200 Madison Avenue
200 Madison Avenue is a 25-story office building in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is along the west side of Madison Avenue between 35th and 36th Streets. Designed by Warren and Wetmore, it was built from 1925 to 1926.
200 Madison Avenue's facade is largely made of red brick with limestone trim, as well as window spandrels made of terracotta and cast iron. The ground story is made of limestone and contains entrances from Madison Avenue, 35th Street, and 36th Street. The building contains a setback above its ninth story. The T-shaped lobby is designed in a neo-Renaissance style, with a north–south arcade connecting 35th and 36th Streets, as well as an elevator lobby extending toward Madison Avenue. The lobby's ornate interior contains gilded decorations and various animal motifs. Due to zoning restrictions on the eastern part of the site, the lower stories originally served as an apartment hotel, while the smaller upper stories contained offices.
Since the 1910s, the Astor family had wanted to develop a commercial building on the site, but the plans were delayed for a decade due to opposition from J. P. Morgan Jr. and other local residents. 200 Madison Avenue was developed by a syndicate that included Texas entrepreneur Jesse H. Jones. The building was originally known for its largest tenants, Marshall Field and Company and International Combustion. The apartment hotel initially occupied the second through ninth floors, but it was unprofitable, closed in 1939, and was turned into office space, with tenants such as Amtorg Trading Corporation. The building was sold several times in the 20th century, including to a group representing Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos during the 1980s. George V. Comfort and the Loeb Realty and Development Corporation acquired 200 Madison Avenue in the 1990s, and the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building's lobby as an official landmark in 2021.
Site
200 Madison Avenue occupies the eastern half of a city block in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, bounded by 35th Street on the south, Madison Avenue on the east, and 36th Street on the north; the city block extends westward to Fifth Avenue. The building's land lot has a total area of ; it measures from north to south and from west to east. The building occupies nearly its entire lot, with a frontage of on Madison Avenue, on 35th Street, and 220 feet on 36th Street.200 Madison Avenue is close to the B. Altman and Company Building to the south, the Collectors Club of New York to the southeast, the Church of the Incarnation to the east, and the Morgan Library & Museum. In addition, the Gorham Building at 390 Fifth Avenue, the Tiffany and Company Building at 401 Fifth Avenue, and the Stewart & Company Building at 404 Fifth Avenue are each less than a block away to the west.
Architecture
The building was designed by Warren and Wetmore. It is 25 stories tall, measuring to its roof and to its pinnacle.Form and facade
The exterior of the building contains a granite water table. Above that, the first story is clad with limestone. On both 35th and 36th Streets, the entrances are within recessed openings and contain five brass doors each. The 35th Street entrance is also topped by a transom window. The lowest nine stories occupy the entire site.The upper stories contain a facade of red brick with limestone trim. The Madison Avenue elevation of the facade is made almost entirely of brick, except at several places where there is limestone trim. On the 35th and 36th Street elevations, only the outermost bays of windows are made of brick. The remaining bays are separated horizontally by brick piers; within each bay, the windows on different floors are separated horizontally by black spandrels. The spandrels on the second and third stories are made of ornamental ironwork, splitting each bay into multi-part windows. The spandrels on higher stories are made of dull black terracotta and divide each bay into three windows. Robert A. M. Stern and the co-authors of his book New York 1930 wrote that the facades "hardly resulted in the 'Masterpiece of Modern Architecture' claimed by the Real Estate Record and Guide, but they responded sensitively to the residential scale and character of the Murray Hill district".
There is a setback on the eastern elevation above the ninth story, measuring deep. Behind this setback, the building tapers into a narrower tower. This is because the eastern portion of the site was formerly zoned to allow only residential use, while the western portion could also accommodate commercial use. The offices were above the ninth story which occupied only the western part of the site. The lowest nine stories were originally an apartment hotel. The northern and southern elevations contain a setback above the eleventh or twelfth story. The restriction on the Madison Avenue portion of the site expired in 1940.
Interior
Originally, the building had of rentable space, making it the sixth-largest office building in the United States. At the extreme end of the 36th Street frontage is a pair of driveways, connecting to a loading dock with two freight elevators. An interior loading dock was uncommon in structures built around the same time.Lobby
The lobby is designed in a neo-Renaissance style, but it also contains details of Baroque and 18th-century English architecture. The main entrances are from 35th and 36th Streets, connected by a broad north–south arcade. At the center, a transverse corridor connects to the elevator lobby, which has ten elevators. This gives the lobby a roughly T-shaped plan. Because of the topography of the area, the 36th Street entrance is higher than the 35th Street entrance. As a result, the north–south arcade is one story high at its north end and two stories high at its south end; the corridor has three sets of three marble steps. Originally, the Madison Avenue entrance led to a separate lobby for the hotel rooms, but it was connected to the elevator lobby when the hotel closed.There are foyers just inside the 35th and 36th Street entrances. Both contain marble walls, a set of five doors to the arcade, and a black marble arch. The side walls of the 36th Street foyer contain brass-framed grilles, with a door on the western wall. The 36th Street foyer's marble arch is directly above the doors there, which are topped by two grilles and three gold panels. The side walls of the 35th Street foyer are trimmed with floral decorations, and the ceiling has neoclassical reliefs. There are transom windows above the doors in the 35th Street foyer. Just north of these doors, the foyer has a saucer-domed ceiling decorated with rosettes, followed by that foyer's marble arch. Below the saucer dome, the corners have decorative pendentives, while the side walls have lunette panels depicting animals. These include motifs of dodos, peacocks, and dragons.
The main arcade contains a patterned terrazzo floor, made of yellow and pink tiles. The tiles are rhombus-shaped and are laid in a chevron pattern. The main section of the floor is surrounded by a patterned marble border made of dark yellow Siena, pink Verona, and Bois Jourdan marble. The outermost section of the floor is made of blue marble. The side walls are also made of pink marble above a black baseboard. Each wall is separated at regular intervals by yellow-marble pilasters. The capitals of each pilaster contain moldings of lion heads, which support round arches on the ceiling. Between these lions' heads are medallions that symbolize horses, sheep, and rams. The eastern wall contains two tenant directories and two brass doors, to the north of the elevator hall. The center of the western wall includes a brass door to the freight loading dock, which is flanked by black-marble panels and topped by a lunette with birds. There is a reception desk in front of this door. The barrel-vaulted ceiling is ornately decorated with circular and octagonal reliefs and medallions.
There is a groin vault above the intersection of the arcade and the elevator lobby, with black marble pilasters at each corner. The elevator lobby is about wide, with similar floors to the arcade. Turnstiles are installed in front of the elevator lobby, restricting access to tenants and guests. The shallow barrel-vaulted ceiling contains a grid of rosettes within squares; the north and south edges of the ceiling contain gilded moldings, as well as friezes with peacocks. Below the friezes, the north and south walls contain elevator doors, as well as brass mailboxes resting atop marble sills. There are four elevators to the north and six to the south; their doors are made of brass, with vertically arranged motifs of arches and rosettes. Each set of elevator doors is surrounded by a black-marble frame. The elevator lobby leads east to a double brass door, above which is a gilded lunette panel.
Upper stories
Originally, the building contained an apartment hotel on its lower floors and offices on its upper floors. The ground and second floors contained stores. There were also apartments on the second through ninth floors, extending about deep into the building from either side. The apartments on the eighth and ninth stories were double-story duplex units. There were about 56 units in total. Each of the lower stories occupies about.The building had of rentable space after the apartment hotel was converted to offices. Some of the office tenants redecorated their spaces. Parts of the second through fourth stories were occupied by a Marshall Field's department store, which had its own elevator and staircases. The showroom of fashion firm Warner Brothers Co. contained 12 selling rooms, as well as offices for various departments and a foyer with green-and-peach walls. The foyer of fashion firm Venus Foundations' office contained a blue-and-gray mural, a statue of the Venus de Milo, and a mirrored wall. Venus Foundations' offices also had a Pompeian-themed showroom and private sales offices.