The Marc (New York City, New York)

USA / New Jersey / West New York / New York City, New York / West 54th Street, 260
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433-foot, 42-story postmodern residential building completed in 2004. Designed by Frank Williams & Associates, the beige-brick slab tower with multiple chamfered corners rises from atop a 4-story podium base that contains a parking garage, and retail on the ground floor.

The base is faced in pre-cast concrete with a grey granite water table. The main entrance is at the center of the north elevation on 54th Street, with glass doors flanking a glass revolving door, below a stainless-steel and translucent glass canopy; the canopy is rounded at the end, suspended from two poles, and has cylindrical light fixtures at the front corners, mirrored by smaller ones on the piers at the top of the ground floor. The other ground-floor bays have plate-glass storefronts, except for the eastern one, which has an entrance/exit to the parking garage. The eastern bay and the 2nd from the west are the widest, with the center bay just slightly wider than the other two. The narrow west end bay has concrete infill, while the other bays have metal lattice screens shielding the parking facilities behind. The west facade on the avenue spans 13 bays - the end bays and the 6th bays in from each side have concrete infill, while the others have more metal lattice screens. Plate-glass storefronts line the entire width of this facade at the ground floor. The south facade on 53rd Street matches the bay layout of the north facade, and also has a garage entrance/exit at the east end; the middle bay, however, has a deeply recessed, double-height, opaque glass wall with a glass double-door at the lower right serving as a secondary entrance to the lobby. There are pre-cast concrete panels along the top of the base at each facade, with columns of five stacked stainless-steel cylinders ornamenting the piers, except for those at the middle bays; here the piers extend up above the base and form open skeletal framed squares that attach to the tower portion of the building.

The tower has 12 bays on the east and west sides; the middle two have double-windows, and the outer bays recess back in a series of chamfers to create four corners on both sides of the east and west elevations. The first two bays flanking the center bays have triple-windows, each set further back than the previous bay; the next two bays double-windows; and the end bay, again set further back, has double-windows. The windows at the first two outer bays, and the bay before the end bays wrap around the corners onto the narrow south- and north-facing side walls, extending for two panes at the inner of these bays, and three panes at the outer one.

All of the windows have blue-green-tinted glass. The narrower north and south facades have two bays of double-windows at the center; the other bays are formed by the setbacks of the outer bays on the east and west elevations. There are exposed concrete floorplates running across the piers.

The tower has an open-frame top of numerous boxes around a central core, with a smaller set of fewer boxes stacked on top, surrounding the rooftop water tank. The top is illuminated with colors that can change at night. The building contains 394 apartment units. The ground floor is occupied by Cascade Cafe, a Duane-Reade pharmacy, and Duet Karaoke.
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Coordinates:   40°45'51"N   73°59'2"W
This article was last modified 7 years ago