Terminal Warehouse Company Central Stores (New York City, New York)

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7- and 9-story warehouse completed in 1891, with additions in 1911 and 1914. Designed by George B. Mallory for the New York Terminal Warehouse Company. Occupying the whole block, the building is separated into 25 semi-independent compartments (numbered 1-23 odd along West 27th Street and 2-26 even along West 28th Street).

The 11th Avenue facade is composed of a main section flanked by two massive corner towers. The main section contains a very large round-arch opening in the middle of the ground floor, which originally allowed two rail tracks to enter the building. It has three vertical columns of round-arched windows with splayed brick lintels puncturing an otherwise solid brick face. Corbelled brick belt courses extend between window openings on the 2nd floor and under the window openings of the 7th. The main section is topped with a corbelled brick cornice.

The corner towers have double-height round-arch openings at ground level, with splayed brick lintels supported by terra-cotta imposts and decorated terra-cotta spandrel panels recessed between the 1st and 2nd floors. Floors 3-6 in the corner towers have staggered round-arched windows with splayed brick lintels. Corbelled brick belt courses run under the 3rd and 7th floor window openings; The corner towers terminate in a corbelled brick cornice and wrap around three bays onto the side streets, continuing the architectural pattern of the main facade with double-height, round-arched openings at the ground floor and segmental-arched windows on the upper floors.

Large lettering on the facade reads "TERMINAL WAREHOUSE FREE COLD BONDED STORAGE", with "TERMINAL STORES" above the massive round-arched opening. The south and north facades have sections varying in height with either 7 or 9 floors, and mostly segmental-arched windows with splayed brick lintels. The central buildings on each side street project out slightly and have taller brick parapets.

The 12th Avenue facade is similar to that on 11th Avenue, with a very large round-arch opening in the center and corner towers. The windows are arranged in four vertical bays and as a continuous row across the 3rd floor. All were originally round-arched, but some have been converted to rectangular. The facade is topped by a corbelled brick cornice.

The original metal fire shutters have been removed from every window in the complex, as has the metal awning that once stretched along both side street facades and covered the ground floor entrance. Fire escapes have been added along portions of the north and south facades.

The Central Stores were erected so that trains could travel down the middle of Eleventh Avenue from the New York Central’s yards on West 30th Street and enter the warehouse complex through the massive round arch in the building’s eastern facade. Store 3 was expanded from 7 stories to 9 stories in 1910-11 by architect Otto M. Beck. Two year later, in 1912, the same architect drafted plans to replace the entire western section of the complex after a fire had damaged the edifice, but only Stores 15-20 were actually expanded.

The Terminal Warehouse Company sold the Central Stores in 1947. The building continued to function as a warehouse in the ensuing decades, and much of the structure is still devoted to that use. The arched tunnel that once allowed whole train cars to enter the building was for a time in the late 1980s and 90s occupied by a night club; it now serves as a concourse for art galleries and other commercial tenants that occupy the ground floors of several of the stores.

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