Damson Oil Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, high-rise, Neoclassical (architecture), 1920_construction

185-foot, 15-story Neo-Classical office building completed in 1920. Designed by Warren & Wetmore, it is clad in dark-red brick above a 4-story limestone base. The two main facades have matching designs, six bays wide on the avenue and four bays wide on 46th Street. The ground floor has banded piers above a grey granite water table. The main entrance, with glass doors, is in the southernmost bay on the avenue, with plate-glass storefronts in the other bays. The storefronts have sharply-sloped green canvas awnings. The ground floor is capped by a frieze of geometric patterns, with elaborate swags and pendants at the piers.

The 2nd-3rd floors have 3-story fluted piers with stylized capitals. The end bays have single-windows and the middle bays have tripartite windows in dark-green cast-iron framing. At the 2nd floor the windows in each bay are divided by spiral pilasters with small Corinthian capitals, supporting small dentiled cornices and broken pediments at the spandrels above the 2nd floor, in all dark-green cast-iron. Small cartouches are located in the middle of the pediments, which are flanked by panels with urns and foliate ornament. 2-story patterned pilasters divide the windows at the 3rd & 4th floors, also dividing the spandrels between the two floors into three panels, each with a pattern of wavy lines; the middle panel has a large medallion with various figures, depending on the bay. Two large, projecting flagpoles are mounted at the end bays on the east facade, above the 2nd floor. Rosettes decorate the frieze at the top of the base, above each pier, and a dentiled cornice caps the base.

The 5th floor is transitional, with limestone enframements around the paired windows, and brick panels on the piers. A small cornice sets off the upper floors, which also have paired windows. The top floor is set off at top and bottom by narrow string courses, and the facades are crowned by a bracketed, green metal roof cornice. The ground floor is occupied by Jos. A Bank menswear.