307 Fifth Avenue

 office building  Add category

200-foot, 17-story Art-Deco office building completed in 1928. Designed by William I. Hohauser, it has a modernized ground floor of grey granite, with marble on the 2nd-5th floor, beige brick at the shaft, and white terra-cotta at the top two floors. The ground floor has a recessed, modern entrance on the right, and a storefront on the left. Above the ground floor is a shallow, rounded cornice composed of stylized floral baskets.

The piers at the 2nd-5th floors are fluted and divide the facade into five bays; the outer two are widest, with the other two sets narrowing to the slenderest in the middle. The end piers have bizarre faced in the capitals; between the floors alternating spandrel panels have swirls, zig-zags and geometric designs. The narrower pilasters between the end piers are capped with complex capitals holding up a frieze with riotous Art-Deco patterns. Hohauser’s elaborate terra-cotta decoration is interrupted at the 7th through 16th floors where more tepid geometric designs in brick take over. The three middle windows are divided by black metal mullions. The wonderful terra-cotta cladding resumes at the top two floors, ending in a terra-cotta roof parapet that is peaked at the center. The north elevation is faced in plain brick and stucco, with bays of double-windows beginning at the 6th & 7th floors.

On the day of its opening the building was 70 percent leased to a variety of tenants including apparel firms, a real estate leasing company and the Garrison Fire Detection Company; it was soon fully occupied. The wide variety of tenants continued throughout the coming years. In 1991 the storefront was replaced and in 2007 a year-long façade restoration was initiated.

The ground floor is occupied by Let's Meat BBQ.