New School Sheila C. Johnson Design Center (New York City, New York)

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160-foot, 12-story university building completed in 1912. Designed by Charles A. Rich (of the firm of Lamb & Rich) as on office building for the Prentice-Hall publishing company, it now houses the New School's Sheila C. Johnson Design Center. In addition to its elegance, the building housed numerous civil rights organizations and has been described as a haven for liberal and forward-thinking ideas. Most notably, the building was the home of the NAACP, the African-American civil rights organization, from 1914 to the mid 1920s. From the building, the NAACP fought racism on a nation-wide level, fighting segregation of the federal workforce, protesting unsavory depictions of African Americans in the 1915 film “Birth of a Nation” among many other meaningful causes.

The building is L-shaped in plan, with a long narrow wing extending along 13th Street to Fifth Avenue. The 2-story base is clad in limestone, with piers set on blocks and having mixed Ionic-Corinthian capitals. The ground floor has modern replacement windows that are set at an angle. The 2nd floor has double- and triple-window bays with dark-green metal mullions and frames. Some of the spandrels have foliate carvings, and the base is capped by a dentiled cornice.

The beige brick upper floors have three windows per floor on Fifth Avenue; the 13th Street elevation has three central bays of triple-windows united under 5-story round-arches ending at the 8th floor. At the 3rd floor, these bays are framed in white stone. Within the arches, the windows have dark-green metal mullions and framing. Flanking these central bays are a bay of single-windows, three bays of paired windows, and another single-window at the end bay. The single-window bays have stone surrounds, with splayed keystones, and rounded stone pediments at the 3rd floor.

The 10th floor is capped by a cornice, and at the top two floors the paired bays are separated by rounded columns with Corinthian capitals. A toothed roof cornice surmounts both main facades. The south elevation is clad in red brick, with simple windows.

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