9 East 40th Street

 office building  Add category

223-foot, 18-story office building originally completed in 1913 as a 13-story building. Designed by La Farge & Morris, five floors were later added in 1931. Clad in limestone, the main tower has three single-windows in the middle, flanked by end bays with single-windows. There is also a 3-story wing at the west end, allowing light and air to the west side of the upper floors. The rusticated ground floor has a modernized plate-glass storefront in the middle, with a glass entrance to the storefront in the west end bay, and the main entrance in the east end bay, with glass-and-metal doors. There is a green glass panel above the main doorway, and a round canvas canopy above the storefront entrance. Above the storefront the 2nd floor has a band of six windows in black metal framing. The western extension of the ground floor has another plate-glass storefront, with a small service entrance at the west end, and another band of six windows at the 2nd floor. Both storefronts are covered by sloped canvas awnings. Two separate entablatures (at the main section and the west extension) top the 2nd floor, with dentiled cornices and friezes framed at the ends by oval shields flanked by hanging floral carvings, above stylized capitals with egg-and-dart and fluted moldings (except for at the eastern end, where the newer granite facing has replaced the original features).

The 3rd floor of the main section has vertical panels with elaborate carvings on the piers framing the end bays and is topped by another cornice with egg-and-dart molding. The 3rd (top) floor of the west extension has similar, but narrower panels on the piers, which frame a band of five windows divided by thick, brown iron mullions. There is a separate cornice with egg-and-dart molding, surmounted by a stone parapet, stepped up at the ends.

The 4th floor has a carved lintel band above the three center windows, and surrounds at the end-bay windows topped by rounded pediments. Embossed urns decorate the lower sections of the piers at the 4th floor, with smaller panels with rosettes above them, at the level of the lintel band. The rest of the windows only have simple stone sills for decoration. At the 11th floor, the end bays have projecting stone balconies with round-arched windows. At the 12th floor, there is a band course with a stone balcony fronting the three middle windows. The piers around the end bays at the top two floors have projecting center sections with stylized bases and capitals. A modillioned cornice marks the original roof line.

The five added floors, faced in tan stone, are recessed in a series of shallow, cascading setbacks, with the narrow end bays on each floor further recessed than the centers, which have five single-windows on the 14th-17th floors. The taller top floor has three large windows with a roof parapet and a high mechanical housing rising up at the east side.

The west elevation, above the low 3-story section, is clad in beige brick and stucco, with a grid-like, protruding framework of red brick around the window bays, which mostly have single-windows, except for a couple floors that have double-windows. The brick framework ends at the original roof line, and the newer top floors have smaller, squarer window openings. The east elevation is clad in reddish-brown brick, with a bay of single-windows at the front (ending in a set of paired windows at the 14th floor, where the setbacks begin). There are three other bays of single-windows further back. The ground floor is occupied by Dash Mart.