Mercantile Building

 office building, skyscraper, 1929_construction, Renaissance Revival (architecture)

620-foot 48-story Renaissance-revival office building completed in 1929. Designed by Ludlow & Peabody, it was the fourth-tallest tower in the world when it was built. It spans through the block, with a 10-story lower section consisting of seven floors of buff-colored brick above a 3-story limestone base, and a central main tower set back on the north and south sides, rising to a sloped, green-patina copper roof. Both lower facades are organized into three bays, with wide paneled piers at the base supporting an entablature. The north side has modernized glass infill, with a plate-glass storefront in the west bay, a brass-framed revolving door flanked by two regular glass doors in the middle bay, and two revolving doors in the east bay. The 4th-9th floors, faced in brick, have three windows in each bay; the piers are lined with vertical columns of projecting brick, the windows have stone sills, and the brick spandrels have projecting square panels. The 10th floor is set off by a band course and faced in stone, with elaborate carved panels on the piers. A bracketed cornice marks the first setback to the upper tower.

The brick upper floors have two windows in the outer bays, with additional setbacks occurring above the 12th, 15th, 21st, and 25th floors. The 21st floor has darker-colored string courses at the top and bottom, and full stone surrounds at the windows. The last 4-story section before the vertical wall of the upper shaft begins (from the 22nd-25th floors) is also slightly set back at the sides, and has single-windows in the end bays.

Above, the center bay becomes a band of triple-windows instead of three individual windows, with two metal mullions running vertical through the band, separating the panes, and black metal spandrels between floors; the outer bays have paired windows. The 37th floor is faced in stone, with band courses at the top and bottom, and ornamented panels on the piers. The 38th floor is very slightly set back, and the end bays have single-windows with stone enframements topped by triangular pediments and flanked by gargoyles in the form of lions with shields. The 39th-42nd floors have single-windows in the end bays, and a 4-story round-arch in the middle, containing triple-windows at each floor, with black metal spandrels. The 43rd floor returns to the form of three windows in the middle bay, with single-windows at the ends. It is topped by a cornice, with a further set-back 44th floor that has six evenly-spaced single-windows, and eagle gargoyles at the corners.

The 3-story crown is set back again, above a ornamented parapet. The 45th floor has four single-windows, and the 46th-47th have four double-height round-arched windows. Above, a frieze with rows of red-and-gold medallions transitions to the steeply-angled copper roof, which has six narrow slit windows at its base on the north side.

The south facade on 39th Street mostly matches this design. The ground floor has modernized glass infill, and the 2nd floor consists of large metal louvers (the eastern bay has a triple-window with metal vents in the transom. At the 4th-8th floors, the eastern opening in the center bay is bricked-in, and at the 4th-7th floor the eastern opening in the east bay has metal vents. The rest of the facade is identical to the north side, except for the top floor in the copper roof having four slit windows instead of six.

The much wider west and east facades have five main bays, each with paired windows. They take their design cues from those on the corresponding floors of the north and south facades, including the string courses above and below the 21st floor (but only at the three middle bays). Above, the middle bays transition from separated paired windows to a band of double-windows with black metal spandrels and vertical metal mullions. The uppermost floors also match the design of the north and south facades. The major difference is on the east elevation, where there are only windows in the north and southern two bays (and none in the southernmost bay below the 26th floor). The other two bays have ghosted outlines (the middle bay only has outlines of the bay itself, while the north-middle bay has individual window outlines), but no actual openings. The one middle bay that does have openings continued with its form of paired windows instead of transitioning to vertical window bands. The round-arches at the top floors are also ghosted. Above the 44th floor, there is a 2-story vertical extension that is not present at the other facades, with three tiny round windows at the 46th floor, and one such window on both of the north- and south-facing sidewalls of this extension. The roof line and crown are the same on both the east and west sides, with numerous narrow slit windows, some taller than others.

On November 14, 2007, the building became the final site to be removed from Thomas Edison's original direct current grid in New York City. The ground floor on both streets has private entrances to the Wood Tobe-Coburn School, a community college originally founded in 1879.