928 Broadway (New York City, New York)

 office building  Add category

150-foot, 12-story Renaissance-revival office building completed in 1910. Designed by William Harvey Birkmire as a store-and-loft building, it is L-shaped, with a narrow with extending the East 21st Street. Both facades are clad in brick, limestone, and terra-cotta, and organized into a 3-story base, a 7-story shaft, and a 2-story crown.

At the Broadway facade 2-story rusticated limestone piers frame recent grey-painted infill. At the 3rd floor, ornamented limestone piers flank two groups of replacement windows and support a decorated terra-cotta band course. Above the base, the 7-story brick shaft rises. Pilasters with ornate capitals flank two groups of tripartite windows. Decorated spandrel panels are placed beneath the windows. A pronounced cornice separates the shaft from the 2-story crown. The 11th & 12th floors each have two groups of tripartite replacement windows flanked by embellished terra-cotta piers. Ornate spandrel panels appear between the 11th- & 12th-floor windows.

On the narrower 21st Street side, a modern storefront occupies the ground floor of the 3-story base; above this, at the 2nd and 3rd floors, smooth stone piers with stylized decorative capitals flank tripartite replacement windows and support an ornamental terra-cotta band course. Above this, the 7-story brick shaft rises; at each floor are tripartite windows topped by bead moldings. Each of the two stories in the building's crown replicates the window configuration below; the floors are flanked by piers with capitals and are separated by a recessed spandrel panel. A parapet caps the facade.

The southern elevation, visible on the Broadway wing of the building, is an exposed brown brick wall with two bays of square-headed windows. The upper northern elevation is similar, but mostly obscured by a large sign on the roof of the neighboring building.

Some of the early tenants included a corset maker, cloak and suit merchants, a shirtwaist merchant, and a button seller. The ground floor is occupied by Obica Mozarella Bar.