American Woolen Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, Neo-Renaissance (architecture)

299-foot,19-story Neo-Renaissance office building completed in 1909. Designed by Robert H. Robertson, it is clad in white brick and terra-cotta above a 3-story limestone base. The west facade on the avenue has five bays, the middle ones with three windows and the end bays with two. There is a 2-story grand entrance in the middle bay, with four glass doors below a tall glass expanse set in a round-arch highlighted by a ram's head. 2-story pillars support an entablature across the 2nd floor with the inscription AMERICAN WOOLEN BUILDING, topped by a dentiled cornice. The ground floor has plate-glass storefronts south of the main entrance, and French windows to the north that slide open for a restaurant space. The 2nd floor has thin, paneled stone mullions between the windows in each bay, with small triglyphs on top that are ringed by garlands. The 3rd floor has slightly-rounded thin pilasters framing each bay, and there is a smaller dentiled cornice across the top.

The upper floors have terra-cotta spandrels and mullions between the main brick piers. In the 3-window bays, the spandrels are decorated by diamond shapes within rectangular panels. The 15th floor is topped by a broad stone cornice with large paired console brackets, with a shallower cornice below. The middle bays at the 16th-18th floors have sets of three windows with the outer panes angled back into the facade, and green copper framing, mullions, and spandrels. The two piers separating these three bays are rounded, and the other piers are topped by stylized capitals. The 19th floor has shorter, square-headed windows punched into the facade, which is crowned by a sloped, black tiled mansard roof.

The south facade on 18th Street has the same design at each level, but spans 11 bays. The east elevation is clad in brown brick with three bays of single-windows at the front, another near the middle, and two at the north end.

The building served as the temporary headquarters for the Port Authority of New York after 9/11 until 2015. Is now also linked internally to the neighboring building to the north. The ground floor is occupied at the west end by Flushing Bank, and Boucherie Union Square bistro.

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