Allied Arts Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, 1929_construction

240-foot, 17-story Art-Deco office building completed in 1929. Designed by Buchman & Kahn, it is clad in light-brown brick above a 2-story limestone base. The piers have pink-brown polished granite bases near the ground, and are overlaid with elaborate geometric patterns at the 2nd floor, with geometric finials extending up into the brick piers at the 3rd floor.

The north facade is organized into 13 bays. At the ground floor the west end bay has black metal infill and a service door. The next five bays have have large tripartite show-windows in black metal framing, below transom panes. At the eastern two of these bays, glass doors take the place of one of the window panes. The main entrance is in the next bay, framed by double-height pillars of black polished granite. At the ground floor the inner edge of the pillars are slanted back toward the recessed set of three glass doors. A large window of 3-over-3 panes tops the entry and the rest of the 2nd floor at this bay. The next bay has silver steel infill at the ground floor, with a set of glass double-doors and a plate-glass window below steel louvers. The next two bays are joined as a loading dock with a metal roll-down gate. The next two are similar to those near the west end that have doors incorporated, and the east end bay has a mix of metal and frosted-glass infill, with louvers. At the 2nd floor each bay (except for above the main entrance) has a tripartite window configuration, with a narrow double-window flanked by single-windows, separated by thin stone mullions. The stone spandrels above and below the 2nd-floor bays have geometric patterns.

The upper floors have three windows in each bay, separated by brick mullions. The spandrels have projecting brick panels between floors, between the piers and mullions, at each bay except the two outer bays on each side. These bays also have dark-grey metal mullions instead of brick. Decorative geometric overlays at the piers appear again at the 7th floor, but composed of brick instead of the stone at the 2nd floor. The middle bays of the 7th floor are very slightly recessed, with a larger setback above the 7th floor - except at the middle five bays, and the outer two bays on each side, which all set back above the 9th floor. There are further terraced setbacks on the upper floors, with sloped glass atria capping some of them. The main roof line is at the 16th floor, with three square pavilion structures spaced across the top. The outer two have two levels, while the center one is a single floor; each has a triple-window opening.

The west elevation is clad in red brick, and has five bays across the lower floors, each with a large triple-window. There are setbacks at the north end above the 9th, 11th, 13th, & 15th floors, and shallower setbacks at the south end.

The south-facing facade is clad in red brick, with terraced, shallow setbacks every two floors at the upper levels. The 13 bays have triple-windows.