Adler Building (New York City, New York)

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390-foot, 30-story Art-Moderne office building completed in 1929. Designed by Buchman & Kahn, it is clad in grey-brown brick above a 4-story base of tan stone. It spans five bays along 7th Avenue, and eight bays on 39th Street. The main entrance is in the middle bay on the avenue, recessed with brass-and-glass doors; above there is a Moderne-style metal ornament with the address of 530, and there are Moderne wall lanterns flanking the entrance. The other bays have modernized storefronts, except for the western two bays on the north side, where there is a freight entrance with a garage door and metal service doors. The 2nd-3rd floors are visually one unit, with large 2-story paired windows. The 4th floor has horizontal banding with tripartite windows, and is capped by a banded stone cornice.

The upper floors have paired windows in each bay, but widely spaced, to create a uniform distribution of windows. A pair of flat, white stone string courses delineate the top of the 5th floor and the bottom of the 6th. At the 17th floor the piers project and there are carved stone spandrels. At the top of this level, each pier and bay has a stone coping, and the first shallow setback occurs on both main facades. There is another at the 18th and 20th floors, but not at the outer two bays of each facade, and then a larger setback above the 22nd floor. At the 21st & 22nd floors, the northeast corner is chamfered, with a single-window. The end bays have one more setback at the 24th floor, rejoining the main facades. The 23rd-29th floors also have chamfered corners, with small paired windows at the 23rd-27th floors, and single-windows at the 28th & 29th floors. Beginning at the 23rd floor, there are projecting piers and stone spandrels with vertical banding. The final shallow setbacks occur above the 27th & 29th floors.

The south facade has three-and-a-half bays of paired windows at the east end, dropping off as they reach the various setbacks of the upper floors. The middle section is plain tan brick, and the west end of the south facade has a recessed bay with paired windows and an end bay with paired windows. The ground floor is occupied by Enigma Nails & Spa, Postal Connections print & ship center, Scottrade, and Pret-a-Manger restaurant. The Skylark Lounge is on the top floor.

usmodernist.org/PA/PP-1932-11.pdf