400 Madison Avenue (New York City, New York)

 office building, high-rise, Neo-Gothic (architecture), 1929_construction

241-foot, 22-story Neo-Gothic office building completed in 1929. Designed by H. Craig Severance, it is clad in white terra-cotta with pink granite at the ground floor. Occupying an entire blockfront along Madison Avenue but extending less than 50 feet deep, the design of the narrow building allowed all of the interior spaces to face an exterior wall and offered tenants access to light and ventilation.

The main, east-facing facade on the avenue has eight ground-story storefront openings, with two additional window openings. The main entrance, with glass doors, is in the left-center bay, covered by a small metal-and-glass canopy. The other bays have storefronts, and the ground floor is topped by a heavy rounded molding.

The 2nd-4th floors have tripartite windows in the main bays, square-headed at 2nd and 3rd floors and segmental-arched at 4th floor, with elaborate frames featuring chamfered mullions with buttressed bases and crockets, and spandrel panels containing trefoils and quatrefoils. The two narrower bays have single-windows, also segmental-arched at the 4th floor.

The 5th floor has nine wide, tripartite widows and two narrower windows, all square-headed, connected by a heavy continuous sill (with projections at the piers) and topped by elaborate abstracted Gothic ornament including (flanking the seven central windows) empty tabernacles with abstracted crockets, joined by a horizontal band composed of abstracted pointed arches, buttresses, shields, tracery, and other Gothic motifs; above the two outer bays are thick paneled bands.

The 6th-14th floors have plain piers, with paired windows in each main bay. There are recessed panels below the 7th-14th-floor window openings (paired below the 14th floor), except below the outer eight 13th-floor bays, which have projecting panels with Gothic tracery. There are panels with Gothic tracery and quatrefoils above the 12 central 14th-floor window openings; and four panels, two with Gothic tracery and two without, over each window opening in eight outermost 14th-floor bays. The 15th-16th floors have 2-story pavilions at the at the 4th and 15th bays featuring paneled spandrels, stylized lancet arches, chevrons, trefoils, and quatrefoil panels over the 16th-floor windows, similar ornament on the north and south faces of the pavilions, and empty tabernacles at the corners.

Over the ten central 16th-floor windows are stylized lancet arches, chevrons, trefoils, and panels filled with Gothic tracery, and over the outer six 16th-floor window openings are paired diamond panels. Recessed panels are located below the 18th-, 19th-, and 20th- floor windows, with stylized Gothic tracery above the outer six 19th-floor bays, with stylized crockets at the corners.

Over the eight central 20th-floor bays are projecting lancet hoods with incised ogee moldings, with abstracted Gothic gables crowned by simplified crockets over the two outermost 20th-floor window openings. The paired 21st-floor windows are crowned by horizontal bands containing disks and by Gothic tracery, and there is a crown with buttresses, ogee moldings above blind openings, grouped chimney-like corner piers, crockets at roof corners, and Gothic tracery at the attic story and roof.

The south facade on 47th Street has a former entrance portal of pink granite at the west end surrounded by engaged columns with polygonal bases and shafts and crowned by large segmental arch, above which is a heavy balustrade with polygonal newels, quatrefoil reliefs, and repeating trefoil arches. The opening now has a plate-glass window. At the east end is a storefront window. The ground floor on the north facade on 47th Street has a wide storefront window at the east end, next to a narrower window, and an ATM, all framed in stainless-steel. At the west end is a pair of metal service doors. The upper floors of both the north and south facades have a central bay of single-windows flanked by wider bays of tripartite windows (five single-windows across the facades above the 5th floor), matching the design characteristics of the east facade.

The west elevation, exposed at the south half, is clad in buff-colored brick, with several bays of 2-over-2 windows. Into the 1930s and over subsequent decades, 400 Madison Avenue continued to house advertising, real estate, and financial firms, as well as lawyers’ and tourist offices. The ground floor is occupied by a Blue Forest Farms, Bluestone Lane Coffee, Robert Marc eyewear, Ike Behar menswear, and Madison Jewelers. One of the long-time tenants was Crouch & Fitzgerald, a luggage store that dates back to 1839. FDR bought custom-made luggage from them.