CBS Broadcast Center (New York City, New York)

 television broadcast station / TV centre, television studio

A complex of buildings filling the entire block, it houses the New York broadcast and production center for CBS television and radio. It's CBS's main East Coast production center, much as Television City in Los Angeles is the West Coast hub. The 3-story main building, at the west half of the block, was completed in 1937 as a milk pasteurizing plant for Sheffield Farms. Designed by Stohldreis & Zetsche, the building was purchased in 1952, and CBS began moving operations from their old location at Grand Central Terminal to the Broadcast Center in stages, ending in late 1964.

The main building is clad in red brick and limestone with a grey granite water table. It is divided in half on 57th Street by a windowless tower with a flagpole on top. One of the main entrances is to the right, covered by a steel canopy. Continuing west, the ground floor has several bays with three windows each, and there are also two metal service doors. The 2nd & 3rd floors are similar, with most of the 3rd-floor windows at the west end bricked-in, and horizontal stone bands framing the 3rd floor. To the east of the tower, the slope of the street causes the facade to shorten to two main floors, with larger paired windows below the three windows in each bay of the upper floors. There is one metal double-door at street level, flanked by two vents in decorative stone frames. The east end on 11th Avenue has a row of loading docks, of which only one has not been filled-in. Several of the upper-floor windows have also been bricked-in. There is another loading dock at the west end of the south facade on 56th Street. This elevation also has a 4-story tower, located farther to the east end, with one small window at each floor, above a stone-framed metal door. There are several more loading docks on either side of the tower, and the window bays (again grouped mostly in threes) have numerous bricked-in openings.

On 57th Street, the east end of the original dairy building has a 6-story addition, three bays wide and also clad in red brick and limestone. There is a grand 2-story entry in the center bay, atop a flight of stone steps, and framed in a stone molding with a cornice. Two bronze-and-glass doors flank a central revolving door, each topped by a 3-over-2 transom in bronze framing. Black iron spandrels separate the three windows at the 2nd floor within the stone molding (the middle pane has been replaced by metal louvers). The rest of the bays have triple-windows with simple stone sills and black iron mullions. Banded limestone end piers frame the facade, and the top floor has band course above and below.

The next building in line on 57th Street is an 8-story structure that predates the main building, having been completed in 1912. Designed by J. Broome as a store-and-loft building, it has since been re-clad in red-painted concrete, with a vertical, beige concrete band at each end. It is three bays wide, with no openings at the west bay, which has only vertical grooves. The other two bays have triple-windows, with spandrels between the floors divided by grooves of the same scale as those to the west. At the ground floor is another of the complex's main entrances, in the east bay, with a glass revolving door flanked by traditional glass doors, below a steel canopy. There is a plate-glass show-window in the middle bay on the ground floor.

There is a small gap between the next building, a 6-story office building completed in 1940. It is clad in red brick above a tall, red-painted limestone ground floor, three bays wide. The central entrance has double-doors set in a segmental-arch, atop a sideways-facing stoop. There is a plate-glass double-window to the left, and a larger one to the right. The upper floors have three segmental-arched openings in each of the three bays, with white stone sills and arched brick lintels; there are corbels below the lintels on the 2nd floor. The top floor is set off by a white stone band course above a dentil course, and has round-arched windows with projecting voussoirs. The facade is topped by a corbelled brick cornice, surmounted by a white metal cornice with a weave pattern that follows a large rounded pediment in the center. This cornice wraps a short way around onto the west facade, where all the window openings have been bricked-in. The east elevation is clad in brown brick with six bays of square-headed windows.

A low, 1-story and 2-story section with service doors and large studio windows connects to the far eastern group of buildings that complete the 57th Street frontage. First is a 4-story twin building completed in 1906. The two halves of the facade are similar on the top two floors, but altered on the bottom; both are clad in red brick with banded brownstone at the ground floor. The west end of each half has a metal door framed by pilasters supporting entablature, and the west half also has two small windows with iron grilles. The 2nd floor on the west half has three single-windows (wider in the west bay) topped by beige stone peaked pediments above the lintels. The east half's 2nd floor has a wide window band. The upper floors on both have three bays of single-windows with white stone sills and shallow peaked lintels. A white stone parapet caps the roof line across the building.

The northeast corner of the complex is a 7-story office building completed in 1913 as a hospital. Designed by Crow, Lewis & Wickenhoefer, it is clad in red brick, banded at the corners, above a limestone basement.

A 10-story annex building next to the southeast corner of the block was completed in 1984. It is also clad in red brick on the north, east and west elevations (where there are no openings), and on the lower two floors of the south facade, with a grey granite water table. At its west end, the ground floor has two loading docks below four square windows at the 2nd floor. There is also a black metal service door at the east end. The 3rd-5th floors have recessed ribbon bands of windows between projecting grey brick bands with rounded ends. There is a large setback above the 5th floor, and the 6th-9th floors also features window bands between projecting grey brick bands. The top floor, above the last of the projecting bands, has two wide bands of dark-tinted windows.

There is a brick wall at the far southeast corner, topped by a metal fence enclosed large mechanical equipment. Just to the north, on the avenue, is a 2-story building completed in 1926. It is clad in white-painted stone above a grey granite water table. The south end of the ground floor has an entrance behind an iron gate flanked by fluted pilasters supporting an entablature. There is a large, square opening on either side, with infill in a 3-by-3 grid of windows defined by iron mullions; the lower two middle windows have single panes, while the rest have small, multiple panes. There is a smaller door behind an iron gate to the north, and another large, gridded window and service door at the north end. The 2nd floor has three bays of wide, 4-pane windows at the south, another such bay at the north, all below a band course with an egg-and-dart molding.