Continental Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, skyscraper, Art Deco (architecture)

511-foot, 42-story Art-Deco office building completed in 1931. Designed by Ely Jacques Kahn Architects, it is clad in white brick above a 6-story limestone and glass base. The base and lower building mass (first 18 floors) have an angled west facade following the route of Broadway. The narrower upper tower's west facade is rotated back in line with the regular street grid, creating a rectangular tower. The base has four bays on Broadway and nine along 41st Street, the far western bay being wider. On the ground floor it has a metal service entrance and small glass storefront with silver metal louvers on the top, behind a brown canvas awning. The rest of the bays on this facade also have storefronts with metal louvers at the top, all with awnings except for the eastern three. The west facade on Broadway has the main entrance in the 2nd bay from the south, with a revolving door in glass infill. The other three bays have modern metal-and-glass storefronts, with large pale green-grey metal panels separating the two large windows on the 2nd floor of each bay. The 3rd-5th floors have a glass curtain wall between the end piers of clear windows and pale green-grey panels at the piers and spandrels, with narrow black metal framing. The 6th floor begins the pattern of paired windows seen on the upper floors. On the north facade, the 2nd-5th floors have tripartite windows and black glass spandrels, except for the westernmost bay, which has a band of five windows on each floor, and the 3rd bay from the west and east, which have paired windows and limestone spandrels at the 5th floor, a pattern which is repeated on the 6th floor and above. The easternmost bay on the 6th floor has three windows instead of two.

The six middle limestone piers extend up into the 7th floor; the three middle bays set back, with the piers extending slightly up into the space created by the setback. From the 7th floor up, the pies and spandrels are faced in white brick. The narrow side walls created by the central setback each have a bay of single-windows. The wide westernmost bay sets back above the 11th floor; the two wings created by the central recessed portion set back above the 20th floor at the inner bays, and above the 18th at the outer bays. The west facade also sets back above the 18th floor. There are additional setbacks above the 20th, 23rd, 24th, & 26th floors, from where the upper tower rises vertically to the 40th floor. The angled western facade returns to the regular street orientation above the 24th-floor setback.

The upper shaft has three bays of paired windows flanked by two bays of single-windows on the north and south elevations (although only the western two bays on the south facade have actual window openings; the rest are merely ghosted into the brick facade), and the west and east sides have a bay of paired windows in the middle flanked by single-window end bays (although, again, the southern bay on the east side has no actual openings, and the next bay has recessed openings instead of windows, with metal railings fronting the resulting alcoves). The east and west sides have setbacks above the end bays of the 40th floor, and above the middle bay of the 41st floor. Some of the spandrels at the top floors have ornamental brickwork. The double-height 42nd floor is topped by a mechanical housing with two pairs of narrow slit openings on each facade. The ground floor is occupied by Chopd salads, Oxido restaurant, Sticky's chicken fingers, and Paris Baguette restaurant.

In the 1998 Movie "Deep Impact" a comet hits the earth causing a huge tsunami. The scene shows the tsunami destroying Manhattan; one shot featured a low-angle view of Times Square as the wave approaches, and the Continental Building can be seen collapsing sideways before the wave hits.

usmodernist.org/AF/AF-1930-06-1.pdf