Bowery Savings Bank Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, Romanesque (architecture)

237-foot, 18-story Romanesque-revival office building completed in 1923. Designed by York & Sawyer, this imposing structure marked the expansion of the bank from its original headquarters at 130 Bowery to a convenient location adjacent to Grand Central Terminal and the growing midtown commercial district. The building's magnificent, 4-story central banking hall, modeled on the nave of a Romanesque church, is topped by office floors. A 6-story addition to house the bank's administrative and public relations departments was completed in 1931.

The main 42nd Street facade is clad in Ohio sandstone ashlar, with pink granite columns and colonnettes, tile roof and copings, and verde marble spandrels. On the 41st Street facade, above a sandstone ground floor, the building is of a matching buff face brick, with a speckled grey granite water table following the slope of the site downward to the east.

The deeply-cut, arched 42nd Street entrance to the banking room is the major element of the building's 5-story base. Archivolts, each carved in a different pattern (foliate, spiral, and chevron) articulate the arch's splayed intrados. The mullions of the large plate-glass window within the arch are of bronze, though the fitting of the doors below are of anodized metal. The doors are approached by shallow steps lined by brass railings. Two bronze display cases flanked the entry arch. Two rose windows, containing pierced tracery of marble, flank the head of the great arch. A window arcade of four triple bays and five blind niches, supported on engaged pink granite columns, runs across the 5th floor and defines the base. The outer blind niches have pink granite pilasters. Extending out from the 5th-floor arcade's center niche is a flagpole.

A pier and spandrel system of four double bays articulates nine of the thirteen office tower floors. An arcade bracketing the 15th & 16th floors and a row of round-headed windows on the 17th floor complete the tower. The 18th-floor penthouse, capped with a low hipped roof of Cordova tiles, has four triple-windows. The corbelled cornices (14th & 17th floors) reinforce the Italian Romanesque references.

To the east of the banking hall's entrance is the 6-story addition. A 3-story, triple-arch arcade carried on two engaged, pink granite columns supports the paired 3rd- and round-headed 4th-floor windows, a motif repeated from the narrow tower bay, and the 5th-floor window arcade. The spandrels are of verde marble and the engaged colonnettes of the 5th-floor are pink granite. Four stones on whose faces are carved allegorical images (from left to right: an eagle, a lion, a horse, and another eagle) are evenly spaced above the cloister-like arcade and just above them are inscribed the words: "A MUTUAL INSTITUTION CHARTERED 1834 TO SERVE THOSE WHO SAVE".

The the East 41st Street facade, setbacks and the building's light court prescribed an irregular silhouette. The elevation uniformly rises for nine floors to a corbelled cornice with a coping of Cordova tile. From a setback of 22-feet, the westernmost bay continues up to the 17th floor and a corbelled cornice with a coping of Cordiva tile and a setback of six and a half feet. Sandstone is used on the ground floor, at window openings, and on the banking hall's tri-faceted entrance, great arched window, archivolts, and alternating voussoirs. Above the ground floor the walls are a buff-faced brick; a pier and spandrel system articulates the walls above a corbelled molding at the 5th floor. The 4th-floor roundels are defined by a course of stretchers within a course of headers.

The projecting banking hall entrance is tri-faceted ; the central portion has an architrave enriched with low relief carving and it carries an ornamental carved cresting. The three doors are of panelled bronze; those flanking the central doorway are single doors; double doors close the central doorway. Two vitrines with bronze framing are set in the wall flanking the tri-faceted entrnace. The cast-iron mullions of the banking hall's great south window are enriched with ornament. Flanking this great window and mounted on the archivolts, two long bronze light boxes with cast surfaced enriched with ornament are supported on ornamental brackets, their tops crested. The flanking ground-floor windows are protected by hinged, ornamental iron grilles.

The ground floor is now occupied by Cipriani restaurant.

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