135 East 57th Street

 office building, skyscraper, 1988_construction, postmodern (architecture)

430-foot, 31-story postmodern office building completed in 1988. Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, the massing responds to complex zoning requirements and creates separate entries for the program's two components, the antiques centre and the office tower. The most notable feature of the building is the curving wall of the tower, facing the corner of Lexington Avenue and 57th Street and extending all the way to the top. The plaza in front of the arced main facade is elevated from the street and features a 3-story round granite "temple" with fountains as its sculptural piece, acting as a gateway. The tower is divided into two distinct building masses: the slightly lower one faces 57th Street, while the other wraps around the corner plaza.

The facades are clad in grey granite and silvery-blue glass, overall neo-Classicist in spirit. The tower's entrance lobby is situated behind the plaza on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 57th Street, at the center of the 6-story base (banded on the lower two floors). It has a double-height opening framed in dark-green marble, with a revolving door flanked by traditional glass doors. A glass-and-metal screen wall flanks the doors and fills the upper part of the opening. To either side of the entry, following the curved facade, there are three bays of narrow show-windows with transoms, all framed in the same green marble, and a wider bay at the ends. At these storefront bays, there are grey stone bands across the tops of the transoms, with the marble frame extending up and around them. The wider bays have square panels, angled slightly down, at the center of the upper parts of the frames, each with a granite inset panel bearing the number 135, for the building's address. At the 2nd floor there are large square windows above the end bays, also with marble framing, and smaller square windows above the narrow bays.

Around the corner on the south facade there are two more large storefront bays (featuring the same design), and then a narrower bay that defines the transition between the two main building sections. It has a glass door and sidelights, without the marble framing, with including the horizontal stone band. The west half of the base has three more bays, two with the main storefront design, and the center one with an alternate storefront that features a revolving door flanked by glass doors, below a black metal marquee, and with a 3-over-3 pane glass wall at the 2nd floor, all framed in marble (with a flagpole extending from the base of the 3rd floor). As on the curved facade, there are large square windows with marble framing above the storefront, and a smaller square window above the narrow bay. At the far west end is a 2-story extension of the grey granite, with a large opening and metal gate at the ground floor; there is an open-air cutout at the 2nd floor, and a metal atrium roof topping the passageway entrance to Cohen Park, a small public garden space tucked back next to the building's west end. The narrow east facade on the avenue has two bays with the main storefront design.

The 3rd floor of the base has 13 bays of single-windows along the curved facade. The middle three rest atop the projecting marble of the main entrance, and the others are underlined by triple-bands of dark-green stone at each bay. The 4th-5fh floors are joined in each bay by 2-story vertical strips of glass, and the spandrels between the 3rd & 4th floors have square panels of darker stone with inscribed circles of lighter stone. The 6th floor also has single-windows, with the end bays terminating above the 5th floor, and the 6th floor above having angled corners. Along 57th Street there are four matching bays at the east end, and six at the wets end, with the dividing space in between set back above the 2nd floor with a bay of double-windows. Here again, the end bays of both sections terminate above the 5th floor, and the 6th-floor corners are angled. The 4-bay east facade on the avenue follows the same pattern.

The 7th floor is transitional along the curve, now nine bays wide, with another row of circle-adorned spandrels, and the tower is set back above the base on the east and west facades. The upper floors on the curved facade have alternating vertical bands of granite and glass, with metal mullions separating the windows from the glass spandrels in each bay, except at the end bays, where there are stone spandrels. The circle decorations appear again between the 23rd & 24th floors, and there are horizontal stone spandrels across the bottom of the 25th floor and top of the 26th, where the end bays drop away to angled corners up to the tower's roof line. The angled corners are slightly recessed between the main building facade's, and each have a bay of single-windows.

On the south facade, just around the corner from the curved facade, there are two bays of single-windows that have stone spandrels between each floor, framing two bays of single-windows with vertical bands of glass, extending to the 25th floor. The top floors match those on the curve, including the setbacks at the corners, with only the middle two bays extending to the roof line. The west section follows the same patter, but with four middle bays between the end bay, and the two sections are separated by a slightly-recessed bay of double-windows; the stone spandrels between the floors at this dividing bay are ornamented with small squares with projecting diamond-shapes. The end bays of the west section terminate at the 24th floor, with the four middle bays ending at the 26th, where they are crowned by a wide, low, rounded pediment.

On the north elevation, the taller east section has a bay of double-windows flanked by two bays of single-windows on each side, above the base. The end bays have stone spandrels, and the middle bays feature vertical strips of glass. The north facade of the lower west section has four bays of single-windows in vertical glass stripes flanked by single-window end bays, and mirrors the south facade. Between them, the west end of the east section has no window openings, containing the building's core, and the joining section in between has a bay of single-windows and a bay of double-windows. A low and narrow 3-story wing extends out to 58th Street on the north side, with a loading dock on the ground floor, and mechanical equipment above, enclosed by metal louvers. The west elevation of the west section has a central bay of double-windows flanked by two bays of single-windows in a pattern matching the north facade of the east section.

The ground-floor storefront are occupied by Saks Fifth Avenue Off 5th, an HSBC bank branch, and a Starbucks coffee.

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