Crystal Building (New York City, New York)

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150-foot, 12-story Renaissance-revival residential building completed in 1910. Designed by Schwartz & Gross as a store-and-loft building, it is clad in buff-colored brick and stone. Tenants in the building characteristic of those in the district included shirtwaist and cloak and suit merchants. The ground floor has a doorway at each end, each containing a lintel and stylized pediment, with a frieze above each door reading "Crystal Building". A more modern doorway has been cut into the middle of the ground flo or. Above, a wide unadorned belt course acts as a base for six pilasters that flank the window bays of the 2nd & 3rd floors and rise to support a simplified cornice. The five window bays of the 2nd and 3rd floors are framed in metal with Chicago-style tripartite casement windows with transoms. The abstracted decoration of the pilaster capitals supports brackets reminiscent of triglyphs.

Above the limestone-faced 3-story base, the shaft is faced in buff-colored brick, with the spandrels decorated by diamond shapes. The end bays receive a heavier masonry treatment than the three central bays. Each end bay contains three windows separated by thick brick mullions. The central bays are slightly recessed; each contains four windows. Geometric and foliate ornament mark the dges of the end bays at the 10th floor, where they meet a slim cornice. While the 11th floor is treated like those below, the 12th-floor windows are taller, with flat-headed vouissoirs above the central bays and voissoirs rising to a low peak above the roof line over the end bays.

The visible upper portion of the western elevation is unadorned brown brick punctuated by several windows. In 2009, the building was renovated by Stephen Day/Paul Segal Architects into condominiums on the upper floors, with the New York Public Library's Andrew Heiskell Library for the Blind & Physically Handicapped, as well as the Cambridge University Press, located on the lower floors.