275 Madison Avenue
275 Madison Avenue is a 43-story office building in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is along the southeast corner of Madison Avenue and 40th Street, near Grand Central Terminal. The building, constructed from 1930 to 1931, was designed by Kenneth Franzheim in a mixture of the Art Deco and International styles.
275 Madison Avenue's three-story base is made of polished granite and contains large openings. On all the other floors, the facade contains vertical pilasters of white brick, as well as dark spandrels between windows, which were intended to give a vertical emphasis to the exterior. The 4th through 23rd floors contain several setbacks to comply with the 1916 Zoning Resolution. The building tapers to a rectangular cross-section on the 24th through 43rd floors. The interior of the base is designed with a main entrance lobby on 40th Street, as well as storefronts. Floor areas above the base range from.
275 Madison Avenue was developed by Houston Properties, a firm headed by Texas entrepreneur Jesse H. Jones. It was originally known as 22 East 40th Street. The skyscraper opened at the onset of the Great Depression, and Houston Properties sold the skyscraper in 1933 to the New York Trust Company. In the mid-20th century, 275 Madison Avenue had several owners and was also known for major tenants Johns Manville and American Home Products. It has been owned by the RPW Group since 2016. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated 275 Madison Avenue as an official landmark in 2009.
Site
275 Madison Avenue is in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, just outside of Midtown. It is bounded by Madison Avenue to the west and 40th Street to the north. The L-shaped land lot covers with a frontage of on Madison Avenue and on 40th Street. Nearby buildings include the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library and 10 East 40th Street to the west, 461 Fifth Avenue and 18 East 41st Street to the northeast, the Lefcourt Colonial Building to the north, and 101 Park Avenue to the northeast. Grand Central Terminal is two blocks to the north.In the mid-19th century, the surrounding section of Murray Hill was developed as an upscale residential district, with the estates of many prominent families. Among these estates were three houses at 273, 275, and 277 Madison Avenue, all built in 1862 on lots measuring wide. The three residences served as "the homes of many distinguished citizens of New York". Also on the site were two stables built before 1910 at the addresses 24 and 26 East 40th Street. By 1920, commercial concerns had relocated to the area, which The New York Times called "a great civic centre". The New York Trust Company acquired the old mansion at 277 Madison Avenue in 1922, where it opened a banking branch, and antique bookstore Rosenbach Company occupied number 273 starting in 1920. The Metropolitan Realty Company had planned a 14-story building at 24 and 26 East 40th Street in 1925, but it was not built.
Architecture
275 Madison Avenue was designed by Kenneth Franzheim and built by the Dwight P. Robinson Company for Houston Properties. It has also been known as 22 East 40th Street, the Johns-Manville Building, and the American Home Products Building. The building was designed in the Art Deco style with elements of the International Style. It consists of 43 stories and measures from ground level to the roof. The New York Herald Tribune gave a slightly different figure of 42 stories and.When completed in 1931, the building was one of the more distinct skyscrapers in the city. The Wall Street Journal called it a structure "of novel aspect". The building was also depicted in photographer Berenice Abbott's Changing New York pictorial series. According to architectural critic Carter B. Horsley, 275 Madison Avenue and the nearby 295 Madison Avenue were "two of the city's better Art Deco towers", though Horsley regarded number 295 as the better of the two.
Form
275 Madison Avenue is designed with a three-story base of black granite, above which is a 40-story tower clad with white brick and dark terracotta. The building contains setbacks on the 4th through 23rd stories to comply with the 1916 Zoning Resolution. The setbacks taper to a rectangular tower on the 24th through 43rd stories. The setbacks were designed with over thirty terraces ranging from. The larger terraces generally face east and west while the smaller terraces generally face north.The 40th Street elevation has fourteen vertical bays at the 4th story, with the center six bays being recessed in a light court between four bays on either side. The center bays form a stepped "peak" with setbacks at the 18th through 21st floors. According to architectural writer Robert A. M. Stern, the pyramidal setbacks resembled those on the nearby Chanin Building. The four bays to the west and east have setbacks at the 10th and 12th floors. The Madison Avenue elevation has six bays on the 4th through 12th stories, above which is a setback. There are also setbacks at the 14th, 17th, and 20th stories of the northern and western elevations. The eastern elevation rises from the lot line until the 23rd story, where it sets back to the eastern wall of the top twenty stories.
In addition, the top of the tower contains notched corners with small terraces in each corner. The tower's roof was originally flat, but a two-story penthouse was added after the building's completion. The southwestern notch was removed at that time.
Facade
The black granite of the base was quarried in Pennsylvania. The base is designed with black and silver ornamentation, though many of the silver ornament is painted. The base's color scheme was similar to that of the Fuller Building on Madison Avenue and 57th Street, as well as the Bloomingdale's building on Lexington Avenue. The tower's fenestration, or arrangement of window openings, is different than that of the base. Generally, the tower stories contain vertical pilasters of white brick, which separate the bays of windows. Within each bay, the windows on different floors are separated by spandrels made of terracotta tiles. The white glazed brick was made in Ohio, while the 1,060 metal window frames were made in West Virginia.Base
The northern elevation on 40th Street contains eight bays; the main entrance is recessed in the fifth bay from the west. The main entrance has revolving and swinging metal doors, above which is a black metal transom bar with the words "275 Madison Avenue". Atop this bar is a transom window split into four rows of five panes. The panes are separated by vertical mullions, which are flared at the bottom and contain seashell-shaped lighting sconces between them. From top to bottom, the rows of openings contain plain windows, sash windows, rectangular metal spandrels, and plain windows. The metal spandrels contain a black representation of a skyscraper with part of a silver "starburst" motif at the top. The starburst motifs may represent the Lone Star State, the state nickname of Texas, where Houston Properties was based. To the left and right of the main entrance are metal grilles with full starburst motifs. On the left wall of the entryway is a metal door. Above the entryway and slightly in front of the building's outer wall, there is a translucent glass panel with the metal characters "275".West of the main entrance, in the first through fourth bays from west, are large openings. The openings are each split into three parts: the ground level, ornamented "skyscraper" spandrels, and mezzanine. Each opening has five sets of mezzanine windows above spandrels, which are separated by vertical metal mullions. The ground-level portions of these openings contain a triple-width window flanked by smaller panes. East of the main entrance are three narrower bays. In both the sixth and eighth bays, the ground floor contains large window panes, and there are four sets of spandrel–windows. In the seventh bay, the ground floor has a metal door, topped by a vent and a window pane, as well as signage. The seventh bay has three spandrel–windows, with the center spandrel–window being wider than the outer ones.
The western elevation on Madison Avenue has four bays. The second bay from north has a recessed entrance, which leads to the ground-story banking space inside and was the main entrance prior to 2004. Above the entrance doorway are four windows; the space beneath these window panes is taken up by an octagonal clock and a sign. The first and third bays from north, respectively to the left and right of the Madison Avenue banking entrance, contain a large window pane at ground level and three spandrel–windows above. The fourth bay from north is seven spandrels wide, but there are ventilation grates instead of windows at the mezzanine. This bay has a double door of metal and glass, which leads to a storefront, as well as a shop window.
The third floor has a set of window openings on both 40th Street and Madison Avenue. Along 40th Street, the third-floor window openings are asymmetrically arranged on either side of the main entrance, with twelve to the west of the entrance and six to the east. All except one of these openings contain sash windows; the remaining opening has a louver. The openings are separated by silver geometric motifs. Architectural writer Christopher Gray wrote that the motifs "could be kissing owls, or hooded figures, or the face cards in a deck from another planet". This motif is repeated several times above the main entrance, which is flanked by two flagpoles. On Madison Avenue, there are eight such openings, separated by geometric motifs. Two of these openings have two sash windows each, while the others have one sash window each.
Tower
The 4th through 43rd stories have pilasters of continuous white brick, alternating with bays of windows and spandrels. The windows were designed to be flush with the brick. Franzheim avoided decorative elements such as cornices, entablatures, and pediments, as he wanted the building to be "shadow-less". Instead, the tower was to rely exclusively on the contrast between white and black materials for decoration. Terracotta spandrels, between the white pilasters, separate the windows on different stories; they were meant to emphasize the building's height. According to Stern, the spandrels were inspired by those on Raymond Hood's nearby Daily News Building.The northern and western elevations of the 4th through 23rd stories are designed with white pilasters and dark spandrels, with a few exceptions. At some of the setbacks on the northern and western elevations, the black spandrels are decorated with white-brick geometric shapes. Some of the setbacks also have ornamented white-brick lintels just beneath them. The eastern elevation below the 23rd story has windows within an otherwise flat white-brick wall. The southern elevation below the 23rd story only has windows at the setbacks.
Above the 23rd story, the tower rises as a rectangular shaft, with six bays on the northern elevation and five bays each on the western and eastern elevations. This gives the tower an almost square shape. The two southernmost bays on the western elevation have black panels. The south elevation has eight bays, of which only the three easternmost bays have windows. has black vertical stripes in the first, third, fourth, and fifth bays from west and a pipe in the second bay from the west; only the three easternmost bays have windows. The top of the shaft has a few geometric decorations, similar to those used on the lower section of the tower. The rooftop parapet originally had black-and-white chevron-shaped motifs as well as projecting white brick at the tops of the pilasters. At the roof is a two-story penthouse, which has ribbon windows, steel walls, and chamfered corners. A metal pipe railing and two tiers of rooftop terraces are at the top of the penthouse.