Gramercy Gateway Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, interesting place, movie / film / TV location, 1902_construction, Renaissance Revival (architecture)

164-foot, 12-story Italian-Renaissance office building completed in 1902 as an 11-story structure. Designed by Clinton & Russell, it later had two major penthouse additions added to the roof. The building is organized into a 3-story rusticated limestone base (painted white at the ground floor), a 6-story light-grey brick mid-section, and a 2-story terra-cotta crown (plus the rooftop penthouses). It spans five bays on the avenue, and nine bays along 23rd Street.

The ground floor has two narrow round-arches at the south end of the east facade, with a metal service door, and glass secondary entrance. The other bays have plate-glass show-windows with metal canopies. The two eastern storefronts at the north facade have the same design; the rest have red canvas awnings. The main building entrance is in the westernmost bay on 23rd Street, with glass doors and a segmental-arched, flanked by a pair of bronze phoenix-bird sculptures. Bronze medallions decorate the tops of each pier along the ground floor. The 2nd & 3rd floors are also rusticated, with tripartite windows (double-windows in the end bays) and shallow arches at the 3rd floor. The windows are separated by slender black iron columns, and there are black iron spandrels with swags between the two floors. A stone band course with a Greek-fret design caps the base.

The upper floors, in coursed brick, have paired windows on the east elevation (narrower in the end bays), and groups of three windows per bay on the north elevation (paired windows in the end bays). The 9th-floor windows are segmental-arched with splayed stone lintels. A band course sets off the 10th & 11th floors, which have ornate terra-cotta detailing on the piers, on the spandrels between the two floors, and above the round-arched windows of the 11th floor, where there are garlands. A double-row of dentils underlines the green copper roof cornice, which has modillions, and rounded projections on the top.

The first penthouse was built in 1916 for Jules Guerin, a muralist commissioned to design two 60-foot-long, 12-foot high canvas murals for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Guerin’s penthouse was designed by the prominent architectural firm of Starrett & Van Vleck. It was a single space the height of two normal stories to accommodate the large canvases needed for the murals, and featured a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows to accommodate the north light. The second penthouse was built between 1925 and 1926 adjacent to Guerin’s studio for William F. Kenny, then the owner of the building, and a multi-millionaire contractor and childhood friend of Governor Al Smith. The penthouse, known around the city as the “Tiger Room”, was named for the Tammany Tigers. Tiger skins, brass tigers and tiger paintings adorned the major retreat for Smith and dozens of other figures from the late 1920s political scene of New York City.

The ground floor is occupied by Bath & Body Works, Starbucks coffee, Duane Reade by Walgreens, SPiN Ping Pong Social Club, and Fields Good Chicken. The exterior was seen in a drive-by scene for S4E8 of the HBO series "Succession".