Taipei Economic & Cultural Office (New York City, New York) | consulate / consular section / consul residence, cultural center / centre, diplomatic / foreign mission / representation

 consulate / consular section / consul residence, cultural center / centre, diplomatic / foreign mission / representation

177-foot, 15-story office/consulate/cultural building completed in 1927. Designed by Cross & Cross as the Corn Exchange Bank Building, its narrow facade is clad in limestone. It has a tall, rusticated base with a triple-height lobby that originally served as a banking hall. It is dominated by a central round-arch with glass infill and entrance door, and topped by a scrolled keystone. To either side are shorter, smaller round-arches with recessed entrances; the bases of the piers between the arches are of grey granite. Above the eastern arch is mounted a gold metal number 1. Above the end arches, even with the top of the center arch, are a pair of circular windows set in intricately carved squares. A band of whiter-colored limestone runs most of the way across the facade below the 2nd floor, which has a triple-window in the center bay and single-windows at the end bays, with projecting stone sills. Just above these windows, the base is topped by an elaborate frieze with garlands and shields, surmounted by a dentiled cornice with a Greek-fret motif.

The upper floors are organized into four bays. The 3rd-4th floors have plain stone spandrels and narrow, 2-story projecting piers, topped by scrolled brackets supporting a stone balcony and balustrade at the 5th floor. The rest of the shaft is unadorned until the 13th floor, which is underlined by a thin sill course and has lightly-paneled piers. A band course sets off the 2-story crown, where the windows are recessed between the piers, and the facade is topped by a modillioned roof cornice with a small cartouche at its center. Further back there is a small rooftop mechanical penthouse.

The top five floors have three bays of single-windows at the exposed front edge of the east elevation, while the front of the west elevation has three bays of single-windows at the top nine floors, with ornamented spandrels in a cross-hatch pattern between the top two floors.

The Taipei Cultural Center of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York was formerly known as the Cultural Center , one of the two major components of the Chinese Information and Culture Center (CICC) of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York. The CICC was co-established by the Council for Cultural Affairs, the Government Information Office and the Ministry of Education in 1991, and the CICC was organized into two major components, the Information Center and the Cultural Center. Moreover, the Cultural Center also consisted of two cultural institutes, Taipei Gallery and Taipei Theater.

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