Bankers Trust Company Building (New York City, New York) | store / shop, office building, commercial building

 store / shop, office building, commercial building

194-foot, 16-story Neo-Classical office building completed in 1921. Designed by Charles E. Birge for the Bankers Trust Company, it is clad in brown brick with limestone and copper trim above a 3-story base. The base has a modernized, triple-height entrance bay at the north end on the avenue that is clad in light-grey stone panels. There are recessed glass double-doors set in a dark-grey-green granite frame, wider at the right, with a bronze metal canopy over the doors. There is a small copper accent panel above the left edge of the grey-green frame, which is edge by a recessed section of the light-grey stone. At the upper 2nd-3rd floors there is a vertical notch near the north end of the bay, with a copper accent panel at its bottom end. The lower two floors along the rest of the east facade were remodeled in 2015 and have four Doric limestone columns that separate asymmetrical bays of white travertine with double-height show-windows. Each window is shaped as a partial-arch at the top, embraced on one side by a projecting, organic-shaped form of smoother, whiter stone that billows out at the tops; the south bay has a full round-arch with a white stone frame than extends down both sides. Two columns on the south facade divide it into three bays, with a full round-arch in the center and partial arches at the ends, featuring the same organic stone forms around the glass. There are glass double-doors to the retail space in the middle bay on 57th Street, and in the 2nd retail bay from the north on the avenue. The 3rd floor, except for at the main entrance bay, is clad in brown-painted stone. It has five bays of paired windows on the east facade, and two such bays flanking a 3-window center bay on the south facade. The windows are flanked by paneled pilasters, and the bays separated by narrow piers with fluting at the top halfs, and scrolled keystones at the tops. A brown stone band course caps the base.

The upper floors have the same window configuration on the south facade, while the east facade adds a bay of paired narrow windows flanked by narrow single-windows at the north end, above the main entrance. The paired windows are separated by non-painted, paneled limestone pilasters, and the 5th-floor windows have large, projecting, dentiled stone sills above ornamented stone panels (except for the single-windows at the north end). A cartouche also decorates the central panel on the south facade.

There is a stone cornice above the 13th floor, with roundels at the main piers. The 14th-15th floors have recessed double-windows framed in black metal (triple-windows at the center bay on the south facade) between thick limestone piers. The 15th floor is topped by a projecting, copper roof cornice with modillions. There is a sloped penthouse level above the cornice, lined with skylight windows. The lower two floors were previously occupied by Fendi which had alterations performed to both the interior and exterior by Peter Marino, with the space taken over by Dior in 2022.