Fairmont Building

 office building, Georgian (architecture)

6-story Neo-Georgian/Neo-Renaissance office building completed in 1923. Designed by Joseph C. Schaeffler, it is clad in grey-brown brick with limestone trim above a limestone ground floor with a light-grey granite water table. The symmetrical facade has a entrance at both ends, each with a pair of scrolled brackets supporting a triangular pediment, above which are a pair of carved panels of Renaissance ornament. In the middle is a wide, tripartite storefront bay with very thin, Renaissance-ornamented iron pilasters separating the window panes; they are topped by shallow-arched fanlight with iron tracery, and the whole storefront is framed by an arched, beveled surround with a keystone.

The upper floors have tripartite windows in the middle bay and single-windows in the end bays. At the 2nd-5th floors the middle bay has stone columns framing the windows, with Ionic capitals at the 2nd floor, Corinthian capitals at the 3rd & 4th, and Doric capitals at the 5th. These support stone entablatures of different patterns at each floor. There are iron railings at the base of the windows on the 2nd & 5th floors, and thin, dentiled cornices topping each entablature, with the 5th-floor cornice incorporating a triangular pediment. The 6th-floor middle bay has splayed stone lintels over the three windows.

The end bays are round-arched at the 2nd floor, with drip moldings, keystones, and ram's head brackets, as well as matching iron railings to those at the middle bay. The other floors have splayed stone lintels over the windows, and simple stone sills. Each floor has a stone band with a different pattern topping the lintels. The facade is crowned by a dentiled stone roof cornice surmounted by a stone parapet with a balustrade in the middle.

The building originally housed the J.M. Heatherton's publication, "The Plumbers' Trade Journal", which was founded in 1881. It was also leased to various fur companies in the early years. In the 1960s, it was entirely occupied by The Lou Nierenberg Corporation, makers of fake furs. By the 1990s, it was home to the Chelsea Clinic, and later other medical offices moved into the building.

There is now a vertical sign mounted to the 2nd-3rd floors, reading American Dental & Medical Centers.

hdc.org/buildings/fairmont-building/
daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-heatherton-b...
www.oldnyc.org/#711967f-a
www.jstor.org/stable/community.12093806