30 West 57th Street | office building, commercial building

 office building, commercial building

7-story office building completed in 1930. It is clad in limestone above a 2-story base of grey granite. The main entrance is at the west end of the ground floor, with glass double-doors in a stainless-steel surround. To the left are two glass-and-metal storefronts, both with glass double-doors. The 2nd floor has two wide window openings joining at the center.

The upper floors are divided into two halves, each with a large bay of four window panes above lower bottom panes, in red metal framing. There are stone cartouches ornamenting the stone spandrels between floors, and the 6th floor has segmental-arched tops to the window bays, with a pair of scrolled keystones. The top floor, set off by a dentiled stone cornice, has tripartite windows with the end panes separated from the middle panes by flat pilasters with stylized capitals. A modillioned stone cornice ornaments the roof line. The west elevation is clad in dark-red brick, with seven single-windows along the top two floors (and four windows at the 5th floor).

Between 1942-47 this was home to the Art of This Century gallery. It was opened by Peggy Guggenheim on October 20, 1942. The gallery occupied two commercial spaces on the seventh floor of a building that was part of the midtown arts district including the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Non-objective Painting, Helena Rubinstein's New Art Center, and numerous commercial galleries. The gallery exhibited important contemporary art until it closed in 1947, when Guggenheim returned to Europe. The ground floor is occupied by Metro Marche restaurant, and Blank Street Coffee.