Film Center Building (New York City, New York) | office building, interesting place, commercial building

 office building, interesting place, commercial building

177-foot, 13-story Art-Deco office building completed in 1929. Designed by Ely Jacques Kahn of the firm Buchman & Kahn, the interior of the building is notable for its bold and varied colors, extending to details such as the lobby directory and even the radiator grills, and its treatment of the lobby walls as if they were tapestry. Within 10 years of its construction, the Film Center building would house 70 film distributing companies, and it still is used by many film companies to the present day. Its ornate lobby is designated as a New York City interior landmark.

The building is clad in grey-brown brick above a 2-story base of stone and terra-cotta at the 2nd floor, and a ground floor with piers of pink polished marble and varied storefronts. The main entrance is at the center of the 11-bay west facade, with three bright brass-and-glass doors below ornate brass grilles in Art-Deco patterns. The doors are slightly recessed, with the walls on either side stair-stepping in toward the entrance; these side walls are banded at the tops and faced in pink polished granite at the bottoms. The storefronts lining the rest of the ground floor are mostly metal-and-glass, and of varied designs. There is a loading dock at the east end of both the north and south facades, and a small secondary entrance just to the left of the loading dock on 44th Street, framed in brass with similar brass grilles to those above the main entrance.

The 2nd floor has a broad, white-painted band across the top and bottom, with thin horizontal banding at the end bays. The main bays all have four windows separated by wide, black metal mullions, except for the center bay above the main entrance, which has three windows recessed behind banded stair-stepped edges like those at the main entrance. The piers between the main bays are grey terra-cotta, with patterns of offset, short, vertical lines framed by horizontal grooves at the sides. The end bays on the west facade, and the west end bays on the north and south facades have paired windows, and light horizontal rustication between the banding at the top and bottom. The east end bays on the north and south elevations, above the loading docks, have three slightly-narrower windows.

On the upper floors the brick piers run uninterrupted from the 3rd-10th floor, and the brick spandrels have thin, horizontal, projecting brick bands, crossed by wider, vertical brick bands aligned with each mullion. White terra-cotta sills underline the four windows in the main bays, and join the paired windows in the end bays.

In the main bays, the piers project out at the 11th-13th floors, and smaller intermediate piers of terra-cotta divide each bay into three windows. The spandrels have similar patterns to those below, but with lighter-colored terra-cotta. The top floor is slightly recessed, with wider intermediate piers, and is topped by a brick parapet with extensions of the intermediate piers and horizontal grooved panels; the middle panel in each main bay has a simple square at its center. The end bays have horizontal banding below the 11th floor and above the 12th floor, and horizontal banded spandrels between the windows of the two floors, each with a vertical rectangle at the center. There is also horizontal banding at the roof line of the end bays.

The exposed upper part of the east elevation is clad in plain brick with no openings or decoration. "FILM CENTER" is painted in white at the top, at both the north and south ends. The ground floor is occupied by Réunion Surf Bar, Marseille French restaurant, Gregorys Coffee, Juice Press, Nizza Trattoria Italiana, Five Napkin Burger, and Schmackary's cookies.