1440 Broadway

 office building  Add category

309-foot, 25-story office building completed in 1925. Designed by Starrett & Van Vleck, it is clad in brown brick above a 4-story limestone base. The building is roughly L-shaped, with a wing extending through the block to 41st Street, and a west facade that follows the angle of Broadway. Later alterations were made by Moed de Armas & Shannon.

The 6-bay Broadway facade, and most of the south facade on 40th Street (the seven west bays) set back above the 18th floor; the three east bays set back above the 9th floor. The 3-bay north facade sets back above the 13th floor. There are entrances in each of the three main facades. The Broadway entrance is in the 3rd bay from the north, with a revolving door flanked by two regular glass doors in glass infill; it is covered by a silver metal canopy, as is the glass storefront to the north.; the other bays also have glass storefronts. The four west bays on the south facade are smooth limestone and have low metal-and-glass storefronts above a grey granite water table; the stone on the bays to the east are rusticated. The original south entrance is in the 4th bay from the east, set in a molded stone surround, with new stainless-steel and glass doors below an iron-and-glass transom bar, surmounted by an entablature with two small heraldic shields at the ends at a dentiled cornice. There is a double bay of storefronts to the west, separated by a black marble column and topped by a crested black iron lintel. The eastern of these two bays has been converted to an additional entrance, with two revolving doors below a glass transom. An extra-wide pier separates the three easternmost bays, which have storefronts topped by another crested black iron band. A stone band course runs across the top of the ground floor.

The 2nd-4th floors have limestone piers; except for those at the eastern three bays, they are paneled and have Corinthian capitals. The bays in between have tripartite windows divided by slender black iron colonnettes and black iron spandrels decorated with shields and foliate ornament.

The upper floors have paired windows of 2-over-2 panes, round-arched at the 17th floor. The brick spandrels have central diamond-shapes. The 18th floor is faced in limestone, with two smaller, evenly-spaced 2-over-2 windows in each bay, topped by a blind arcade of small round-arches, surmounted by balustrades at the setback. The 19th-22nd floors have limestone piers with Corinthian capitals between the bays of paired windows and the single-window end bays. A stone cornice marks the 22nd-floor and 24th-floor setbacks. A mechanical penthouse rises from the east end of the roof.

The north facade is similarly designed as the west and south ones. The ground floor is occupied by a FedEx Office, CVS pharmacy, Le Cafe Coffee, and Mexicue restaurant.

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