We Become Accustomed – Part 3

Having discussed the steel framing and the basic curtain wall of an incredibly-average 1926 office building, I want to take a look at the end of the work. The picture above shows the building, just about on completion: a middle-of-the-road, mid-sized office building, with its Fifth Avenue address being the most attractive thing about it. (The ornate building on the right is the Waldorf wing of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, to be torn down in a few years when the hotel moved uptown, and replaced by the Empire State Building.) The setbacks at the top were required by the 1916 zoning law, but they also keep it from being a cube, which is the only thing I can think of that would make more boring. The big water-table below the first setback, the quoins, and some of the details above are the last vestiges of the classical styling that was common in early steel-framed buidings 30 years earlier and was still being used, somewhat more fully-developed, in apartment houses further uptown.

Here’s the building a little earlier:

First, the windows are being installed in the still-under-construction facade. Note that the window frames are in all of the openings in the main block of the building, but the glass is only in a few, easily found by how shiny they are. In other words, the current practice of shipping complete window units (frame, sash, and glazing) didn’t exist yet, so the glazier had a lot of work ahead of him when this photo was taken. The wood scaffold on the setback is a little jarring from our perspective, but I like how the open bulkhead, presumably last in line to get its masonry curtain wall, shows off the steel water tank and elevator equipment.

The most interesting detail is the little wing under construction to the south, at the left of the main block of the building. I suspect it’s there to allow for south-facing windows that can’t ever be blocked. (Zoning note: you’re free to building lot-line windows in New York, with certain regulations regarding fire-proofing and the whether the windows are required by use. Your neighbors are also free to block those windows by building something new on their lots. So a little setback like this is a way to create unblockable side windows.) The part that does not yet have a facade will match the new building as seen in the top photo. The part to its left, which has floor elevations and a facade matching the older building on the south (32^nd Street) corner is also new but appears to below to the neighbor rather than the new building. That 1905 building was not part of the Astor developments, like the buildings along 33rd Street but was in a position to benefit from the new construction to the north: by adding that little extension to 320, the developers of 330 got a wider light court for their south-facing windows and made it less likely that 320 would be demolished and replaced. I assume that portion of the lot was sold to 320, which got an extension and the ability to add unblockable windows to its main north facade.