Herald Square Building | commercial, office building

 commercial, office building

327-foot, 24-story Neo-Classical office building completed in 1930. Designed by Clinton & Russell, it sits on the site of the original New York Herald Building, a 2-story Venetian palace built in 1893 for paper that now lives on only in the International Herald Tribune. The earlier building was demolished 1921, but its name remains in the square to its south.

Clinton & Russell's building is angled to follow Broadway on the west side, filling the wedge-shaped block, with a chamfered northwest corner. The 4-story low-rise portion to south was completed in 1940 to a design by H. Craig Severance. The base, clad in stone and glass and lined with storefronts, aligns with that of the main building. The main west and east facades are five bays wide, with another four bays at the south extension. The north facade is also five bays wide, and the south facade is three bays wide at the extension. There are main entrances at the center of the ground floor on both the west and east sides of the main building (on Broadway and Sixth Avenue), both framed in polished black granite, and with brass-and-glass doors and tall transoms.

The rest of the base of the main building includes the 2nd-4th floor, clad in limestone. The middle bays on the east and west, above the entrances, are narrower than the others; wider stone piers separate each bay, with narrower stone piers subdividing the bays into halves. Within each bay subdivision, vertical steel mullions and other black metal framing separates window panes, while glazed, green spandrel panels separate the floors. A similar organization is found on the north facade. A pair of flagpoles frame the entrances at the base of the 2nd floor.

The upper floors are clad in buff-colored brick. On all four of the facades the end bays have three windows; the middle section has eight windows on the west side, ten on the north side, nine on the east side, and five on the south side (also, the middle window of the three in the end bays on the south side is wider). A dentiled stone band course runs above the 5th floor. Between the 14th & 15th floors on all four facades, the middle of each end bay has a projecting, carved stone panel with dentils at the bottom; grooved lines runs up from the panel, framing the middle windows on the floors above.

The middle section of the west, north and south facades have small setbacks above the 16th & 17th floors, while the end bays have deeper setbacks above the 19th floor. There is another small setback around most of these three facades at the 21st floor, at the end bays at the 22nd floor, and the center section at the 23rd floor. The south facade rises vertically to the roof line, with the setbacks from the east and west sides expressed at the edges. Two projecting piers frame the center windows, joining at the top floor, and ending with a flagpole. The middle section of the south facade also has some carved spandrels above the 16th, 21st & 23rd floors. A parapet wraps around the roof line. A 2-story, recessed mechanical penthouse, clad in brick, and with its own parapet, crowns the north end of the roof.

The top three floors of the low-rise extension at the south are faced in limestone, with four windows in each bay, divided by metal framing. Green spandrel panels separate the bays of the 3rd & 4th floors, and spandrels with signage are between the 2nd & 3rd floors. The ground floor is occupied by a Banco Santander branch, a Duane-Reade pharmacy, a Starbucks coffee, and a FedEx Office.