The 15-story Beaver Building, commissioned by the Century Realty Co. as a speculative office building, was designed in the neo-Renaissance style. The steel-framed, flatiron-shaped structure, with its two major facades joined in a rounded corner, occupies a narrow quadrilateral lot, at the juncture of Beaver and Pearl Streets near Wall Street, created by the original colonial street plan.
The design has the tripartite arrangement of base-shaft-capital common to many of New York’s early skyscrapers, with a stone base, a midsection faced in brick laid in bands of tan and buff shades, and a top section richly ornamented with glazed terracotta in shades of green, cream, and russet, incorporating both classically-derived and abstract geometric motifs.
