LPC Commissioner Roberta Brandes Gratz Statment on the Designation of the B.F. Goodrich Buildings
The property owner of these two buildings has tried exceedingly hard to persuade us that these are two separate and distinct buildings and only the Broadway Building is worthy of designation.
It is indeed an obvious stretch to separate the architectural and historical significance of these two buildings and I am far from convinced.
In fact, I find the 57th Street building even more distinctive, although to designate one and not the other is akin to separating siblings.
As our finely researched and clearly written draft designation report notes, these are both the only known works in New York of noted Chicago architect Howard Van Doren Shaw and that contemporary journals often treated the two structures as a single building. In fact, the elevator shared by both buildings enabled the Broadway building to service automobiles.
And, as public testimony pointed out, it is on the 57th Building that the Goodrich name is inscribed and that the terra cotta panels between the windows at the top carries the more automotive design references, specifically the “stylized references to the rubber tire trade with lug-nuts and tire treads structuring a grid of plant forms, one of which appears to be a rubber plant.”
Buildings displaying both Viennese Secessionist ornament and Chicago School references are rare in New York City and even rarer among designated landmarks. I support designation of both and not dividing them up for reasons not connected to their architectural and historical worthiness.