Bush Tower

 office building, skyscraper, Gothic revival (architecture), 1917_construction

433-foot, 30-story Neo-Gothic office building completed in 1917. Designed by Helmle & Corbett for Irving T. Bush's Bush Terminal Company, owners of Bush Terminal in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, Bush Tower's lines rather than its surface are the most expressive features of the building. Much of the tower's impact is due to its exiguous siting, with a tall sheer tower on a small front. Its lower floors housed the International Buyers Club, a meeting place for designers, buyers, and manufacturers which contained lounges and an extensive library of traditional patterns and crafts.

The skyscraper was the first built after the Zoning Code of 1916, but it had been designed before the code went into effect. The Gothic trimming was an economical way of resolving the problem of whether the tower would be perceived as an skyscraper or piece of infill. The decoration of the base and shaft is remarkably stripped down. The windows are concentrated on the north (42nd Street) and south facades. With the exception of a recessed mid-facade lightwell on the east facade, the east and west walls were left largely blank. Instead, Trompe-l'œil brickwork creates vertical "ribs" with a false "shade" pattern to enhance the verticality.

The Neo-Gothic street-level facade, three bays wide, has small, metal service doors at the ends. The 3-story base is topped by three double-height arches at the 3rd floor, with carvings in a nautical theme enriching the corbels below the 3rd-floor cornice, which is punctuated by shields. Above the 3-story base, a system of primary and secondary angular ribs articulate the north and south facades of the tall portion of the tower that rises unbroken from street level to the 20th floor. At the top of the shaft, in a transitional area, a band of panels, which is continued unbroken with ribs screening the light court on the east facade, becomes a parapet wall at the corners. Copper lantern pinnacles top the wide, smooth brick piers that extend upward from the street to this height and finials top each rib extending through the parapet on the street facades. The upper shaft area, above the 20th floor, has angled corner walls filled with paired windows. Ribs continuing up through the street facades resolve in an elongated arched window which is echoed by the edge of the balustrade wall enclosing the area above.

The crowning pavilion is set back on all four sides, but repeats the elongated octagonal form of the upper shaft. Above the windows, framed to appear as 2-story tall arched windows, blank Gothic tracery divided the roof parapet wall. The copper roof originally was topped by a pair of finials with electric torches at the ends of the gabled ridge.

There are two 10-story wings on the south side, facing 41st Street, also designed by Helmle & Corbett. The portion of the 10-story south wing next to the tower is set back to create a light court. On the exposed east side wall of the main portion of the wing trompe l'oeil piers and a band of shield-enriched panels marking the 8th floor repeat the design of the tower portion. The exposed portion of the west side wall is buff-colored brick with windows in the 6th-8th floors. The 41st Street facade is detailed as the tower facades with angled and flat ribs dividing the window bays. Above the 8th floor windows framed by projecting transoms, the 9th floor is recessed behind truncated pinnacles at the building corners. The walls of the further-recessed 10th-floor penthouse have closely-set windows. The limestone-faced ground floors are both divided into thirds by piers that support a wide transom with blank Gothic tracery supported by corbel stops in a cast foliate design. Much of the eastern portion of the facade has been recovered in modern materials. The western facade, a secondary entrance to the movie theater, has a central bay framed by cast-stone faced piers from which quoins extend on the ground floor. This bay is nearly filled with wide, arched bronze doors with Gothic tracery slightly recessed in a deep Gothic arch. A shield-bearing lion guards the door in front of a cast-stone sheathed traceried arch which is tied into a blank Gothic tracery transom between the 2nd & 3rd floors. The outer bays have plain, double service doors topped by cast-stone lintels.

The ground floor is occupied by Carrot Express on 41st Street.

halfpuddinghalfsauce.blogspot.com/2013/02/bush-terminal...
babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015086591750&v...
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usmodernist.org/AM/AM-1919.pdf