n a message dated 10/2/98 3:09:59 PM EST, [log in to unmask] writes:
<< Started a job this week @ the Fuller Bldg 595 Madison/141 E 57th- which
may or may not be the oldest steel bldg in NYC [the info in the floor mosaics
is a little confusing]
But the point is if your are in the neighborhood check out the brass
elevator doors sort of WPA bas relief, best doors I've seen to date. >>
Designed by Walker & Gillette, this was built as HQ for the once-titanic
Fuller Construction Company in 1929. A stone-trade magazine, "Through The
Ages", described the doors as "specially modelled to symbolize the building
industry. Divided into panels, each portraying a trade or step in the
construction of a modern skyscraper, they not only fulfull their dual role of
utility and ornamentation, but add a note of intense interest to the whole
theme."
The "oldest steel building" reference in a the floor mosaics indicates not the
Fuller Building, but the Tacoma Building in Chicago. [Inserted without
prejudice in the perpetual controversy about the oldest steel-framed
building.]
A brilliant (Ken please note: fully copyrighted) was published in The New York
Times on June 11, 1995, and follows:
"Art Deco Delight Seeks to Recapture Its Past Glory"
It was built in 1929 as a jazz age testament to the emerging chic
of 57th Street. Upstaged in 1993 by the new 52-story Four
Seasons Hotel New York next door, the Fuller Building is at the
end of a troubled financial period and at the beginning of a
$6,000,000 renovation which may help it recapture its original
prominence.
Victorian New Yorkers prized wide streets like 57th as
residential addresses almost as highly as Madison and Fifth
Avenues. Large townhouses began going up on 57th off Fifth in
1869, and continued until just after the turn of the century,
when an influx of art dealers like Durand-Ruel and Knoedler gave
the street a different luster.
In 1924 what is now the Crown Building was built at the southwest
corner of 57th and Fifth in part to serve art galleries - the
Museum of Modern Art opened there in 1929. In the same year the
Fuller Building opened at the northeast corner of 57th and
Madison and its unusual design quickly made it the center of
gravity for art firms.
George A. Fuller founded the company which bore his name in
Chicago in 1882, after giving up architecture to found a general
contracting company. The Fuller Company built one of the first
steel-framed skyscrapers, the Tacoma Building, in Chicago in
1889. When Fuller died in 1900 his son-in-law, Harry Black took
over the firm and expanded its role in development, building the
Fuller (Flatiron) Building at 23rd and Fifth Avenue both as the
company's headquarters and as an investment.
It was also apparently Harry Black who decided to move the Fuller
Company up to 57th Street. In 1927 the architects Walker &
Gillette designed a new Fuller Building, one with an unusual
plan. Opened in 1929, the 40 story structure has a three part
scheme: a black granite lower section with shops and gallery
space; a middle section of showroom space, from the 7th to 16th
floors, marked by a horizontal window banding; and finally office
space from the 17th to 40th floors in a square tower with a
vertical treatment, capped by a Meso-American geometric pattern
in black glazed terra cotta.
Although there are some straightforward art deco touches to the
facade - like the zig-zag wave panels under the windows of the
art gallery section - the Fuller Building does not have the
typical art deco flat geometric decoration of, say, the Chanin or
Chrysler Buildings. Instead the building relies on the spare
contrast of white limestone and black marble and terra cotta and
also the linear banding, both horizontal and vertical, around the
windows. This simplification prefigures the art moderne of the
1930's, as does the slight rounding of the limestone at the
corners, almost imperceptible from the street. The sculpture
panel above the main doorway by Eli Nadelman, muscular figures of
laborers in front of a modernistic city skyline, is also a
forward-looking touch.
The Fuller Building lobby is largely intact, nice but
predictable, except for the raised relief construction scenes on
the elevator doors.
The Fuller Company took the 16th through 19th floors of its new
building, leasing out the rest. Art dealers, like the Pierre
Matisse Gallery, usually used the 41 East 57th Street address.
But private investors and businessmen, including Franklin
Roosevelt's advisor Bernard Baruch, the banker Frederick Lewisohn
and former New York State Governor Herbert Lehman, usually used
the 595 Madison Avenue address.
Before they left the building in the early 1980's, the Fuller
Company built the United Nations, Lever House, and the U. S.
Supreme Court in Washington.
From the 1930's to the 1980's this stretch of 57th Street
remained fairly unchanged, with the suave Fuller building forming
an agreeable contrast with the leftover townhouses and gallery
buildings. But these largely disappeared under successive waves
of construction, especially after I. M. Pei's sleek, 52-story
hotel, the Four Seasons New York, opened next door at 57 East
57th Street in 1993.
According to Marc Weissman, the property manager, the prior owner
refinanced the Fuller Building during the boom market of the
1980's. But falling rental values resulted in the mortgagor, the
Dallas-based L & B Group, taking back the building last December
[1994]. The exterior and the lobby were designated as Landmarks
in 1986, and now L & B is proceeding with new windows, fire
safety improvements, tenant work and also repair and cleaning of
the limestone.
The exterior certainly could use it: where it is not wind-
scoured, the limestone is not just aged but stained. The peeling
paint on the flagpoles is indicative of a first class building
which has gone slightly to seed. Particularly interesting,
after the cleaning, will be the relationship between the Fuller
Building and the new hotel. The fresh, clean cast stone panels
of the hotel are designed in a rather bare imitation of art deco
streamlining; the Fuller Building is the real thing.
{END}
|
