SGI-USA New York Culture Center (New York City, New York)

 office building, buddhism, Romanesque (architecture), 1887_construction

5-story Romanesque-revival office building completed in 1887. Designed by R.H. Robertson for the YWCA, it is clad in brownstone and red brick in a two-part vertical composition with an attic and central pavilion. The ground floor has two large round-arches in a rusticated, rough-faced stone wall on either side of the entrance pavilion. These arches, outlined in round frames that meet in a carved boss between each pair of arches, enclose stone transom bars at the imposts and central stone muntins. The entrance pavilion is a projecting rectangular bay with rounded sides, a rusticated base, a smooth surface above the impost, and a rounded cornice with its ends carved in a foliate pattern.

The main portion of the facade, framed in rusticated stone end piers, contains a 1-story tier and a 2-story arcade, unified by the similar treatment of wall surfaces in contrast to the base and attic, and by a 2-story arched bay window in the wider central pavilion. The two tiers are separated by a smooth band with a central string course that rests on foliate carvings at either end. The two rectangular windows on either side of the central pavilion are framed by thin colonnettes and enclose a grid of casement windows. Between the windows are stone banded brick walls. The 3-sided central bay windows which rises two stories inside a 3-story arch consist of a lower casement and a transom in each of its sides. There are rich foliate panels at the base of each side, and a pipe colonnette dropping from a lion mask at the two angles of the bay window, at this level only.

The arcade of the upper tiers has very slightly recessed rusticated spandrel panels. The walls between the arches and the arch spandrels are brick with stone quoins. The brick side arches are outlined in round frames that meet in foliate bosses between the pairs of side windows and in wild asymmetrical foliate panels at the impost of the embellished stone central arch.

In the central pavilion, the second story of the angled bay window is identical to the story below minus the decorative base panels and lion masks atop pipe colonnettes. The wide arch of the top floor is framed in a grid with six casement windows and three solid, foliate panels. A cornice composed of a pair of round moldings that end in carved foliate designs terminates this portion of the design.

The attic consists of a wide trabeated opening on either side of a blocky central pavilion. The three main divisions of this level are framed by heavy piers topped by 4-sided dome-shaped coping blocks with finials. Between the two central coping blocks, above the central pavilion, is a modern aluminum parapet. Each of the side openings encloses four windows framed in engaged Romanesque colonnettes separated by a square pier. The central pavilion, likewise, is a trabeated opening with a cluster of three Romanesque colonnettes at either end and a single such colonnette in the middle carrying a richly carved foliate frieze. The central pavilion is topped with a hip roof which itself is a windowless dormer to the larger hip roof over the whole building.

The YWCA building contained a library of 20,000 volumes, the first circulating library in New York open to women, a reading room, classrooms, a chapel-auditorium, a social room, and an employment office. In 1889-91, the Y.W.C.A. facilities were greatly expanded with an annex to the original building, a residential hall (the Margaret Louisa Home), and a corridor linking the original building with the residential hall, all on an adjacent lot which fronts only on East 16th Street.

In 1917 the Y.W.C.A. moved out of this building which then became known as "The People's House" of the Society of the Commonwealth Center. It was occupied by a variety of organizations associated with the labor movement and socialist politics in New York City. Chief among these was the Rand School of Social Science, one of the leading socialist institutions in the city. Other tenants in the 1920s included the United Neckwear Makers, the Amalgamated Metal Workers, the Woman's Trade Union League, the Local New York Socialist Party, the Allied Dental Council, the Cloak Button Workers, and the New York Committee of the Socialist Party.

In 1956 the building was taken over by the International Association of Machinists who converted the gymnasium and some classrooms to office space. In 1974 the dance hall was changed back to a meeting hall and the remaining classrooms converted to office use. The current owner is Nichiren Shoshu Soka Gakkai of America (NSA), an international Buddhist organization.

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