8 West 38th Street

 office building  Add category

150-foot, 12-story office building completed in 1914. Designed by Starrett & van Vleck, it is clad in white stone and terra-cotta above a 3-story limestone base. The narrow center bay is flanked by two wide bays, plus an additional 7-story section attached to the west end. The entrance is in the middle bay, with a stone surround and egg-and-dart molding; above the doorway is a panel with the gilded word "EIGHT", surmounted by an entablature with a dentil course and shallow triangular pediment highlighted by a cartouche. Metal-and-glass storefronts fill the wide bay on either side. The main facade and the smaller west section are both framed by lightly-fluted and molded piers on grey granite bases. The west section has a service entrance at the ground floor. The 2nd & 3rd floors have tripartite windows in grey metal frames (with wide single-pane windows in the middle bay). Below both floors are grey metal spandrel panels with light wave patterns and circles in the center panel of each wide bay. The base is capped by a cornice.

The upper floors have the same window divisions, with elaborate terra-cotta cladding on the piers and spandrels. Heraldic shields are featured at the center of each bay's spandrels. The 4th-6th floors of the west extension match, while the 7th floor is set off by a cornice with brackets and dentils. This floor is topped by a peaked parapet with a stone coping.

At the top of the 11th floor, the piers have large cartouches supporting a cornice with large modillions. The top floor has evenly-spaced, square-headed windows. At the middle bay, the roof cornice is crowned by a projecting shell-shaped parapet. The exposed front edge of the eastern elevation, also clad in white terra-cotta, has one bay of large, square windows. The western elevation, on both the taller and shorter portions, are clad in reddish-brown brick, with five bays of industrial, multi-paned windows.

The ground floor is occupied by Blaggard's Pub.