Rolls Royce Building

 office building, commercial building

266-foot, 22-story Art-Deco office building completed in 1930 for the 34 East 57th Street Corporation. Designed by Buchman & Kahn, it is clad in buff-colored brick above a 3-story limestone base, two bays wide. The ground floor has a plate-glass storefront on the left, and the main entrance at the right end, with glass-and-bronze double-doors below a horizontal fluted bronze panel, and framed in a beveled bronze surround. The 2nd & 3rd floors have bands of metopes across the piers. There are two wide 4-pane windows on the 2nd floor, and openings the same size on the 3rd floor, with tripartite windows.

At the upper floors the piers have recessed horizontal banding at each floor level, with white stone at the inner edges of the banding on the end piers and on both ends on the center pier. There are bands of four windows in both bays, with black metal mullions. The brick spandrels between floors span the full width of the facade.

The east bay sets back above the 12th floor, more deeply at the east half of the bay, and the west half sets back again above the13th floor, splitting the east bay into two smaller bays of double-windows. The east bay has a shallow setback above the 15th floor, and then there are full-floor setbacks above the 16th and 19th floors. At the 17th-19th floors the west bay has a double-window flanked by a single-window on either side, and at the top three floors it has only a double-window, while the east bay (now unified again) has a double-window flanked by a single-window on either side.

The east elevation is clad in brown brick, with a bay of three windows at the front edge, followed by a bay of paired windows, another 3-window bay, and another paired-window bay. Windows drop off at the various setback levels. The ground floor is occupied by Maximilan furs.

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