G.P. Putnam Building

 office building  Add category

203-foot, 16-story Neo-Classical office building completed in 1910 for G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a publisher. Designed by Schwartz & Gross, it is clad in buff-colored brick above a 4-story white-painted limestone base. The end bays have matching entrances (although the main entrance at the east also has a metal-and-glass canopy), with two modernized metal-and-glass storefronts in the middle. Each entrance is framed by grey granite pilasters supporting entablatures with dentiled cornices. These in turn support an ornate window composition, with carved seashells, scrolling, and foliate ornament at the bottom, pilasters framing the narrow double-windows, and triangular pediments on top. Another narrow doubled-window without the ornament fills the end bays at the 3rd floor. The middle of the 2nd & 3rd floors has bands of windows (three wide middle panes and two narrow end panes) in black iron framing, with transoms, and elaborately detailed spandrels between the two floors. The end bays are capped at the 3rd floor by alternating roundels and triglyphs, and a band course runs across the full 3rd floor. The transitional 4th floor is also limestone, but begins the fenestration pattern of the upper floors, with wider double-windows in the end bays, separated by black iron mullions, and six recessed, square window openings in the middle. Elaborately carved panels flank the middle windows on each end.

The upper floors also have end bays with double-windows divided by black metal mullions; they also have stone sills. The middle section of six windows is recessed, with angled edges that have decorative panels at each floor. The centers of the brick spandrels have ornamental terra-cotta carvings. A projecting band course sets off the 3-story crown of the building. The 14th & 15th floors match those below, but the top floor has separate paired windows in the end bays, and a wide, low segmental-arch over the middle section; above this the ornamented angled edges of the middle section join in an arch. Both the center of the arch and the end bays have carved ornament projecting up over the roof line.

The upper west elevation is clad in reddish-brown brick. There are two bays of three windows at the rear, and several bays of single-windows toward the front. The ground floor is occupied by Wendy's, and a Starbucks coffee.