Bowker Building | office building, Art Deco (architecture), American Craftsman (architecture)

 office building, Art Deco (architecture), American Craftsman (architecture)

249-foot, 20-story Art-Deco office building completed in 1927. Designed by Walter Haefeli, it is clad in brown brick above a 2-story base of rusticated red stone with grey granite plinths. The main entrance is in the south bay of the west facade on the avenue, which is organized into three equal-width bays. It has a revolving door flanked by glass doors, framed in steel and set below a very large transom in a steel surround. The other bays have glass storefronts, as do most of the seven bays of the north facade on 29th Street (the east end bay has a freight entrance).

The 2nd floor has tripartite windows, and the spandrels between the two lower floors are composed of two rows of square terra cotta tiles with floral designs in varying shades of pale reds, blues, oranges, and greens. A single row of larger but otherwise similar tiles tops the base.

The upper floors have thin, red metal framing around the windows, with tripartite windows on the 3rd floor, and mostly multi-paned industrial windows above, grouped into fours. The west facade has a wider center bay and smaller end bays, with tripartite windows on the 3rd floor, and industrial multi-pane windows above, grouped into fours in the center bay and doubles in the end bays. The facades are dotted with protruding air-conditioning units.

The 16th floor is completely clad in the multi-hued floral tiles seen at the base, and the top floors are set back on the west and north sides, each crowned by a band of tiles. The south facade is fully brick, and has one bay of single-windows near the west end. The east half has another single-window bay, a paired-window bay, a 4-window bay, and a double-window bay fronted by projecting balconies. The east facade has only one bay of double-windows, near the north end.