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Gainsborough Studios

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Gainsborough Studios is a distinctively detailed, colorful cooperative apartment building on a street sometimes termed bland.

The 1908 landmark was a cooperative in the original sense – intended for a community of artists – and designed for studios. The park-facing apartments are all duplexes, with double-height windows to capture the light. The rear apartments are all standard-height units. See floor plans (click plans for enlarged view). Alas, the apartments’ multi-million-dollar price tags are out of artists’ reach.

The facade was restored in 1988 – the same year the building was designated a NYC landmark.

The building next door (220 Central Park South) was demolished, and the lot will remain vacant and boarded up until the joint owners can settle their dispute. Vornado Real Estate Trust wants to build a new tower; Extell, which owns the underground parking garage (accessed via W 58th Street) won’t vacate. Extell also owns the new One57 tower and is building the 1,500-foot-tall Nordstrom Tower directly behind 220 Central Park South.

It seems that historic Gainsborough Studios will soon be dwarfed by its new neighbors east and south.

Gainsborough Studios Vital Statistics
  • Location: 222 Central Park South between Seventh Avenue and Broadway
  • Year completed: 1908
  • Architect: Charles W. Buckham
  • Floors: 16
  • Style: Victorian / Edwardian
  • New York City Landmark: 1988
Gainsborough Studios Recommended Reading

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Bank of America Tower

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Bank of America Tower is a model architectural and environmental citizen, despite its height: Easy on the eyes and on resources.

Although BoAT is New York’s third-tallest* skyscraper, it seems understated, just one of the crowd on 42nd Street.

Where it does stand out is its reflective, faceted design, which looks different from every angle and minute-by-minute. Bank of America Tower is surrounded by other glass buildings in different colors and patterns; their constantly changing hues, reflections and intersections are like a massive mobile. Looking up along the skin is akin to looking through a kaleidoscope.

Under the skin, Bank of America Tower is impressive for its environment-friendly features. BoAT used massive quantities of recycled materials in its construction; the building captures and uses rainwater; it has its own power plant; at night, when electrical demand is low, the building makes ice to use for cooling during peak-demand daylight hours. There’s much more – explore the Recommended Reading links below!

Bank of America Tower’s base includes the landmark Henry Miller’s Theatre (now named Stephen Sondheim Theatre) and Anita’s Way – a mid-block passageway between W 42nd and W 43rd Streets (named after Anita Durst, founder of Chashama, which transforms vacant properties into artists’ spaces). The southeast corner (6th Ave./W 43rd St.) includes an “Urban Garden Room” open to the public.

* Based on structural height, 1200 feet, which includes the spire.

Bank of America Tower Vital Statistics
  • Location: One Bryant Park – Sixth Avenue between W 42nd and W 43rd Streets
  • Year completed: 2009
  • Architect: COOKFOX Architects
  • Floors: 55
  • Style: Postmodern
Bank of America Tower Recommended Reading

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Knox Building

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The Knox Building is a landmark 10-story Beaux Arts commercial building, wrapped by the modern 29-story HSBC Tower. Both have ties to 19th-Century personalities.

Civil War hero Edward Knox took over his father’s ailing hat business and pledged to make the Knox name known wherever hats were sold. The Knox Hat Building on Fifth Avenue was part of the route taken. Knox, active in veterans’ affairs, met architect John H. Duncan and was impressed by his designs of the Grand Army Plaza Memorial Arch and the General Grant National Memorial (Grant’s Tomb). Knox subsequently commissioned Duncan to build his newest store and company headquarters.

In 1964 Republic National Bank bought the building and converted it to banking, making relatively few exterior changes (though they did remove the mezzanine). Then in 1985 Republic wrapped a 29-story L-shaped tower around the Knox Building. HSBC acquired Republic, and in 2006 made additional restorations and renovations to the structures.

The artfully done tower (Eli Attia, architect) comes off as a drape backdrop for the Beaux Arts Knox Building. The art came at the expense of the Kress Building, which many preservationists wanted to save from demolition.

HSBC Tower preserves some history that predates the Kress Building, though. In the middle of the Fifth Avenue facade a bronze door memorializes the site of an 1850s “House of Mystery.” That mansion was owned by the Wendel family until the last daughter, Ella, died in 1931 at age 78.

The five-story red brick home was said to be the last residence on that stretch of Fifth, an eccentric home to an eccentric and very wealthy family.

When Ella died, the estate reportedly took 10 years, 250 lawyers and $2 million to settle – there were no less than 2,300 individuals claiming to be heirs.

Drew University was among the beneficiaries of Ella’s will: They received, then sold, the mansion, and a Kress Department Store was built on the site.

Knox Building Vital Statistics
  • Location: 452 Fifth Avenue at W 40th Street
  • Year completed: 1902
  • Architect: John H. Duncan
  • Floors: 10
  • Style: Beaux Arts
  • New York City Landmark: 1980
  • National Register of Historic Places: 1982
HSBC Tower Vital Statistics
  • Location: 452 Fifth Avenue at W 40th Street
  • Year completed: 1985
  • Architect: Eli Attia
  • Floors: 29
  • Style: Postmodern
Knox Building / HSBC Tower Recommended Reading

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Madison Belmont Building

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The Madison Belmont Building was a prominent addition to the young “Silk District,” commercial buildings serving the silk industry that replaced the mansions of uptown-bound wealthy New Yorkers. It was among the first in the U.S. to use Art Deco design elements, according to the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission. The overall design, however, was traditional. Like other tall buildings of the time, the Madison Belmont Building had a base – shaft – capital organization mimicking a classical column.

Although architect Whitney Warren had been exposed to Art Deco concepts while in Paris, it appears that prime tenant Cheney Silk Company also influenced the design. The company had a relationship with Edgar Brandt, a pioneer of the Art Deco style in Paris. Warren picked Brandt to design the iron and bronze framing around the showroom windows of the lower three floors, as well as the entrance doors and grilles.

The white 18th floor was added in 1953 – 29 years after the original construction.

Despite the Madison Belmont Building’s pioneering role, architects Warren & Wetmore are better known for their neo-Renaissance and Beaux Arts works, such as the New York Yacht Club, Grand Central Terminal, New York Central Building (aka Helmsley Building), Steinway Hall, Aeolian, and Heckscher Building (aka Crown Building).

Madison Belmont Building Vital Statistics
  • Location: 181 Madison Avenue at E 34th Street
  • Year completed: 1925
  • Architect: Warren & Wetmore
  • Floors: 18
  • Style: neo-Renaissance, with Art Deco decoration
  • New York City Landmark: 2011
Madison Belmont Building Recommended Reading

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261 Fifth Avenue

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261 Fifth Avenue replaced six houses from the mid-1800s; it was used primarily as showrooms and offices of companies in the housewares and carpet industries, according to the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.

The commission also notes that the striking bold terra cotta ornament used by architect Ely Jacques Kahn had “similarities to motifs used by Frank Lloyd Wright.” Which leads to a small bit of irony: Frank Lloyd Wright was the inspiration for Howard Roark, the hero architect in Ayn Rand’s novel “Fountainhead.” But Ayn Rand worked for Kahn (as an unpaid typist) while she was researching the book; she is quoted as saying of Kahn, “As a type, he was Guy Francon.” (Francon was a sycophant in the novel.)

261 Fifth Avenue Vital Statistics
  • Location: 261 Fifth Avenue at E 29th Street
  • Year completed: 1929
  • Architect: Buchman & Kahn
  • Floors: 26
  • Style: Art Deco
  • New York City Landmark: 2001
261 Fifth Avenue Recommended Reading

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Philadelphia Museum of Art

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The Philadelphia Museum of Art is the third-largest art museum in the United States – but may be better known for its steps, a backdrop for the movie “Rocky.” Probably not a good testament to American culture. But art imitates life imitates art: On any given day you’ll see scores of people running up those steps, and a monumental statue of “Rocky” now stands just east of the base of the steps.

The museum is constructed as three Greek temples atop Faire Mount, at the northwest end of Benjamin Franklin Parkway. While the center temple is the principal building, the north temple has the most elaborate pediment.

Philadelphia Museum of Art Vital Statistics
  • Location: 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th Street
  • Year completed: 1928
  • Architect: Horace Trumbauer, C. Clark Zantzinger, Charles L. Borie, Jr.
  • Floors: 3
  • Style: Greek Revival
Philadelphia Museum of Art Recommended Reading

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Port of New York Grain Terminal

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The Port of New York Grain Terminal, the “Magnificent Mistake” in Red Hook, Brooklyn, has been shut since 1965 and is slowly crumbling into the Gowanus Canal. The ruins are now privately owned, apparently used only as a photo/movie backdrop.

The silos were built by the State of New York in 1922 in an attempt to revive Erie Canal traffic: Midwest grain could travel by barge through the Great Lakes, Erie Canal and Hudson River to this terminal, for onward shipment and/or local consumption. Unfortunately, New York’s labor costs drove the traffic to other ports.

Meanwhile, the site has become a challenge course for graffiti artists and photographers: The building is guarded on the north and west by a 12-foot concrete wall and chain link fence; on the east and south by the Gowanus Canal. I got my closeups by accident: The guard apparently went to get his lunch, leaving the gate wide open, when I wandered by. I spent a half hour shooting the grounds unchallenged. When I left, the guard had returned – and was furious. I suspect that the only reason I didn’t get in trouble is that he’d have more explaining to do than I would.

Port of New York Grain Terminal Vital Statistics
  • Location: Columbia Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn
  • Year completed: 1922
  • Architect: ?
  • Style: Brutalist
Port of New York Grain Terminal Recommended Reading

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Blue

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Blue is much too young to be a landmark in the historical sense, but it has certainly made its mark in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

The towering (in the local context) cantilevered glass box, with its Mondrian-esque grid of blue and black, stands out like the proverbial sore thumb against the Lower East Side’s historic tenements (the Tenement Museum is three blocks away). Not long after the controversial apartments went up, New York City Council rezoned the East Village and Lower East Side, limiting building heights to preserve “neighborhood scale and character.”

The architect – charged, after all, with the task of creating a profitable building – said the structure was the logical result of maximizing square footage within the separate requirements of two lots. The cantilevered south section (103 Norfolk Street) rises over a commercial zone lot; the north section (105 Norfolk Street) is on a residential zone lot.

You must admit it’s an arresting design from any angle, even on a cloudy day.

Blue Vital Statistics
  • Location: 103 & 105 Norfolk Street between Delancey and Rivington Streets
  • Year completed: 2007
  • Architect: Bernard Tschumi Architects, SLCE Architects
  • Floors: 17
  • Style: Postmodern
Blue Recommended Reading
  • The New York Times Real Estate article (September 11, 2005)
  • Bernard Tschumi Architects website
  • Street Easy listing

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