strip, the curtain wall projects out. Both the north and south facades are split in the middle by a bay of angled windows that projects out and runs up the upper two-thirds of the tower. The crown is formed by the two narrow concrete bands on the east facade extending up above the roof and creating a pair of tall fins that curve down toward the west end of the roof.

The Epic contains 460 apartment units.

www.theepic.com/