Saturday, July 17, 2004
Decker Building earns a spot on the National Register
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Several buildings around Union Square have been recently honored by admission to the National Register of Historic Places, a designation administered by the US Department of Interior’s National Park Service, whose local agent is the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation sand Historic Preservation, Bernadette Castro, Commissioner.
There are five buildings in the group, already distinguished by their designations as New York City landmarks, The new designation gives them, besides the honor, a palpable benefit of a tax deduction of 20 percent for repair work. It also gives me, in the 11-page government document, access to a treasure of architectural terms for parts of the buildings, which I will try to decipher and disseminate to my audience. Other people get grants for this kind of work, your kind thoughts will be ample reward for me.
Let’s start with the most fun structure, the Moorish eleven-story Decker Building, later Union Building, at 33 Union Square West, between 16th and 17th Streets, easily recognized by an interesting layout of windows, three of them per floor, and a turret at the top. No floor is the same. The classic tripartite columnar skyscraper division is employed: the first two stories form a base, with the second floor windowing unified by a frame. Third is transitional, then come six stories forming a shaft of the column (the classical Greek column consisting of a base, a shaft and a capitol is easily discernible in lots of early NY skyscrapers), then a columnar loggia (a roofed open gallery overlooking the court, very appropriate in Tuscany, for instance), then a balcony, and finally, a tower.
What brought this Islamic/Venetian fantasy, this 1893 sliver in the middle of “shapeless and ill-looking lots …around which were reared a miserable lot of shanties,” per Valentine’s manual of 1957? Actually, at the time of the present building’s construction there were modest three- and four-story structures surrounding a burgeoning park and residential area, with a major shopping area on the Ladies’ Mile, just a block westward.
Well, this was a piano industry area – consider the Steinway building on 14th Street – and a bit of flash was expected to help the Decker piano people acquire the class that goes with fortune. In 1869 they hired Leopold Eidlitz, who was finishing St George’s Church on Rutherford Place, to construct a jewel of a four-story showroom for their wares. In 1893 this was razed, to construct the present Moorish miracle.
The architect of record was Alfred Zucker, whose work we discussed in conjunction with the Madison Square Park Historic District. The actual doer was a notable architect and a man of some mystery, John H. Edelman, an anarchist who had come to the city after drifting back and forth between his native Cleveland, Chicago and Kearney, N.J. In Chicago he was a major influence in the growth of Louis H. Sullivan, the great pioneer of American architecture who sometimes worked for Edelman. Their interaction, with the aid of ideas from the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs in Paris formed what has been recognized as an outstanding style, best exemplified by the Decker Building. Edelman’s presence at the birth of the present #33 has been recognized only since the 1960s by inquisitive historians, although the difference in styles between this and other imaginative Zucker buildings has been a long-time puzzlement.
Now to the interesting decorative elements. The center fifth-floor windows are framed by an Arabic horseshoe arch. The intrados (interior curve of the arch) has a contiguous band of similar small arches. An alfiz, rectangular molding framing a horseshoe arch, unites the fourth and the fifth floor window elements. Another horseshoe arch surmounts the 11th floor center windows. Cast-iron ogee arches (bell-shaped but pointed) frame the second-story windows. Terra-cotta ornaments, sunflowers, filigrees and arabesques abound. There was once a domed minaret atop the tower, which disappeared long ago. It was rumored that the owners had promised to restore it, but let’s not hold our breaths.
To cap it all, this building’s sixth floor after 1968 housed the Factory, Andy Warhol’s studio and offices. It was renovated into condominiums in the 1990s.
More in weeks to come . Wally Dobelis thanks the NYS Office of Parks, Restoration and Historic Preservation, Anthony Robins, Christopher Gray, and Jack Taylor
Several buildings around Union Square have been recently honored by admission to the National Register of Historic Places, a designation administered by the US Department of Interior’s National Park Service, whose local agent is the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation sand Historic Preservation, Bernadette Castro, Commissioner.
There are five buildings in the group, already distinguished by their designations as New York City landmarks, The new designation gives them, besides the honor, a palpable benefit of a tax deduction of 20 percent for repair work. It also gives me, in the 11-page government document, access to a treasure of architectural terms for parts of the buildings, which I will try to decipher and disseminate to my audience. Other people get grants for this kind of work, your kind thoughts will be ample reward for me.
Let’s start with the most fun structure, the Moorish eleven-story Decker Building, later Union Building, at 33 Union Square West, between 16th and 17th Streets, easily recognized by an interesting layout of windows, three of them per floor, and a turret at the top. No floor is the same. The classic tripartite columnar skyscraper division is employed: the first two stories form a base, with the second floor windowing unified by a frame. Third is transitional, then come six stories forming a shaft of the column (the classical Greek column consisting of a base, a shaft and a capitol is easily discernible in lots of early NY skyscrapers), then a columnar loggia (a roofed open gallery overlooking the court, very appropriate in Tuscany, for instance), then a balcony, and finally, a tower.
What brought this Islamic/Venetian fantasy, this 1893 sliver in the middle of “shapeless and ill-looking lots …around which were reared a miserable lot of shanties,” per Valentine’s manual of 1957? Actually, at the time of the present building’s construction there were modest three- and four-story structures surrounding a burgeoning park and residential area, with a major shopping area on the Ladies’ Mile, just a block westward.
Well, this was a piano industry area – consider the Steinway building on 14th Street – and a bit of flash was expected to help the Decker piano people acquire the class that goes with fortune. In 1869 they hired Leopold Eidlitz, who was finishing St George’s Church on Rutherford Place, to construct a jewel of a four-story showroom for their wares. In 1893 this was razed, to construct the present Moorish miracle.
The architect of record was Alfred Zucker, whose work we discussed in conjunction with the Madison Square Park Historic District. The actual doer was a notable architect and a man of some mystery, John H. Edelman, an anarchist who had come to the city after drifting back and forth between his native Cleveland, Chicago and Kearney, N.J. In Chicago he was a major influence in the growth of Louis H. Sullivan, the great pioneer of American architecture who sometimes worked for Edelman. Their interaction, with the aid of ideas from the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs in Paris formed what has been recognized as an outstanding style, best exemplified by the Decker Building. Edelman’s presence at the birth of the present #33 has been recognized only since the 1960s by inquisitive historians, although the difference in styles between this and other imaginative Zucker buildings has been a long-time puzzlement.
Now to the interesting decorative elements. The center fifth-floor windows are framed by an Arabic horseshoe arch. The intrados (interior curve of the arch) has a contiguous band of similar small arches. An alfiz, rectangular molding framing a horseshoe arch, unites the fourth and the fifth floor window elements. Another horseshoe arch surmounts the 11th floor center windows. Cast-iron ogee arches (bell-shaped but pointed) frame the second-story windows. Terra-cotta ornaments, sunflowers, filigrees and arabesques abound. There was once a domed minaret atop the tower, which disappeared long ago. It was rumored that the owners had promised to restore it, but let’s not hold our breaths.
To cap it all, this building’s sixth floor after 1968 housed the Factory, Andy Warhol’s studio and offices. It was renovated into condominiums in the 1990s.
More in weeks to come . Wally Dobelis thanks the NYS Office of Parks, Restoration and Historic Preservation, Anthony Robins, Christopher Gray, and Jack Taylor
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 5:53 AM 
