Rock Building

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146-foot, 11-story Beaux-Arts office building completed in 1907. Designed by Maynicke & Franke for Matthew Rock, its anchor tenant was Brentano’s bookstore, which signed a lease for the 1st through 3rd floors, plus the basement.

The triparte design features a 3-story base of rusticated piers filled with vast cast-iron show windows. It has one bay on Fifth Avenue and spans seven bays along 32nd Street. The storefronts along this side have been modernized, but still retain the sloped iron roofs at each bay that tie into the dentiled sill courses of the 2nd-floor windows. The storefront and entrance on the avenue are gleaming brass with a panel at the top bearing the number 315. The spandrels between the top two floors of the base are blue-painted stone with central panels of rows of gold rosettes, below gold-dentiled sill courses. These are also seen on the north facade, below the 3rd floor, where the bays end in segmental-arches. The tripartite windows in each bay are divided by textured gold frames with fruit and flower designs. The rusticated limestone piers, which sit on grey polished granite bases, have stylized capitals with metopes; the arches also have keystones supporting the stone cornice above the base.

The 6-story midsection above is unadorned stone (with three windows per bay) until the 9th floor where dripping garlands frame full-floor cartouches on each pier. Below the cornice at this level, stunning foliate swags and wreaths wrapp the building. The topmost section features heavy broken pediments above the clustered openings. Carved wreaths and shields filled the areas between the pediments, which are supported by scrolled brackets. Crowning both facades is a grey-green metal roof cornice.

Upon completion, Matthew Rock of course moved his tailoring business here; other diverse tenants included The American Cement Company, and The Italian School of Languages. Although Brentano’s had signed a 21-year lease, they were gone by 1909, moving into the new Brunswick Building on Madison Square. In its place, somewhat coincidentally, came the Sohmer Piano Company, having abandoned its building at Fifth Avenue and 22nd Street. In 1931 there were no fewer than six tailoring businesses in the building, two jewelry firms (Fleischman Brothers and the International Gem Company), and several apparel companies. At the beginning of World War II, The Book and Magazine Club operated here. Throughout the rest of the century apparel related firms, like Standish Fabrics, were housed here; as was the National Civil Service League, in the 1960s. The ground floor is occupied by Cafe & Ginseng Tea House, Besfren Beauty, Hokkaido Baked Cheese Tart, The Bentos restaurant, and Keki restaurant.