Cunard Line Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, high-rise, 1921_construction, Neo-Renaissance (architecture)

255-foot, 23-story neo-Renaissance office building completed in 1921. Designed by Benjamin Wistar Morris (with Carrère & Hastings as consulting architects) for the Cunard Line, one of the world's most famous shipping companies. It has primary facade on Broadway, and secondary facades on Greenwich and Morris.

The Broadway facade is clad in Indiana limestone, with slightly-projecting end pavilions flanking a wide central section. At the 4-story rusticated base, five double-height round-arched entrances are crowned with carved keystones. Reached by granite steps, the three central arches contain historic bronze infill: multi-paned transoms and door enframements of crested cornices, pilasters, side panels with ornate grilles, and glazed doors. Carved rondels with ships bracket the central section. There are two smaller entrances flanking the southern arch. The upper portion of the base is treated like a loggia, with pilaster-fronted side pavilions and a colonnaded center. These support a richly-carved entablature — exhibiting nautilus shells, titans, and compasses — which is crowned by stunted obelisks with shields.

Above the base, the central section is recessed slightly more than it is below. Both side pavilions and central section are faced in smooth limestone, except for horizontal bands of rustication at transitional stories and vertical bands of rustication which serve as quoining. The end pavilions terminate in a 3-story arrangement of double-height pilasters (which frame decorated metal spandrels), piers bearing bundled fasces, and pairs of carved seahorses with riders. The crown of the facade duplicates the loggia treatment of the base and includes paired Ionic columns, decorated spandrels, and a balustraded and modillioned upper entablature. The further setback attic continues the Renaissance-inspired detailing at the limestone central portion, which is crowned by a mansard roof, but the side wings are much simpler, faced in stone-trimmed brick and flat-roofed.

The Morris Street elevation has a granite watertable, limestone 2-story base, and a central court which separates the limestone-faced east wing from the limestone-trimmed tan brick west wing. All court elevations are of tan brick. The Greenwich Street elevation has a granite basement punctuated by several openings. Above the basement rises a 3-story arched opening with its deeply-set multi-paned metal-framed windows and two metal balconies set at an angle to the rest of the facade, which is clad in tan brick with regularly spaced windows. The terminal cornice of stone survives, as do rooftop extensions with stepped gables trimmed in terra-cotta. The south elevation is also clad in tan brick.

Long before construction of the Cunard Building was complete, several large businesses had signed leases in the new building, among them the Atlantic, Gulf & West Indies Steam ship Lines, Merchant Shipbuilding Corp., Consolidated Steel Corp., and International Motor Truck Corp. Over the following decades, occupants included many steamship lines and their agents; brokers; shipbuilders; oil, mining, and steel companies; railroad companies; engineers; and attorneys.

Its time as a ticketing hall ceased in 1968 and the building was sold in 1971. Tenants associated with Cunard shipping interests also eventually left the building; they were replaced by Standard & Poor's Corporation, whose name still adorns the southern entrance along Broadway. A major tenant now is Deloitte Consulting LLP.

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