Scribner Building (New York City, New York)

 condominiums, 1894_construction, Beaux-Arts (architecture)

6-story Beaux-Arts residential building completed in 1894. Designed by Ernest Flagg as a store and office building for publisher Charles Scribner's Sons, it was known as the Scribner Building. The facade is organized with a ground-story base, a 4-story midsection, and is capped by a slate mansard roof, all symmetrically arranged around a central core. A projecting bay on each side frames a central section of three bays. The design employs such elegant details as broken pediments with cartouches, lion-headed console brackets, a projecting pierced balcony, and wrought-iron work.

The ground floor, which serves as a base for the 4-story midsection, is of rusticated limestone and has a wide store front at the center (originally with a glass marquee which gave the store prominence and provided shelter). This storefront is flanked on either side by a single doorway (each of which contains a modern metal and glass door and permits access to the building) topped by an entablature with cornice supported by brackets. Above each doorway is a small, square window. At the center of the plain frieze, two cherubs hold a garland that formerly bore the inscription "Charles Scribner's Sons" and now says "RAPAPORT HOUSE".The middle four floors (the lowest of which is of rusticated limestone) have a tripartite organization. At the 2nd floor, the three middle tripartite windows are divided by slender limestone colonnettes. Above this, a wide stone band course is decoratively pierced at the center to form balustrades (the center one of which protrudes and is supported by lion-headed console brackets), beneath the 3rd-floor windows. In the 3rd and 4th floors, which are treated as a single unit, the central windows have metal colonnettes and are separated vertically by metal balconies. The three center bays are separated from one another by limestone pilasters and are flanked by half-pilasters.

From the 2nd through the 5th floor, each side bay contains a single window; those at the 3rd floor are capped by entablatures with cornices supported by console brackets, reminiscent of the treatment of the entrance doorways beneath them. A band course with pellet-molding crowns the 4th floor. At the 5th floor, the tripartite central windows (themselves divided by slender stone colonnettes) are separated by broad fluted pilasters, and the central section is flanked by fluted half-pilasters. The single windows in the side bays are flanked by stone colonnettes which are in turn flanked by broad stone piers. A prominent cornice separates this 5th-floor band of windows from the mansard roof which houses the 6th floor and crowns the structure.

At the 6th floor, a low parapet is broken by a central dormer and is terminated by panels which each bear an inscription; above these panels, curved pediments broken by cartouches appear. Rising behind the parapet is the slate mansard roof which is broken by skylight windows at either side and at the center by a stone dormer. Joined to the parapet by a console at either side, the dormer contains a tripartite window with stone transom bar and mullions. A pilaster on each side of the window supports the entablature above it; this turn, is crowned by a pediment broken by an ornate cartouche.

The corporate home of Charles Scribner's Sons, the building was designed with a bookstore at the first story and offices above. Scribner's relocated its headquarters further uptown on Fifth Avenue in 1913. In 1974, the building was bought by the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism to serve as their headquarters as named Rapaport House. In 2012, the USCJ sold the building, and moved to Second Avenue. It was then converted to condominiums.

archive.org/details/sim_architectural-record_1902-04_11...
digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dc-9a5b-a3d9-e0...