Fisk Tire Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, high-rise, Neoclassical (architecture), 1921_construction, commercial building

315-foot, 25-story Neo-Classical office building completed in 1921. Designed by Carrère & Hastings with Shreve, Lamb & Blake, it is clad in reddish-orange brick above a 3-story stone base. The ground floor was remodeled in 2016, and now has polished black granite piers and bands above the plate-glass-and-metal storefronts. There are three such bays on the east facade on Broadway (which is slightly angled to follow the street), five on the west facade on 8th Avenue (with service doors in the south bay), and 12 on the north facade on 57th Street, with a subway entrance in the 2nd bay from the west, and the main building entrance in the 4th bay from the east, with glass doors below a small metal canopy.

The 2nd-3rd floors have wide, paneled limestone piers. Each bay has a double-window set in black cast-iron; there are ribbed panels below the windows on the 2nd floor, which are framed by slender colonnettes, and are topped by either transom panes or slit vents. At the 3rd floor the windows are flanked by even thinner spiral colonnettes, and there are paired spandrels between floors, each decorated with a garland above a row of five rosettes. At the top of the 3rd floor, scalloped keystones highlight each bay, and a dentiled band course caps the base.The east facade has a middle bay of double-windows and end bays with single-windows at the base, and the west facade has five bays of double-windows.

The 4th floor is transitional, with limestone surrounds at the windows and brick piers (which have herringbone patterns at this floor). The windows are organized into a group of ten single-windows in the middle of the north facade, and two groups of three at each end. Stone cornices cap the windows at the 4th floor. The upper floors on the east facade have four bays of single-windows, and the west facade has six single-windows in the middle, with single-window end bays set farther apart. At the north facade, the groups of three windows inward from the outer groups have black cast-iron spandrels, and every bay (also on the east and west facades) have the same spandrels between the 14th & 15th floors.

The 16th floor is set off by a stone band course, and has stone surrounds at each window and pier. There is a shallow setback above the 16th floor at the middle of the north facade, and the east and west ends of the building terminate at this level. The two 3-bay sections next to the end-bay sections continue up to the 19th floor, where their three windows are spaced closer together, and then terminate in a 3-level, stepped stone cap. The full east, north, and west facades set back above the 19th floor. There is limestone cladding at the 21st-23rd floors, except at the end bays on each facade. The north facade spans 14 single-windows, while the west elevation has seven, and the east elevation has three. There is a final shallow setback above the 24th floor, with the east facade narrowing to two windows. The building is crowned on all three main facades by a sloped copper mansard with six skylights along the north elevation, and three on the west.

There is also a recessed east-facing elevation, at the south end, rising above the base of the apartment tower to the south. Unlike the north section of the Fisk Building, it is not angled to follow Broadway. It is clad in the same brick and has one bay of single-windows near the south end, up to the 20th floor, where it is joined by two bay of paired windows to the north. There are also horizontal stone bands across a few of the floors. The copper mansard does not extend onto this facade.

The exposed west end of the south elevation faces onto the small public plaza at the southwest corner of the block. There are no openings at the lower floors, which are painted over in red with horizontal white stripes and borders. The upper floors have two bays of paired windows until the setback above the 16th floor.

The ground floor is occupied by Le Cafe Coffee, TJ Maxx clothing store, an AT&T wireless store, a Bank of America branch, and a Citizens Bank branch.

www.250west57th.com/