New York Design Center

 office building, 1927_construction

200-foot, 16-story Neo-Romanesque office/manufacturing building completed in 1927. Designed by Buchman & Kahn, it was built to serve furniture and department store buyers as the Furniture Exchange Building. In the late 1970s, the building began to shift its focus towards interior design and architecture; and in 1981, emerged as the New York Design Center, which now houses nearly 100 showrooms representing more than 500 lines of premier, traditional, contemporary, residential and contract furniture.

The facades are clad in beige brick above a 3-story base. The lower two floors have stone piers separating 2-story bays that are mostly filled by show-windows with metal framing at the ground floor, and stainless-steel panels at the 2nd floor. On the north and south facades there is a square, 2-over-2 window set within the upper part of each metal bay, although a few have vents with metal louvers instead. On 33rd Street, the site is higher in elevation to the west, such that the ground floor only appears at the east end (with show-windows in the end bay), gradually receding to the west; the next three bays have low, rows of four grey granite panels, and the bays after that have a black granite water table that lowers into the sidewalk level as the street rises. The main entrance is centered on Lexington Avenue, where the base is nine bays wide. It has a revolving glass door flanked by a set of glass double-doors on either side, and is covered by a metal-and-glass canopy. The north and south facades have eight narrower bays. The 3rd floor has stone piers with vertical ribs and elaborate patterns of interlocking circles and diamonds at the edges. These define 12 bays of single-windows, with end bays of paired windows. Capping the 3rd floor is a stone band with a continuous, snake-like curving pattern, with alternating upwards- and downwards-facing pendants nestled between each S-curve. The band is punctuated by beveled octagons inscribing flowers at every other pier. The east facade has 14 single-window bays, with paired-window end bays. The upper floors have the same window layout as the 3rd floor, and there is also a bay of small vents in the center of the east facade.

The 11th floor's windows are topped by a projecting stone cornice with oversized, sloped brackets that frame each bay, decorated with various geometric forms. The cornice itself features a scalloped band with floral ornament below each curve, and is topped by a metal railing. The 12th-13th floors have the windows slightly recessed in double-height round-arches, with fluted pilasters at the window edges and spandrels featuring the same octagon-flower ornament seen below, set in a field of projecting bricks. The 14th-16th floors are set back, with the windows slightly recessed between the piers. The spandrels between these floors are simple rectangles of brown brick, and those above the 15th floor have trios of vertical, rectangular notches.

The rear, west-facing elevation is clad in tan brick without the ornament seen on the three main facades. The ground floor is lined with several loading docks and service doors. The upper floors have four bays of single-windows near each end, with another bay in the middle, as well as a bay of smaller paired windows between the middle bay and the southern bays. The only decoration that continues to this facade is the projecting stone cornice and brackets at the 11th floor, which wraps around both corners to extend a short distance at the ends, both of which have one single-window bay at the 11th-13th floors.

The ground floor is occupied by Circa Lighting, Dune furniture store, McGuire Furniture, Visual Comfort & Co., and Milano Smart Living.

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