The Bar Building (New York City, New York)

 office building  Add category

155-foot, 14-story Neo-Classical office building completed in 1923. Designed by Severance & Van Alen, it has facades on both 43rd and 44th Streets. The north facade on 44th Street is three bays wide, clad in beige brick above a white-painted limestone base. The glass entry doors and large glass pane above them are deeply recessed in the center bay, with the side walls slightly angling in. Rope moldings with gilded highlights framed both the front and rear edges of the vestibule; a panel above has embossed gold letters in the serif font reading "BAR BUILDING". The ornamented vaulted ceiling of the lobby is visible through the glass of the entrance. There are mirror-image storefronts on either side, with their doors set back at the inside edge, and the black-metal-framed glass curving back to meet the doors. Above each storefront is a 3-piece strand of gold garlands. A separate entrance for the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society was made on the west side of the 44th street entrance.

The upper floors have double-windows in each of the three bays, with metal enframements and small-dentiled sills and lintels. A dentiled band course runs across the top of the 11th floor, and between the end piers the facade sets back above the 12th floor. The recessed top two floors are topped by a large, rounded roof parapet with large cutouts in the middle.

The south facade, slightly offset from the north, mostly matches the north facade, but spanning four bays instead of three. The ground floor has two small entrance at the ends, with four larger round-arched bays of storefronts in the middle, with decorative keystones. On 44th Street the ground floor is occupied by EG Antiques, and on 43rd Street by Digitech Printers, PLS Check Cashing, Toasties sandwiches, and Lashtouch Eyelash Extenions.