One Union Square South

 apartment building, movie / film / TV location, postmodern (architecture)

27-story modernist mixed-use building completed in 1999. Designed by Davis Brody Bond, it takes up the entire block. It is one of the city’s most flamboyant buildings because the north façade of its base features a major public art work, "Metronome," created by Kristen Jones and Andrew Ginzel. The building’s very large art work consists of red-brick masonry designed in circles around a hole on the north façade that emits steam, à la the famous old Camel cigarette sign in Times Square, and this part of the design is dappled with bronze inlays in a sunburst pattern. A metal rod angles up to the center of the sunburst, narrowing to a point.

Adjacent to the east of this large, dynamic sculptural element is a 15-digit number that is a clock that is also part of the installation. The art installation, which cost the developer more than $4 million, also includes a bronze sculpture of what is supposed to be a hand projecting from the façade that appears more like a rock formation. To the west is a seemingly random-placed 3-foot diameter gold sphere embedded in the grey metal panels of the facade, which slowly rotates in sync with the lunar phases.

The 6-story base is clad in grey metal panels at most of the west side and parts of the south and east sides. It has a glass curtain wall at the southwest corner (where a cineplex is located), and a ground floor of white stone most elsewhere. The northeast corner of the base is also clad in a glass curtain wall, with reflective silver-blue glass above the two lower floors of more transparent glass, housing several commercial spaces. The digital clock is located at the 5th floor of this curtain wall. Most of the north half of the east facade (except for the glass portion at the corner) is clad in dark-red brick, with rustications at the ground floor around the main residential entrance, and a large 4-story field of single projecting bricks in a grid above the entrance, and just to the north of where the east facade has a gentle bend. A single narrow column of translucent glass rises up to the 5th floor to the right of the entrance.

The tower portion of the building is also clad in dark-red brick, and has many corner windows and a complex fenestration pattern as well as some setbacks in from of slightly indented façades beneath cantilevered façades. The building contains 240 apartments, as well as a large cineplex at the southwest corner. Other commercial tenants in the base include Union Square Wine, Best Buy, Nordstrom Rack, a Duane-Reade pharmacy, and a Citibank branch. When it was still a Virgin Megastore, the exterior was used as a filming location for "Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous" (2005).