Starrett-Lehigh Building

 office building, Streamline Moderne (architecture), interesting place, historical building

296-foot, 19-story streamline-moderne office building completed in 1931 for the Starrett Investing Corp. Designed by Russell G. & Walter M. Cory, and Yasuo Mitsui as a warehouse and freight terminal for the Starrett Investing Corp. and Lehigh Valley Railroad, it is now one of the largest office buildings in New York City. It occupies the entire block, and in total has 19 miles of strip windows surrounding its facade. The lowest portion of the building consists of seven stories on all four facades; the 8th and 9th stories are a “double-H” in plan; various setbacks and changes in massing occur above, with bulk of building towards the east; the tallest mass, the “central utilities section,” reaches 19 stories and is located towards the center of the building.

The building base, consisting of first, mezzanine, and second-stories, is organized by grid pattern of fenestration; the east and west facades each have nine bays. There are 12 bays west of and 11 bays east of the central utilities section on north and south facades. The four corners of the base are chamfered. The 3rd through 18th floors are articulated horizontally with continuous concrete floor slabs, continuous red brick spandrels serving as parapets on the setbacks, and horizontal ribbon windows.

The central utilities section is articulated with vertical details on the south facade and upper three stories of the north facade. It is divided into two sets of narrower bays on each side of a wider bay on the south facade. Starrett-Lehigh was originally a busy warehouse and manufacturing center, with railroad tracks from the piers running right into the bottom floor. Freight cars carried by boat from New Jersey could be moved in 30-foot elevators to truck pits on upper floors.

The Lehigh Valley ended its association with the Starrett-Lehigh building in 1944, and the spur line tracks were removed from the ground floor. In 1998 the building was sold and renovated. It is now operated by RFR Realty. The south entrance features offices for Martha Stewart Living, the headquarters of Club Monaco and Hugo Boss, the multimedia company Palm Pictures, the International Poster Center, the Pilates studio Stretch and several photography studios and internet businesses.

www.starrett-lehigh.com/

s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/1295.pdf
archive.org/details/isbn_9780810944411/page/103/mode/1u...
6tocelebrate.org/site/starrett-lehigh-building/
75c7f110-2790-473f-8908-ceeaf7e3e6dc.filesusr.com/ugd/9...