Amazon Hank Tech Hub (New York City, New York) | office building, interesting place, Italianate style (architecture), 1914_construction

 office building, interesting place, Italianate style (architecture), 1914_construction

10-story Renaissance-revival commercial building designed by Starrett & Van Vleck and was completed in 1914. It was the flagship of the Lord & Taylor Department Store for over 100 years. The Italian Renaissance Revival Lord & Taylor store is a solid presence on the corner of West 38th Street and Fifth Avenue. The dignity of its design and sense of scale is derived from the subtle treatment of the tripartite façade. Starrett & Van Vleck kept overt decorative elements to a minimum: the two-story arched Fifth Avenue entrance with its coffered vault and sphinx-headed keystone, a continuous balustrade and balconies (now truncated), a two-story colonnade across the ninth and tenth floors and a deep copper cornice. Above the two-story granite and limestone base, with its display windows, rises the store’s six-story central section. Here Starrett & Van Vleck created interest through the subtle use of patterned brick and terra cotta and the device of having the central bays recede slightly from the established plane of the wall. The more heavily decorated third and eighth floors here act as transitions between the three segments.

At the top a two-story Corinthian colonnade with terminal clusters of pilasters and columns supports the deep bracketed cornice. Further adding to the sense of scale is the use of multi-light windows on all floors above the second, a significant departure from previous dependence on large plate glass windows in the design of retail establishments. This became a feature that the critic writing for Architecture noted “added much to the appearance of the openings” further noting that “thus we have escaped from the slavery of the plate glass store front.”

A particularly distinctive design element, and one later repeated by the architects in the Saks Fifth Avenue building (further uptown) is the chamfered corner. Used to create a link between the West 38th Street and Fifth Avenue facades, Starrett & Van Vleck highlighted the chamfer by bracketing it with slender columns of molded brick that appear capped by terra cotta at the eighth floor only to reemerge as part of the clusters of pilasters and columns at the ninth and tenth floors. Shoppers and strollers on Fifth Avenue, viewing the building from the southeast, experience the iconic view of the building’s imposing architecture. To provide an elegant edge to the building where it abuts its shorter neighbor, Starrett & Van Vleck repeated the elongated column at the north end of the Fifth Avenue façade.

Besides its fine design, the building included many innovations. An inclined drive between West 38th and 39th Streets connected to the receiving and delivery departments eliminated on-street loading. The displays in the show windows could easily be replaced by being lowered to the basement on tracks and a new display moved into position and raised to the window. Originally, the Fifth Avenue entrance itself was treated likewise with a display window that would be raised into position when the store was closed. Dumbwaiters and conveyors moved packages to the wrapping desk in the basement and either returned them to the customers or forwarded them to the shipping department for delivery. In addition to merchandise, the Lord & Taylor store offered customers a wide variety of services, including four restaurants on the tenth floor and counters offering everything from candy and magazines to theater tickets and travel assistance, telephone booths and a restroom on the fifth floor. On the seventh floor, where musical instruments were sold, the store had a concert hall with built-in pipe organ.

The entire 11th floor was devoted to employee health and welfare, from the hospital to various medical and dental clinics, a roof garden, gymnasium, a schoolroom for boys and girls and an employee restaurant. The employees' hospital was considered one of the most completely-equipped of its kind in all of New York City.

One of the largest changes to the Fifth Avenue building was the complete remodeling of its main floor and four of the upper floors under the aegis of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Joseph E. Brooks in 1976. The designs by R. J. Pavlik, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, did not affect the basic architecture of the main selling floor but covered the columns and walls with mirrored glass and replaced the wooden sales counters with travertine. In 1986, Associated Dry Goods Company, Lord & Taylor’s parent firm, signed a lease for the use of the entire building on the corner of West 39th Street known for many years as the Dreicer Building and soon expanded the store into the space.

Lord & Taylor's new owners, Hudson's Bay, sold the building to WeWork in October 2017. The store closed in January 2019 and the building is being converted to office space. After being gutted, the building was purchased in March of 2020 by Amazon for $1.1B. The entire Lord & Taylor chain declared bankruptcy in the fall of 2020 and shuttered for good. The structural elements by the Guastavino Fireproof Tile Co. and Rookwood tiling in the lobby have since been gutted. The renovation was designed by Bjarke Ingels Group with Higgins Quasebarth.

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