36 West 34th Street

 office building  Add category

5-story Beaux-Arts office building originally completed in the 1850s as a brownstone mansion. In 1885 the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity was incorporated and established its clubhouse in the lower levels of the house. After only two years the club outgrew the space, and moved to a larger residence at No. 435 Fifth Avenue. Within a few years the house would be leased to the Fox family. While the family lived upstairs, the parlor floor housed the high-end shop of dressmakers Miss Fox and Miss Boland. George C. Boldt acquire the building in 1895 along with the adjoining property at the rear that faced 33rd Street, renting out spaces to a variety of tenants.

In 1905 Boldt commissioned the joining of the buildings and new matching Beaux-Arts facades on both streets. They were clad in limestone, with bands of windows across each floor framed by cast-iron, and the floors separated by cast-iron spandrels. Above bracketed iron cornices with end brackets, the top floors of the 5-story structure was the focal point—behind an iron-railed balcony two prim copper-clad dormers support decorative urns. The mansard is also clad in copper. The railing have since been removed from the 34th Street side.

After the conversion the ground floor was home to the Childs Restaurant with entrances on both streets. The restaurant would get a boost when the soaring Art Deco Empire State Building replaced the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in 1931, as a sea of workers filled the tables for lunches. When the building was sold for around half a million dollars in 1953, the Childs Restaurant was still going strong after nearly half a century. Later that same year, the restaurant introduced a ground-breaking idea—take-out food. More recently, the ground floor space where decades of Empire State Building workers grabbed lunch has been divided into separate stores with entrances on 33rd and 34th Street, and covered over with modern storefronts which removed the provenance. On 33rd Street the groudn floor is occupied by Ai Ki Ya Japanese restaurant.