110 East 42nd Street - NYC, NY - Victorian Style Architecture on Waymarking.com

"The structure was designed in the Italian Romanesque Revival style by York and Sawyer, with William Louis Ayres as the partner in charge. It is on the south side of 42nd Street, across from Grand Central Terminal to the north and between the Pershing Square Building to the west and the Chanin Building to the east. 110 East 42nd Street is named for the Bowery Savings Bank, which had erected the building as a new branch structure to supplement its original building at 130 Bowery. The building was erected within "Terminal City", a collection of buildings above the underground tracks surrounding Grand Central, and makes use of real-estate air rights above the tracks. The building is directly above the New York City Subway's Grand Central–42nd Street station.

As it was not a freestanding structure, 110 East 42nd Street deviated from traditional bank building designs, being laid out as an office building with a bank. The sandstone facade is divided into three vertical sections: the base, tower, and upper stories. Within the four-story base on 42nd Street, there is a small office entrance to the west, a large round-arched entrance at the center, and a smaller arcade to the east. The remainder of the facade is split by vertical piers into multiple bays. The ground floor contains a 80-by-197.5-foot (24.4 by 60.2 m) rectangular room behind the arch, stretching 65 feet (20 m) tall; this was originally the banking room. An annex known as the "Chapel" is to the east of the banking room, and an elevator vestibule and subway entrance are to the west. The other floors are used as offices.

110 East 42nd Street, as well as the adjacent Pershing Square Building, were built on the site of the Grand Union Hotel. Construction started in 1921 and was completed in 1923, and an addition was built between 1931 and 1933. Its facade and banking hall were made New York City designated landmarks in 1996. The building was sold to SL Green in 1998, and the former banking space was turned into an event venue and banquet hall operated by Cipriani S.A. The upper floors of 110 East 42nd Street continue to be used as an office building. Gotham Realty owned the office floors from 2007 to 2011, and Meadow Partners took ownership of the office stories in December 2021.

Site
110 East 42nd Street is in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It is bounded by 42nd Street to the north and 41st Street to the south, in the middle of the city block between Park Avenue to the west and Lexington Avenue to the east. The L-shaped land lot occupies 25,613 square feet (2,379.5 m2), with a frontage of 154.5 feet (47.1 m) on 42nd Street and a depth of 197.5 feet (60.2 m). On the same block, the Pershing Square Building is to the west and the Chanin Building is to the east. Other nearby buildings include the Grand Hyatt New York hotel to the north, the Chrysler Building to the northeast, the Socony–Mobil Building to the east, and 101 Park Avenue to the south.

The completion of the underground Grand Central Terminal in 1913 resulted in the rapid development of Terminal City, the area around Grand Central, as well as a corresponding increase in real-estate prices. Among these were the New York Central Building at 47th Street and Park Avenue, as well as the Grand Central Palace across 42nd Street from the present 110 East 42nd Street. By 1920, the area had become what The New York Times called "a great civic centre""

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Public/Private: public Tours Available?: no Year Built: 1921 Web Address: [Web Link]

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