Chanin Building

	Chanin Building
	U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Location:	122 E. 42nd St., New York, New York
Coordinates:	40°45′4″N 73°58′32″W / 40.75111°N 73.97556°WCoordinates: 40°45′4″N 73°58′32″W / 40.75111°N 73.97556°W
Area:	less than one acre
Built:	1927
Architectural style:	Art Deco
Governing body:	Private
NRHP Reference#:	80002676
Added to NRHP:	April 23, 1980

Chanin Building
Chanin Building
General information
Architectural style	Art Deco
Town or city	122 East 42nd Street, New York, New York
Country	United States
Completed	1929
Design and construction
Client	Irwin S. Chanin
Owner	Stahl Organization
Architect	Sloan & Robertson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

The Chanin Building is a brick and terra-cotta skyscraper located at 122 East 42nd Street, at the corner of Lexington Avenue, in Manhattan. Built by Irwin S. Chanin in 1929, it is 56 stories high, reaching 197.8 metres (649 ft) excluding the spire and 207.3 metres (680 ft) including it. It was designed by Sloan & Robertson in the Art Deco style,^[2] with the assistance of Chanin's own architect Jacques Delamarre, and it incorporates architectural sculpture by Rene Paul Chambellan.

The base of the building boasts black Belgian marble around the store fronts with a bronze frieze directly above depicting scenes of evolution.^[3] A second terra-cotta frieze runs the whole length of the lower facade, presenting a dramatic collection of angular zigzags and curvy leaves. The tower rises 22 stories and then thins into a series of setbacks, reaching a total of 56 floors. The top of the building is a series of buttresses that are illuminated from the inside at night, lighting up the recesses in the crown.

In the lobbies, eight bronze reliefs designed by Rene Paul Chambellan perch above ornate bronze radiator grilles. The bronze ornamentation continues in the waves on the floor, mailboxes, and elevator doors extending the general Art Deco style from the outside in. When originally completed, the 50th floor had a silver-and-black high-brow movie theater. This floor and the 51st are now offices joined by a stairwell instead. Initially a dominant landmark in the midtown skyline, the building had an open air observatory on the 54th floor.^[4] Having been surpassed in height by a number of buildings, most notably the Chrysler Building located across the street, the observatory has been long closed. The self-supporting tower atop the building is the original transmission site for WQXR-FM from 1941 to the 1960s (when they moved to the Empire State Building). WQXR maintains a current backup antenna next to the original tower on a smaller pole. Current tenants include the headquarters for Apple Bank for Savings.