American Radiator Building
The American Radiator Building is an early skyscraper at 40 West 40th Street, just south of Bryant Park, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. It was designed by Raymond Hood and André Fouilhoux in the Gothic and Art Deco styles for the American Radiator Company. The original section of the American Radiator Building, a, 23-story tower, was completed in 1924. A five-story annex, to the west of the original tower, was built from 1936 to 1937.
The original structure consists of an eighteen-story tower above a base of five stories, while the western annex only rises five stories. The American Radiator Building's facade is made predominantly of black brick. Gold-colored decorations are used on the building's setbacks and pinnacles. Hood had intended for the original structure to be a standalone shaft, requiring the building to be set back from the lot line and reducing the maximum amount of space available. Inside, the basement, first, and second floors were originally designed as exhibition showrooms, while the upper stories served as office space.
The building was completed five years before the American Radiator Company merged with Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company to form American Radiator and Standard Sanitary Corporation, later known as American Standard. American Standard sold the building in 1988 to a Japanese company. The main building was sold in 1998 to Philip Pilevsky, who opened the Bryant Park Hotel there in 2001. The annex operated as the Katharine Gibbs School from 2001 to 2009 and was converted into the City University of New York's Guttman Community College in 2012. The American Radiator Building is a New York City designated landmark and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Site
The American Radiator Building is at 40 West 40th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. The original section of the building occupies a rectangular land lot with a frontage of along 40th Street, a depth of, and an area of. There is also a five-story annex at 50 West 40th Street, west of the original tower. The annex's lot covers with a frontage of along 40th Street, extending to the rear of the block at 39th Street.The American Radiator Building is on 40th Street, which forms the southern border of Bryant Park, and between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. On the same block are the Engineers' Club Building, The Bryant, and 452 Fifth Avenue to the east; the Engineering Societies' Building and the Haskins & Sells Building to the south; and Bryant Park Studios to the west. Other nearby places include the New York Public Library Main Branch across 40th Street to the north, as well as the Lord & Taylor Building to the southeast. The surrounding block of 40th Street had contained brownstone row houses through the 1920s, before they were replaced by the American Radiator Building and several other multi-story structures. The site of the annex was occupied by six houses at 46–52 West 40th Street and 39–43 West 39th Street until the 1930s.
Architecture
The American Radiator Building was designed by Raymond Hood and J. André Fouilhoux, of the firm Hood, Godley, and Fouilhoux, in a mixture of the Gothic Revival and Art Deco styles. It was completed in 1924 as the headquarters of the American Radiator Company. Rene Paul Chambellan, a frequent collaborator of Hood and his associate John Mead Howells, created the ornamentation and sculptures. Numerous other contractors were hired for the construction.Only the base of the building was designed in a strictly Gothic style, but the building as a whole contains abstract ornamentation, similar to those used on the Bush Tower and Woolworth Building. The American Radiator Building's massing is based on Eliel Saarinen's unbuilt competition entry for Chicago's Tribune Tower, augmented by a strong use of color. The building's design was also inspired by those of two nearby buildings: the base-and-tower massing of the Candler Building and the Gothic details of the Bush Tower. When the building was completed, Hood proclaimed that it was "in some respects a departure from the ordinary high building".
Form
The original structure measuring tall consists of an eighteen-story tower above a base of five stories. The western annex only rises five stories. According to Architectural Forum magazine, the lower floors "form a projecting screen, back of which rises the towering bulk of the building". The writer Eric Nash described the building as the "first true expression of the Art Deco skyscraper silhouette".The original tower contains several setbacks to comply with the 1916 Zoning Resolution. The first setback is on the 4th floor, and there are also setbacks on the 12th, 17th, 22nd, and 23rd floors. Above the 15th story are indentations; those on the northern side of the building are beveled to make the tower appear like a shaft. Within these indentations are narrow window bays. The shaft-like design permitted the tower to be illuminated by natural light from all sides. The shaft-like form was not applied consistently; the rear conformed to the city's setback requirement for backyards, so the south facade of the base and tower are continuous.
Hood had intended for the original structure to be a standalone shaft. This required the building to be set back from the lot line, therefore reducing the maximum amount of space available in the building. Conversely, the slight setbacks and the indented corners ensure there would be some air between the tower and all adjacent buildings. The presence of the western annex also protected views from that direction. According to Hood, his team shaped "a small plasteline model into the maximum model that the zoning law permitted", which was similar to the structure's final form. Hood and his client only disagreed over whether the building should be more than twenty stories high and whether additional frontage should be used for the base.
Facade
The American Radiator Building was designed in a black and gold color scheme. These specific colors came from a "somewhat offhand" suggestion made during an early discussion with Hood and Fouilhoux's team. It is not known who exactly suggested the black and gold colors, but architectural writer Walter Littlefield Creese says it may have been Hood's friend, architect Joseph Urban. Hood used the black and gold palette because he believed that conventional office buildings, with their white-masonry facades and dark glass windows, were monotonous. He had compared such windows to "waffles" and wished to find a color to make the window openings more conspicuous. After the tower's completion, Hood anticipated that additional colorful skyscrapers would be developed in New York City.The primary color of black was used to signify coal, while gold-coated decorations were used to symbolize fire. The "gold" was actually bronze powder placed on cast stone, a technique which was devised after a number of experiments by Hood and Fouilhoux's team. Hood had visited Brussels just before the American Radiator Building was built, and he had realized how golden colors had made "gloomy and dingy" buildings stand out, especially if their facades were darker.
Base
The original building's base is clad with polished black Swedish granite. The windows of the former ground-level showrooms contain large plate-glass panes with thin vertical bronze mullions in front of them. The spaces below the windows were originally clad in red Verona marble. The main entrance is a round-arched opening between the two original showroom windows. The western edge of the portal contains a plaque with the letters "1924 / Raymond Hood / Architect" embossed in bronze; the plaque originally contained a four-leaf clover, which has since fallen off. There are modified Gothic-style bronze pinnacles above the entrance opening, as well as a bronze frame around it.A cornice, with corbels and modillions, runs above the second story. Originally, there were nine corbels, of which six contained ornamental figures depicting negative human emotions. According to the New York Herald Tribune, the corbels were inspired by caricatures of medieval grotesques. The grotesques on the building were designed in a whimsical manner, with figures that included a pipe fitter with a wrench.
The annex is designed in a similar style to the original building's base, with polished black granite on the first two stories. The annex has similar plate-glass panes and bronze mullions to the original building, but it has a revolving door at the center. The corbeled cornice above the second story of the annex is similar to that in the original building.
Tower
The original building is clad with black brick starting on the third floor; the use of brick was unusual for skyscrapers of the 1920s, which tended to use stone. The third story consists of bays with one or two windows each, as well as carved railings at the bottom of each window and gold spandrel panels above each window. These bays are separated by slightly projecting black-brick pilasters, which in turn have gold pinnacles. This window pattern is repeated in the annex's third floor. The fourth and fifth floors of the annex are slightly set back from the first three stories and contain a facade of black brick, with a gold cornice on top. Projecting brick piers divide these stories into several bays, each with double windows.The tower stories contain projecting bricks in various places, which give it a textured quality. Dark red, light red, amber, and white lights were placed on the setbacks to provide nighttime illumination. Cornices wrap around the building at the 16th and 20th stories. The facade contains various pinnacles and peaks clad with gold, which one publication compared to turrets in old English castles. These ornamental features are actually made of terracotta but are covered in gold leaf. Gold is also used on corbels, cornices, and the spandrels between stories, and the Gothic-style pinnacles at the top of the building are ornamented with gold leaf as well. When the building was being completed, Hood wrote for Architectural Forum that "false tops have gone out of vogue for office buildings, as well as the fashion of putting an ornamental front on one or two sides of a building".
The roof consists of a tank surrounding a chimney and installed on a frame. At night, the gold-leafed terracotta decorations of the American Radiator Building are illuminated to draw attention to the shaft. Hood chose not to illuminate the middle stories of the tower "to avoid any simulation of daylight effects". The nighttime lighting gives the crown the appearance of a heated radiator. Other parts of the building were sometimes illuminated as well; in 1928, eleven stories were lit in the shape of a cross to raise awareness for tuberculosis management.