Dreicer & Co. Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, commercial building

5-story French-Renaissance office building completed in 1907. Designed by Warren & Wetmore for Jacob Dreicer, it housed the jewelry company J. Dreicer & Son, who had been founded at 1128 Broadway in 1868. Although the ground floor has been completely remodeled (which originally featured gold-veined black marble and gilded capitals), the upper floors retain their limestone cladding.

The ground floor now has a modern metal-and-glass storefront at the east end. The rest of the north facade along the ground floor is faced in grey stone with a pattern of darker-colored horizontal streaks creating a wide "O" at the west end, for commercial tenant Oakley sunglasses. The main entrance to the upper floors is at the far west end. Covering the top of the storefront and the 2nd floor at the eastern bay of the north facade and all of the east facade is a dark-grey metal application that resembles crinkled paper, with sharp angular forms. Both sides feature a wide Oakley logo in the center.

The wide tripartite windows are uncovered on the east facade at the 3rd & 4th floors, framed by piers that end in small paired Corinthian capitals at the top of the 4th floor, with an entablature above. The north facade, six bays wide, has similar but narrower tripartite windows in each bay except for the far west bay, which has single-windows flanked by smaller single-windows (with metal lovers replacing the glass in the 2nd floor's left smaller window). Stone balustrades underline the window bays at the 2nd floor, and there are thin metal railings at the bases of the windows on the 3rd & 4th floors - plain at the 3rd floor, and more elaborate with swags and wreaths at the 4th. The entablature from the east facade continues onto this elevation, also supported by small paired capitals. A dentiled cornice at the top sets off the 5th floor, which has tripartite windows (and three evenly-spaced windows on the east facade) dvided by narrow stone pilasters instead of the iron mullions found on the lower floors. An iron railing topping the cornice below runs along the bottom half of the 5th floor, and both facades are crowned by a stone roof cornice.

On November 8, 1926, it was reported that Dreicer & Co, one of the most respected and exclusive of Manhattan jewelry stores would close. The building was sold to the Northern Pacific Railway Company. Cartier, who once regarded Dreicer as its most feared competitor, purchased the entire stock of jewels for $2.5 million.

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