231 West 29th Street

USA / New Jersey / West New York / West 29th Street, 231
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177-foot, 15-story Neo-Gothic office building completed in 1925. Designed by George & Edward Blum, it is clad in light-tan and brown brick above a 3-story limestone base. The main entrance is at the east end, with glass double-doors set in a pointed-arch of black stone, with black stone drip moldings; the lower half of the doors are framed by red polished granite bases of the piers. To the left are five glass-and-steel storefronts, with large stainless-steel panels above them as well as below the show-windows. They each have a glass door incorporated, except for the second one, which has its entrance west of the show-windows in another pointed-arch. At the west end of the ground floor are two more pointed-arches, one with a window and the other with a freight entrance. Above each storefront bay is a large opening with black metal in Gothic designs, topped by 2nd-floor tripartite windows. Set high above each of the four arches is a single-window at the 2nd floor. The 3rd floor has four 4-over-2 windows at the west side, followed by a single-window above the middle arch, two more wide 4-over-2 windows, and another single-window above the main entrance arch. The base is capped by a black stone cornice with beige terra-cotta squares with flower designs.

The upper floors have light-tan brick piers, and brown-brick spandrels between floors within each bay that are each decorated with four vertical niches with arched tops. There are 14 bays of single-windows. The far eastern bay, and the nine western bays, set back above the 7th floor, while the remaining four set back above the 9th floor. At each setback the spandrels change to beige terra-cotta surrounding trios of vertical black stone niches, and the piers have capitals of beige terra-cotta in geometric forms. Above the 9th-floor setback the east side narrows to two bays facing south, with an angled single-window bay on either side. Full-floor setbacks also cross above the 12th & 14th floors. The 15th floor rises from the east half of the building, with simple, white-painted stone capitals topping the piers; there is also a small, 2-story section at the west side of the roof, and a 1-story mechanical penthouse at the rear-center, topped by two round water tanks.

The ground floor is occupied by Jonevon Furs Ltd./Lenore Marshall/Peter Duffy Furs, Radical Mixed Martial Arts, and LaserShip.

esd.ny.gov/sites/default/files/ESC-08-Historic.pdf
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Coordinates:   40°44'55"N   73°59'39"W
This article was last modified 4 years ago