Simon & Schuster Building (New York City, New York)

 commercial, office building, high-rise, Art Deco (architecture), 1939_construction

277-foot, 21-story Art-Deco office building completed in 1939. Designed by The Associated Architects, it was one of the last buildings completed of the original complex and was first called the U.S. Rubber Company Building, but was was renamed the Simon & Schuster Building in 1976 when the publishing company moved in. A 19-story addition by Harrison & Abramovitz was completed in 1955 to the north and east upon demolition of RKO Center Theater.

The limestone facade consists of a 21-story north-south tower, and the 19-story addition to the east. The central tower of the symmetrical Sixth Avenue facade is flanked on the north and south by a 7-story wing. The wings are connected by a broad double-height glass and bronze-mullion lobby wall. The tower is set back above the lobby's planted roof from which it rises sheer to its foliate crested roof line. Above its 7th floor (at which level the wings terminate) the tower has a lateral setback on its north and south sides where recessed tower extensions rise to their foliate terminations on the 21st floor.

The east extension took the form of a 19-story slab set perpendicular to original U.S. Rubber Company Building on Sixth Avenue. Its two lower floors were designed to echo the round-cornered glass exhibition space of the Eastern Airlines Building (10 Rockefeller Plaza), located immediately east of the abutting parking garage. The extension's complex massing differs on the south and north. The former continues the limestone-aluminum spandrel aesthetic of the earliest buildings at Rockefeller Center; the latter takes on the more moderne, machine aesthetic introduced in the adjacent 10 Rockefeller Plaza. The 49th Street elevation rises from the ground with a 3-story glass and bronze mullion wall (terminated by a limestone lintel with simple incised string course) with a rounded eastern corner. The extension rises an additional four tiers, all with the planted rooftop of the glass base. The next tier rises ten additional floors before setting back again. A final setback occurs on the 18th floor.

Unlike the 3-story glass front on 49th Street, the southern (48th Street) elevation continues the height, wall plane, and limestone massing of the building's 7-story southern wing on Sixth Avenue. The latter (original) wing joins the building extension in a broad pier with a conspicuous vertical joint. The ground floor of the extension is pierced by three large display windows, a modern restaurant entrance, and three freight bays. The continuous 48th Street facade rises sheer from the street before setting back above the 7th floor. It rises two additional floors before setting back again on the 9th floor, and the 3rd setback occurs above the 17th floor. The elevation sets back a 4th time at the 18th floor.

Although the eastern elevation of the Simon & Schuster Building abuts the parking garage, it reveals the structure's complex massing. Visible is the central slab of the extension with upper lateral setbacks, flanked on either side by successively recessed tiers. The 7th floor limestone wing on 48th Street wraps around the extension's southeastern corner (rising above the garage), its wall pierced by a large ventilation grille and terminating in foliate spandrels. The northeastern corner, by contrast, is articulated by the rounded termination of the 3-story glass wing, above and behind which is the blind limestone wall of the 2nd setback. The 5-tiered extension is centered behind (to the east of) the original north-south slab along Sixth Avenue. Unlike the slab's southeast elevation, its northeast wall has a gentle 9th-story setback below which the slab is largely faced in long aluminum spandrels. The building's northern Sixth Avenue wing is recessed west of the slab's eastern wall.

The ground floor is occupied by FDNY Fire Zone store, First Republic Bank, Breads bakery, and Christies auction house.

www.rockefellercenter.com/art-and-history/history/simon...