Piazza Italia Coworking Space (New York City, New York)

 office building, interesting place, commercial building

131-foot, 10-story Italian-Renaissance department store and office building completed in 1915. Designed by La Farge & Morris (partnership of C. Grant La Farge and Benjamin Wistar Morris) with Clinton & Russell for the Brooks Brothers Company, the building serves as the Brooks Brothers headquarters, with a flagship store at the base. Both main facades are tripartite, clad in dark-red brick at the midsection, and limestone at the 3-story base and 2-story crown.

The east facade on the avenue has five bays, and the south facade on 44th Street has two parts - a 3-bay west end and a 5-bay east end that is projected forward, mirroring the east facade. The 5-bay sections have central entrances with double-doors framed by sidelights and transoms with wrought-iron cross-hatch patterns. The entrances are set in stone surround with rope moldings, and surmounted by panels inscribed "BROOKS BROTHERS". The east entrances has two small heraldic shields at the upper corners, and a dentiled cornice, while the south entrance has a pair of narrow brackets supporting a cornice. This cornice forms a pseudo-balcony for the 2nd-floor window above, with a wrought-iron railing. The window is framed by ornate floral patterns. The 2nd-floor center window on the east facade is also surrounded by intricate carvings, but is also topped by swags and a cartouche with a projecting flagpole. The most noticeable difference between the two facades, is the projecting entablature on the south facade, with triglyphs and dentiled cornice supported by a pair of large, 2-story Doric columns and further to the outside, a pair of squared Doric pilasters, on granite plinths.

The remaining ground-floor bays have show-windows, topped by carved panels with wave patterns flanking carved urns. There is a service entrance is the far west bay on 44th Street. The 2nd & 3rd floors have 2-over-2 windows with black metal framing, and the base is capped by a band course with a Greek fret-motif.

The brick midsection has paired windows in each bay (except the westernmost bay with 2-over-2 windows), with a stone cornice setting off the crown. The 2-story limestone crown has double-height round-arches with tripartite windows, divided by Corinthian pilasters - except for at the westernmost bay, which has simple 2-over-2 windows instead. There is a rounded brick pier at the southeast corner. Both facades are crowned by a green copper roof cornice.

Brooks Brothers is the oldest men's clothier chain in the United States. Founded in 1818 as a family business, the privately owned company is now owned by Retail Brand Alliance, also features clothing for women, and is headquartered on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, New York City.

In the summer of 1915, Brooks Brothers relocated to its present ten-story flagship store at 346 Madison Avenue. This location placed it, not coincidentally, in a neighborhood which had recently become the preferred location for New York's most prominent social organizations, including the Harvard and Yale Clubs and the New York Yacht Club.

In 2020, the flagship store closed due to the ongoing bankruptcy of Brooks Brothers. In February 2022 the newly formed Piazza Italia rented space in the building to become a collective to promote Italian companies while the building remains for sale.

www.pzitalia.com/palazzo-italia
daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2023/08/the-1915-brooks-...
magazine.brooksbrothers.com/100-years-at-346-madison-av...
babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015059445117&v...
archive.org/details/sim_vanity-fair_1915-11_5_3/page/n8...
archive.org/details/greatmerchantsam00maho/page/36/mode...
digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/f494ef00-ab1c-0137-06...