Bricken Textile Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, Art Deco (architecture)

410-foot, 33-story Art-Deco office building completed in 1930. Designed by Buchman & Kahn, it is clad in gold and brown brick above a 5-story limestone base. The east facade on Broadway has five bays, the north side on 41st Street spans eight bays, and the west facade on 7th Avenue has six bays. There are main entrances on both Broadway (in the middle bay) and 7th Avenue (3rd bay from the north); both are recessed and faced in black granite with brass trim. The other ground-floor bays have storefronts. The entire 2nd-3rd floors are covered by an advertising band on all three facades. The fluted piers, tripartite windows, and black iron spandrels of the 4th floor are visible above the signage band. The 5th floor has banded piers and three windows per bay, divided by thinner stone piers that bulge toward the centers. It is also known as the W.T. Grant Building.

The upper floors also have three windows per bay. The four middle piers on the east facade, and the five middle piers on the other two facades, are faced in tan brick and angled outward at 45-degrees, springing from banded stone bases at the bottom of the 6th floor, and ending in stone capitals at the top of the 17th floor, where the first setback is located. The bays between these middle piers also have tan brick on the intermediate piers, and spandrels with a vertical band of gold brick flanked by two bands of brown brick. The outer bays are clad in brown brick, with flat piers, and horizontally banded brick spandrels that cross over the piers. The spandrels between the 15th & 16th and 16th & 17th floors have three horizontal blocky projections aligned vertically at the middle bays, and on the outer bays there are three vertical projections aligned in a horizontal row, with a band of slightly outward-bulging panels to the outside.

There are additional setbacks above the 20th, 24th, 26th, 27th, and 31st floors. At the first set-back level each of the bays have gold brick piers with brown brick spandrels, and the narrow piers between the windows are composed of vertical bands of alternating stone blocks and small spheres. At the next setback, the northern bay on the two side facades, and the end bays on the north facade, the brick is entirely of the brown variety, while at the other bays both the main and intermediate piers are gold brick (the spandrels are still brown brick). At each succeeding setback on the east and west sides, an additional bay changes to the brown brick. On the north facade, only the end bays (which now have four windows) and the two middle bays set back above the 24th floor; the two other bays extend to the 26th floor setback. Above the 31st-floor setback, the inner half of the two middle bays continue to the 32nd floor, with angled sides. Above the final setback, at the 33rd floor, rises a triple-height mechanical penthouse. It is clad in brown brick at the edges, with horizontal gold banding; at the center of each facade, three triple-height round-arches are framed in fluted gold brick, surmounted by four ornamental gold brick roof parapets.

The two south-facing elevations are clad in brown brick; the western one has one bay each of paired, triple-, and single-windows; the eastern one has three bays of paired windows and two bays of single-windows. There is a light court in the center with additional inward-facing windows.

The ground floor is occupied by Rick Bayless Tortazo restaurant, Champs Sports, and Yard House sports bar.

usmodernist.org/AF/AF-1930-06-1.pdf