1400 Broadway (New York City, New York)

 commercial, office building, skyscraper

446-foot, 37-story Art-Deco wedding-cake-style office building completed in 1931. Designed by Ely Jacques Kahn, it is clad in white brick above a 4-story stone base, four bays wide along Broadway and nine bays along 38th Street, with a wing extending through to 39th Street that spans three bays. The ground floor is faced in dark-grey granite; the main entrance is in the 2nd from northern bay on Broadway, with three doorways (two revolving) in brass and glass, topped by a brass band with geometric patterns. The other bays have plate-glass storefronts. There is a small secondary entrance on 38th Street, in the 4th bay from the east. The 2nd-4th floors are clad in lighter-grey granite, with each bay containing a tripartite window flanked by a single-window on each side; the side windows are separated by beige-painted pilasters, and all the windows have pale red framing. There are opaque black glass spandrels between the 2nd & 3rd floors in each bay, and beige stone spandrels with geometric patterns between the 3rd & 4th. Directly above the main entrance, the 2nd floor has a decorative, intricately patterned grid of brass and black glass, flanked by projecting flagpoles.

The upper floors have four windows in each bay, with uninterrupted brick piers and narrower intermediate piers between each window. The brick spandrels have narrow, vertical notches at the edges, and brick headers above each window. A few of the windows are replaced with black metal louvers.

The first setback occurs above the 10th floor at the eastern two bays. Next is an extremely shallow setback above the 13th floor, and a deeper setback above the 14th floor. This 2-floor pairing of shallow and deeper setbacks is repeated on the higher floors as well. The first setback at the four western bays, and all four bays of the Broadway facade occurs above the 17th-18th floors. The 4th bay from the east, however, continue three floors higher, and the two inner windows of the adjoining bays continue two floors higher, creating pavilion-like structures that further break up the facade. Unlike all the other flat-edged setbacks, the tops of these pavilions have crenelated parapets. Two more paired setbacks occur at the 22nd-23rd floors and 27th-28th, with two more pavilions extending 2-3 floors higher. There are individual shallow setbacks above the 32nd, 33rd & 34th floors, with the main roof line at the 35th floor. A 2-story penthouse rises up from the western two-thirds of the building, with the western wall angled out to a shallow point. On the south side of the penthouse, the end bays have large single-windows, and the middle section has six narrower windows. Above the top (37th) floor, are three projecting Art-Deco finials at the south facade.

The north facade, on 39th Street, matches the other facades on the lower floors. Its first setback is above the 10th floor, with additional cascading setbacks to the roof line (slightly deeper than on the other facades), and with four similar pavilions at the center bay. The east elevation, also clad in white brick, begins eight bays wide, with triple-windows. Due to its lower setbacks, it is narrower than the rest of the building. It narrows to just one and a half bays at the main roof line, as the width drops at the setbacks on both sides. There are two brick chimneys running up the walls, one on the main east facade, and one on the further recessed east elevation of the 39th-Street wing.

The ground floor is occupied by a Shoe Repair shop, and a Subway sandwiches on 39th Street, by Ziani Apparel, and Le Pain Quotidien on Broadway, and by Man Made barber shop, and European Wax Center on 38th Street.

usmodernist.org/AF/AF-1931-01-1.pdf