Syndicate Trading Co. Building (New York City, New York) | office building

USA / New Jersey / West New York / New York City, New York / Madison Avenue, 240
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155-foot, 14-story office building completed in 1925. Designed by Cross & Cross, it wraps around the corner building with a narrow joining section at the rear, and two different facades facing Madison Avenue and East 38th Street. The main facade, on the avenue, is clad in white-painted stone. There is a 2-story base with round-arched entrances topped by scrolled keystones at the ends. The main entrance, at the north, has recessed brass-and-glass doors and is slightly wider. The other entrance is to the plate-glass storefront in the middle. Both the ground-floor and 2nd-floor show-windows are framed by a thin brass molding, and there is a brass spandrel between the middle bay of the two floors, decorated with a row of squares with alternating rosette or diamond shapes. The end bays at the 2nd floor both have a single-window, and the base is topped by an entablature consisting of a frieze with the carved words "SYNDICATE TRADING COMPANY" (with a medallion at either end), and a surmounting dentiled cornice.

The upper floors are four bays wide, with 2-over-2 windows and stone sills. Three scrolled brackets at the top of the 3rd floor support a stone balcony with a balustrade across the two middle bays of the 4th floor. The rest of the facade is plain, except for the 10th floor, which is set off by a simple band course, and has carved ornament on the piers. This floor is topped by a projecting dentiled and modillioned cornice, with the top floors set back above it. These four floors match those below, without ornamentation, and are crowned by a slightly shorter roof cornice with shorter modillions.

The south elevation is clad in tan brick. The front section, before the setback, is a slightly darker shade and has one bay of single-windows above the neighboring building. The rest of the facade has bays of double-windows. The ground floor is occupied by Eco Merit Cleaners, with Madison Avenue Medical Imaging on the 2nd floor.

The narrower north facade, at 18 East 38th, rises only 11 floors. It is clad in brown brick above a 2-story limestone base. The ground floor consists of two service entrances: a round-arched pedestrian doorway topped by a stone shield, and a larger segmental-arched vehicle entrance. The 2nd floor has three square-headed openings; the window in the western opening has been replaced by a metal vent. The base is capped by a dentiled cornice. The upper floors have three bays of 2-over-2 windows. The piers are uninterrupted, except by a stone sill course at the base of the 4th and 11th floors. The brick spandrels have simple rectangular panels, and the facade is topped by a modillioned roof cornice.

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Coordinates:   40°45'0"N   73°58'53"W
This article was last modified 1 year ago