Fur Craft Building

 office building  Add category

161-foot, 14-story Beaux-Arts office building completed in 1926. Designed by Henry I. Oser, it is clad in brown brick with a limestone base. The monumental, centered main entrance is set in a surround with banded piers that extends to a round-arch at the 2nd floor. Projecting from the piers are narrower fluted pilasters with Corinthian capitals topped at the 2nd floor by pedestals on which rest fox statues. Within the base of the arch, the entryway has brown cast-iron inner pilasters with elaborate Renaissance ornament. These flank a recessed area with bronze-and-glass double-doors on the left, and bronze service doors on the right. Above the recessed area is a stone panel with the address 242, set within cast-iron infill including three panels of a grid pattern, the center of which also holds a clock face. Seashell finals along the top edge form the base to the large fanlight at the 2nd floor, which is divided into two halves by an iron mullion. The grand entrance bay is crowned at the base of the 3rd floor by a stone shield with a garland on either side, stepping down to the ends. The other two large bays at the ground floor have metal-and-glass storefronts. Above each is a small stone shield flanked by ogees, and then a dentil course and modillions surmounted by a stone band with a wave motif below the 2nd-floor windows.

The outer bays at the 2nd floor have bands of four plate-glass windows. The upper floors have three bays of four single-windows each, with some protruding air-conditioning units dotting the facade. There are setbacks above the 7th floor at both ends, extending across the outer three windows and marked by dentiled and modillioned stone cornices. The rest of the facade sets back above the 8th floor, with a similar cornice (it does not project at the center bay, and there is an overlap of the outer cornices one floor below. Rising above the 8th floor is a 2-story Neo-Classical temple at the center bay, with squared end columns, and three round middle columns, supporting a triangular pediment. The spandrels between the 9th & 10th floors within the temple area have projecting shields. On either side of the base of the temple is an urn, behind which the walls angle back to the set-back outer bays. There are additional, shallow setbacks above the 10th & 12th floors.

The ground floor is occupied by Steve Maxwell Vintage & Custom Drums, Trend House, and Henegan Construction.

esd.ny.gov/sites/default/files/ESC-08-Historic.pdf