154 West 14th Street (New York City, New York)

 office building, Art Nouveau / Jugendstil (architecture), interesting place, historic landmark, Mission Revival (architecture)

143-foot, 12-story Art-Noveau office building completed in 1913. Designed by Herman Lee Meader, it is clad in buff-colored brick with a wealth of terra-cotta ornament for developer Leslie R. Palmer. It has an ornate 3-story base featuring boldly polychromatic glazed terra cotta (in hues of white, beige, mustard, cobalt blue, celadon, and green). The building’s terra cotta was manufactured by the New York Architectural Terra Cotta Co., the city’s only major producer of architectural terra cotta, of which Palmer was a long-time director, and the building is a virtual advertisement for the material’s exterior use and, specifically, for the products of the firm.

Meader’s sumptuous and eclectic ornamental scheme for the 154 West 14th Street Building incorporated Secessionist, Art Nouveau, Arts & Crafts, and Mission Revival style motifs. A modillioned cornice caps the base section, above which the windows are arranged in doubles, with terra-cotta panels in the spandrels between floors - each panel has interlocking sunflowers, with a blue diamond in the center, echoing the larger green diamonds found in the ornament of the base.

The two stories of the upper section have different treatments. The Secessionist-inspired 11th story features stylized wreaths flanked by green foliation at the piers, a cobalt blue fret-patterned spandrel, and stylized corbeled balcony. The white terra-cotta 12th story (which was altered in the late 1950s – the 14th Street facade was mostly stripped) originally featured repeated Mission Revival-inspired curved gables at the ends of each facade, ornamented by cobalt blue disks flanked by wings. The gables were linked by ornamental bands suggesting 6 “kivas” (projecting beams seen in traditional Southwestern adobe architecture) consisting of stylized curved brackets with projecting flower bosses. Since its completion in 1913, the 154 West 14th Street Building has housed a very wide variety of manufacturers and product distributors, of goods such as paper, soap dispensers, electrical and heating and air conditioning equipment, and jewelry.

The ground floor is occupied by a barber shop and hair salon, a Verizon Wireless store, a Chase Bank branch, McDonald's, a Vitamin Shoppe, a gourmet deli, and Destination A factory outlet. It is a designated New York City landmark.

s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/2419.pdf
daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-colorful-blend...
hdc.org/buildings/154-west-14th-street-building/
www.villagepreservation.org/lpc_application/154-west-14...