551 Madison Avenue (New York City, New York)

 office building, bank, high-rise, interesting place, 1922_construction

194-foot, 17-story office building completed in 1922 as the Winslow Hotel. Designed by Arthur Loomis Harmon, it was renovated and converted to an office building in 1982. It is clad in dark-red brick above a 2-story base of stone, metal, and glass. The piers at the base are rusticated grey granite. Most of the ground floor is taken up by metal-and-glass storefronts, with the building's main entrance near the east end of the south facade on 55th Street, with glass doors below a green glass canopy. The 2nd floor has large tripartite windows.

The upper floors have brick piers and thinner intermediate piers between the windows in each bay. There are patterns of protruding bricks on the main piers and vertical rows of protruding bricks in the intermediate piers. Black glass spandrel panels separate the floor levels at each bay. The west facade has three bays of three windows each, and the south facade has end bays with three windows and a wider middle section that spans seven windows. There are setbacks between the piers, above the 15th floor; a corbel table marks the setbacks. The piers extend another floor to corbels and stone caps at the next floor, with another corbel table and stone cornice along the 16th floor, except for at the middle bay on the south facade, which extends up to the top floor, with another corbeled cornice. This penthouse level is topped by a low-sloped tile roof, and the northwest, southwest, and southeast corners all have smaller, pyramidal roofs.

The ground floor is occupied by Robert Marc eyewear, Allen Edmonds dress shoes, Allen Edmonds Leather goods, and Gregory's Coffee, with a Connect One Bank branch on the 2nd floor.

551madisonavenue.com/