The Haier Building

 office building, movie / film / TV location

6-story Neo-Classical office building completed in 1924. Designed by York & Sawyer as the headquarters of the Greenwich Savings Bank, it was purchased by the Haier Group in 2002. It serves as the headquarters for Haier America and is now called "The Haier Building". The Greenwich Savings Bank operated from 1833 to 1981.

On all three facades, the building is clad in limestone above a polished pink granite base. The treatment of the facade in the classically-inspired arrangement of podium, major order, and attic, conceals the fact that between the elliptical banking room and the exterior walls the building contains six stories and a basement. A projecting podium of smooth-faced, rusticated ashlar, 8-columned portico, and attic dominate the Broadway facade.

An eared surround, containing both astragal and cable moldings, frames the Broadway entrance and the four pink granite steps which lead up to the heavy bronze double doors cast in classical, alternating, low relief motifs. The soffits are articulated with alternating square and rectangular panels with bead moldings. The square panels contain rosette bosses. The stone ceiling just beyond the bronze doors-- visible when the doors are open -- is articulated with two panels flanking a rosette boss incorporating a simple electric light fixture. The building's address, "1356 BROADWAY," is inscribed on the eared tablet flanked by griffins above the door. Three window openings on either side of the entrance are cut deep into the podium's rusticated surface. Four of these are covered with iron grilles cast in a lattice of entwined cable and set flush with the podium's wall.

The monumental Roman Corinthian order of eight fluted columns, an octastyle, rises from its continuous plinth above the podium. Like the podium below, the greater part of the wall surface between the key fret and the paneled frieze is rusticated, though these channeled blocks are slightly smaller. The wall behind the octastyle is recessed and in it three identical arched windows light the banking room within. Below the fret, single windows flank the octastyle; these repeat the configuration of those within the portico. The continuous entablature, like the podium cornice and columnar plinth below, is a major component in uniting all three of these facades. The well-proportioned architrave and frieze support a modillioned cornice and cymatium articulated with lionheads. The limestone of the attic is smooth-faced and has metal letters attached, bearing the name "THE HAIER BUILDING". The attic is capped by a dentiled cornice.

Like the Broadway and Sixth Avenue facades the West 36th Street facade is tripartite -- podium, colonnade with entablature, and attic. The rusticated podium is pierced by ten windows, grouped five and five toward the corners of the facade. Dominating this facade are the nine engaged columns on the continuous plinth atop the podium. Between the lower parts of the columns are eight windows topped by fret moldings. As on the Broadway facade, the attic is articulated with raised panels corresponding with the pilasters below. the denticulated cornice supports the attic's coping. Three new windows have been cut through the attic's limestone surface, two at the west end and one at the east end. These were added in 1971 when a computer room was installed on the 6th floor.

The Sixth Avenue facade is almost a twin of the building's Broadway elevation except that it is the building's narrowest. As a result of this reduced width, the design of the facade has been compressed. Consequently there is no northernmost pilaster and corresponding attic panel above. The projecting podium and portico are narrower, as is the width of the setback at the building's southeast corner. An employees' entrance is tucked between the podium and the northern lot line behind a high brass-plated iron picket fence. Bronze double doors in the main entrance have four panels each. The difference in grades between Broadway and Sixth Avenue eliminated the need for steps at the Sixth Avenue entrance; there is just a pink granite sill. The attic here also bears the name of the building in metal letters.

The interior was embellished with 10-foot-tall brass foyer doors, a board room and executive office with rubbed-oak paneling and soapstone fireplaces, and an elliptical banking room with limestone Corinthian columns, granite walls, a marble floor, a bronze tellers' screen with sculptures of Minerva (symbolizing wisdom) and Mercury (representing commerce), and a coffered, domed ceiling with a 3,000-square-foot stained-glass skylight.

The main elliptical interior banking space has been renovated into an event/meeting venue known as Gotham Hall. The old main banking room, board room and executive office are rented out as the "Grand Ballroom", "Oak Room", and "Green Room", for corporate events, private parties such as weddings and receptions, and other functions.

The exterior was used as a filming location for S3E2 of the Starz Network series "Power" as the site over Verbatim nightclub with an interior filmed elsewhere in the city.

hdl.handle.net/2027/uva.x001789132?urlappend=%3Bseq=555...