W New York Union Square
The W New York Union Square is a 270-room, 21-story boutique hotel operated by W Hotels at the northeast corner of Park Avenue South and 17th Street, across from Union Square in Manhattan, New York City. Originally known as the Germania Life Insurance Company Building, it was designed by Albert D'Oench and Joseph W. Yost and built in 1911 in the Beaux-Arts style.
The W New York Union Square building was initially the headquarters of the Germania Life Insurance Company. In 1917, when the company became the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, the building was renamed the Guardian Life Insurance Company Building. A four-story annex to the east was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and was completed in 1961. Guardian Life moved its offices out of the building in 1999, and the W New York Union Square opened the following year.
The main building, part of the hotel, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001, and was designated a city landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1988. The Guardian Life annex, not part of the current hotel, was designated as a city landmark in 2007.
Site
The W New York Union Square building's site measures along Park Avenue South and along 17th Street. The building is located at the northeast corner of that intersection, diagonally across from Union Square to the southwest. Its immediate neighbors include the four-story International Style Guardian annex and several rowhouses to the east; the former Tammany Hall building at 44 Union Square to the south; the Everett Building across Park Avenue to the west; and a five-story commercial building and a twenty-story loft structure to the north. The building is one of the few remaining major insurance company "home office" structures in New York City.Architecture
The W New York Union Square building is designed in the Beaux-Arts style. It is 21 stories tall, with the 18th through 21st stories being located within the mansard roof. A "light court" on the north side of the building gives it a U-shaped footprint. According to building plans, D'Oench and Yost considered the Germania Life Building's main roof to be a flat roof above the 17th floor. The building is divided into three horizontal sections: a three-story base with a ground floor and two-story "transitional section"; a 12-story "shaft" below another 2-story "transitional section"; and the four-story roof. The building rises above ground level. Two basement levels are located below ground level, and there is a mezzanine between the second and third floors.The interior structure is supported by steel plate girders below the fourth floor. Above that level, the structure is composed primarily of I-beams, with flange plates at their tops and bottoms. The building also incorporates curtain walls in its design.
According to critic A. C. David, the optimal building design included high ceilings and large windows to maximize natural light coverage. The Germania Life Building not only included these features, but also had a corner location that was conducive toward the maximization of natural light. However, unlike many buildings being built on Park Avenue in the 1900s and 1910s, the Germania Life Building also retained traditional design features. For instance, the building used masonry instead of a terracotta-clad metal structure for fireproofing.
Facade
The W New York Union Square building facade is composed mostly of gray Concord granite interspersed with brick, except for the red Numidian-granite water table, and the red Spanish-tile mansard roof. The foundation walls are made of brick, mortar, and cement. On all floors, there are eight architectural bays, three facing Park Avenue to the west and five facing 17th Street to the south.The ground floor facade is rusticated with several rows of beveled masonry blocks, and deep crevices between each row of blocks. In each of the ground-floor bays, there are rusticated arches with foliate keystones. The arches formerly contained storefronts until the building's conversion into a hotel. The main entrance is from the northernmost arch on Park Avenue South. A belt course runs on the facade between the ground and second floors. The second and third floor facades are also rusticated with beveled blocks but have shallower crevices between each row. The center bay on Park Avenue South and the center three bays on 17th Street contain double-story arched openings with keystones at top, while each of the bay at the ends of each facade contain two windows per floor. On the Park Avenue South side, there is a small iron balcony projecting from the third story of the double arch, with the initials "G" and "L" on the iron railing. The third floor facade is topped by a denticulated cornice. Signs with the company name were formerly located above the third floor on both the Park Avenue South and 17th Street sides.
The facades of the fourth through fifteenth floors are largely uniform, with shallow belt courses and quoins in the spaces between each set of windows. Shallow balconies on the fourth floor, with stone colonnades, are located above the denticulated third-floor cornices on the Park Avenue South and 17th Street sides, and run across nearly the entire width of both facades. On the west and east facades, the fenestration or window arrangement is in a 2-3-2 format, i.e. there are two windows per floor on the side bays and three windows per floor in the central bay. On the south facade, the fenestration is in a 2-2-2-2-2 format, i.e. five bays with two windows each. The beige-brick-clad north facade contains the recessed "light court" and is divided into two asymmetric sections, both with simple window openings. The center bays on the west and south facades contain projecting windowsills on the fourth through fourteenth floors. Above the 15th and 17th stories are stone cornices. The 16th story also used to have a cornice above it, but the cornice was replaced around 1940 with a fascia of sheet metal. The 16th floor contains panels depicting torches and shields in the spaces between each bay, while the 17th floor facade is unadorned.
Roof
The W New York Union Square building's most prominent feature is its four-story mansard roof, which contains dormer windows, escutcheons, and five decorative keystones with garlands. On the 18th story, the west and east facades contain fenestration in a 2-3-2 format and the south facade contains fenestration in a 2-3-3-3-2 format. On the 19th story, the west and east facades' fenestration is in a 1-3-1 format and the south facade's fenestration is in a 1-3-3-3-1 format. There are carved scallops atop each of the window groupings on the 18th and 19th stories. On the 20th story, the west and east facades contain a triple window in the center, topped by a large triangular pediment, while there are two standalone dormer windows on each side of the triple window, all with smaller pediments. The south side of the 20th story contains ten dormer windows, all with pediments. On the 21st story, there are five round-arched dormer windows on the west and east facades, and eight round-arched dormer windows on the south facade. A horizontal band runs at the top of the 21st story facade, below a cornice, while vertical acroteria run along the roof's corners.The roof was influenced by both 19th-century French architecture and the Second Empire style. Inspiration also came from the now-demolished New York Tribune Building in Civic Center, Manhattan, which was topped by a three-story mansard roof. In addition, during the 1870s, Germania had added a mansard roof to their otherwise unadorned Italianate headquarters in the Financial District. D'Oench and Yost had decided to retain this feature in their design for the new building. The roof also incorporates several features of German architectural styles because of the company's and D'Oench's German roots. For example, the designs of the dormer windows are different for each floor, and there is elaborate decoration, consistent with 16th-century German architecture.
On top of the roof is a horizontal lighted sign with white letters. It originally contained the letters "Germania Life". The sign was changed to "Guardian Life" in 1917 upon the company's renaming. Most of the letters seem to have been reused when the sign was replaced, while the letters "E" and "M" were replaced with a "U" and "D". The sign was later replaced with a "W Union Square" sign.
Interior
The floors are made of multicolored marble pattern on the ground-floor main entrance, tile on the ground-floor retail area, terrazzo with mosaic borders on the second through fourth floors, and cement on the fifth through 20th stories and in the basements. The ground-floor entrance area also contains white English veined marble on the walls, capped by stucco decoration. The restrooms are designed with hexagonal-tiled floors, tile wainscoting, and stalls made with marble barriers. The main reception room, known as the living room, has a Beaux-Arts design with rosettes on its ceiling.Inside the building are eight elevators, five for passenger use and three for freight transport. There are also two enclosed hallways on each floor, and two enclosed staircases within the building. One particularly heavily ornamented interior space is the second-story elevator lobby, which contains a marble floor and English marble walls and ceilings. The elevator lobby is supported by round arches that divide it into an arcade with five domes.
Directly south of the second-floor elevator lobby, accessed through three sets of openings, is a, double-height space, originally used for selling insurance before being converted into the W Hotel ballroom. The lower halves of the ballroom's walls contain marble wainscoting. Various ornaments, cartouches, and motifs are located throughout the ballroom, including several instances of Guardian Life's initials. Next to the ballroom is a lounge with green decorations. The upper stories have 256 guest units, with decorative details such as checkerboard patterns and black-and-gold tables. There is also a rooftop bar.