Nelson Building

 office building  Add category

204-foot, 17-story Neo-Gothic office building completed in 1925. Designed by George & Edward Blum, it is clad in buff-colored brick above a 3-story limestone base. The piers rest of grey granite plinths and divide the base into five bays. The glass-doored main entrance is in the eastern bay, topped by a grey granite panel with metal lettering spelling out "NELSON BUILDING". The other bays have varied storefronts. There are grey metal spandrel panels below the 2nd floor, with Gothic ornament such as pointed-arched, but most are covered by canvas and vinyl box awnings for the storefronts below. The 2nd and 3rd floors have tripartite windows with grey metal frames, and grey metal spandrels, set inside stone surrounds with beveled edges. The base is capped by a simple stone cornice.

The upper floors have uninterrupted brick piers dividing each floor into ten single-windows, with paneled brick spandrels in between. The facade is dotted with protruding air-conditioning units. Above the 10th floor, there is a setback at the western six windows; the 1st and 4th windows from the east set back one floor higher, and the remaining two bays set back another floor up, creating the effect of a projecting tower near the eastern side, as well as another tower set further back on the western side; the sides of the eastern tower are angled. Each setback is marked by a cast-stone arcade and cast-stone caps on the piers.

The east elevation is also clad in buff-colored brick. At the front, there is a bay of windows with two per floor from the 5th-7th floors, three per floor on the 8th-11th floors, and then another two windows at the 12th floor, where the bay ends at the setbacks. Behind this bay are three vertical stripes of darker brown brick, delineating two central sections that rise the full height of the tower; the rear of these two sections has one bay of narrow single-windows. At the rear is another bay of windows, two per floor up to the 12th floor, with single-windows on the next four floors, due to a setback on the rear facade. The ground floor is occupied by Panda Thread, France Fabrics, Chic Fabric, and ASK Locksmith.