21 West Street Building Designation Report

Landmarks Preservation Commission June 16, 1998, Designation List 294 LP-1999 21 West Street Building, 21 West Street, aka 21-23 West Street, 11-21 Morris Street, and 34-38 Washington Street, Manhattan. Built 1929-31; architects Starrett & Van Vleck. Landmark Site: Borough of Manhattan Tax Map Block 15, Lot 22. On May 19, 1998, the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a public hearing on the proposed designation of the 21 West Street Building (Item No. 1). The hearing was duly advertised according to the provisions of Law. The owner of the building and his representative appeared to speak in favor of designation. Summary The thirty-one story, brick Art Deco office building at 21 West Street was constructed in 1929-31 to the designs of the prolific architectural firm of Starrett & Van Vleck. With its bold, set-back profile, and finely detailed brickwork suggestive of woven fabric, this building epitomizes the skyscrapers built in New York during the "Jazz Age," when architects and their clients were searching for ways to represent this period which was seen as more fast-paced, mechanized, and altogether different from what had come before. The architects used brick for its varied color and textural interest, derived the massing from the recent zoning laws, and used space in new ways, incorporating a recessed street-level shopping arcade and corner windows. The architectural firm of Starrett & Van Vleck which had designed numerous buildings, including offices, schools, and stores were experienced practitioners of this type of design. DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS History of the Area 1 Wall Street) downtown. Infra-structure The southernmost tip of Manhattan is the improvements in various parts of the city served as oldest inhabited part of the island. It was so spurs to new development, such as the demolition densely built up that early in the city's history, the of the Second Avenue Elevated which paved the areas adjacent to the shore began to be filled in to way for Tudor City on the east side, and the create more useable land. The entire block of West Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel in lower Manhattan Street, from Battery Place to Morris Street is built which made travel between Manhattan and upon landfill in the Hudson River; its creation Brooklyn easier, while eliminating much east-west occured in the early years of the nineteenth traffic in lower Manhattan, near the site of this century, in accordance with the terms of certain West Street building. water grants made by the city.1 The earliest occupants of this area purchased standard 25-foot Art Deco Style5 lots and constructed individual houses on them. The Art Deco or Modernistic style of Over the course of the nineteenth century, the city's architecture which primarily appeared in this increasing population, changes in fashion, as well country from the mid-1920s through the 1930s, has as changes in types of businesses and their needs been called an “avant-garde traditionalist”6 meant that residences relocated further uptown, approach to creating a contemporary idiom for leaving lower Manhattan primarily for business buildings of the period. As in other self-conscious use. Beginning in the early twentieth century, modern periods, designers and critics of this time ownership on the block began to change from expressed the need for a new style which could be individuals to realty and warehouse companies. deemed appropriate for the period dubbed the "Jazz These new owners tended to buy numerous small Age," and all its accompanying technological lots and assemble larger parcels to accommodate developments. Much of the architecture that we new, larger industrial and office buildings.2 In know as Art Deco however, was based on 1929, the land on which 21 West Street is located, accepted, standard forms and construction then occupied by various low, early nineteenth- techniques, which were given a modern cast century buildings, changed hands several times through the use of a characteristic ornament, and a among a series of real estate concerns until it was variety of materials, some new and some simply purchased by the 21 West Street Corporation3 used in a new way. Most of the architects active in which erected this office building for investment this style had received traditional Beaux-Arts purposes. training in which the plan and the design of The period from 1925 to 1931 was a period of elevations were the first and most important steps tremendous building and growth in New York in the design of a building. To these initial steps City. During 1925, fifteen new office skyscrapers were added design and ornamental ideas which were erected, and during 1926, thirty more towers evolved from numerous influences including: the were built. The years 1929-1930 were the peak Paris 1925 Exposition International des Arts years for the construction of office buildings in the Decoratifs, the well-publicized designs of the Art Deco style4 despite the crash of the Stock Vienna Secessionists and the Wiener Werkstatt, the Market, as those which had been previously German Expressionists, as well as American planned and financed went forward. Large architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis skyscrapers of those years included the Empire Sullivan, current theatrical set designs, and Mayan State Building (1929-31, 350 Fifth Avenue, a and other Native American forms. designated New York City Landmark), the The overall shape of tall buildings of this Chrysler Building (1928-30, 405 Lexington period came about as a result of the 1916 Building Avenue, a designated New York City Landmark), Zone Resolution of New York which decreed and the Daily News Building (1929-30, 220 East setbacks at various levels to allow light and air to 42nd Street, a designated New York City reach the lower stories of buildings in an Landmark) in midtown, and the Manhattan increasingly dense city. In 1922, architect and Company Building (1929-30, 40 Wall Street, a critic Harvey Wiley Corbett (1873-1954) and designated New York City Landmark), the City architectural renderer Hugh Ferriss (1889-1962) Bank-Farmers Trust Company Building (1930-31, explored the possibilities of the zoning law in a 20 Exchange Place, a designated New York City series of drawings which illustrated progressive Landmark) and the Irving Trust Building (1929-32, stages of design based on the law’s restrictions. 2 These dramatic renderings, published in Pencil City, this new architectural style was used mainly Points (1923) and in Metropolis of Tomorrow for skyscrapers. By the time of its critical re- (1929), significantly influenced architects of the assessment in the 1960s and 1970s this period. The drawings and the laws from which "modernistic" style had achieved the popular name they came directed the architects’ attention to the of Art Deco after the 1925 Paris Exposition. building as a whole rather than to a single facade of 21 West Street Building the structure, thus altering the whole design The office tower at 21 West Street was process. By visualizing buildings “from every conceived and constructed during this fertile design possible angle” the architect was transformed from and building phase of New York architecture.9 a designer of facades into a “sculptor in building Since it was built as a speculative investment, the masses.”7 The zoning law provided architects with owners wanted an appealing building to attract a sound, rational basis for the form and appearance tenants, while giving them as large a return on their of the skyscraper as well as a new source of investment as possible. This type of speculative creativity; historical styles did not seem to express building coincided with the dominant forces of this modern sensibility and consequently, a new business and commercial enterprise in the 1920s, “skyscraper style” emerged in the 1920s. Major and the stylish Art Deco architecture was seen as characteristics of the new style, as generated in part giving expression to this power. by the zoning restrictions, were sculpted massing, According to a contemporary report, the bold setbacks, and ornament subordinated to the building "contains every conceivable device yet overall mass. The dramatic rendering style of invented to contribute to the comfort and Ferriss and others articulated this new modernist convenience of its tenants."10 These features aesthetic. In addition, an emphasis on the included numerous high-speed elevators as well as verticality of the tall building derived from the a uniquely decorated lobby which featured a wide influence of Eliel Saarinen's second-prize mosaic map of old New York. winning competition entry for the Chicago Tribune The design of this building, as conceived by Building in 1923. Starrett & Van Vleck, made use of many of the At the same time, the surfaces of these new current popular architectural theories and ideas. buildings were treated with little depth, literally as The ground floor arcade with storefronts had its a skin around the framework. This idea came from precedent in the Barclay-Vesey Building by the work of architects of the Chicago School, McKenzie, Voorhees & Gmelin (1923-27, 140 which in turn can be traced back to the writings of West Street, a designated New York City German architect Gottfried Semper (1803-1879). Landmark) and reflected the interest of designers in In an essay he included as one of the four basic non-traditional uses of space and traffic patterns. components of architecture the "enclosure of The arcade at the ground story brought pedestrians textiles, animal skins, wattle or any other filler within the building itself, rather than just having hung from the frame or placed between the them pass by, and was an attempt to consider the supporting poles."8 This led to the idea of walls building in terms of its wider environment and being treated like woven fabric, a technique used planning ideas.

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