1501 Broadway Building

skyscraper
art-deco
NY
New York

About the 1501 Broadway Building in New York
1. Building Catalogations
Architect and team
Architectureal style
Spaces and uses
Structure and materials

The 1501 Broadway Building is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Rapp and Rapp and built between 1926 and 1927, for a reported $13.5 million dollars, in New York, NY.

1501 Broadway Building is not the only name you might know this building by though. The building is, or has also been known as Paramount Building.

Its precise street address is 1501 Broadway, New York, NY. You can also find it on the map here.

The 1501 Broadway Building is a structure of significant importance both for the city of New York and the United States as a nation. The building embodies the distinctive characteristic features of the time in which it was built and the Art Deco style. Because of that, the 1501 Broadway Building was officially declared as a national landmark on November 1^st 1988.

Building's timeline

Construction begins

1926

Construction completed

1927

Declared NL

1988

years ago

2024

Architect and team

Rapp and Rapp was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

Rapp and Rapp was in charge of the architectural design, however, architecture is a complex discipline, which usually involves many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the 1501 Broadway Building a reality:

R. E. Hall & Co in charge of Structural Engineering
Thompson-Starrett Company as the Main Contractor
Famous Players–Lasky as the Main Developer

Architectural Style

The 1501 Broadway Building can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The Art Deco movement flourished during the 1920s and 1930s, with many historians marking the outbreak of World War II as its final decline. Even though a couple of decades might not seem as much, the Art Deco movement had a great impact on architecture, and it's widely represented in many American cities due to the development boom that happened during that time.

Art Deco marked the abandonment of traditional historicism and the embracement of modern living and the age of the machine. In architecture, that meant leaving behind the ornaments of Beux-Arts and Neo-Gothic buildings and instead favoring simplicity and visual impact through geometric shapes, clean lines, and symmetrical designs. Ornaments were still an important part of the design, but they became bold and lavish, and were often inspired by ancient cultures or industrial imagery, instead of nature.

The 1501 Broadway Building was completed in 1927, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

Spaces & Uses

The 1501 Broadway Building reaches an architectural height of 456ft (139m), 430ft (131m) if you count the antenna, with the last accesible floor being 390ft (119m) off the gorund. It has a total of 33 floors, served by 22 elevators, which combined offer a total of 686,597 sqf (63,787m²) of usable space.

Ever since opening its doors to the public in 1927, the 1501 Broadway Building has mainly been used as Commercial space.

Materials & Structure

The 1501 Broadway Building uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade is non-load bearing either, as it is common in frame structure type buildings.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features limestone for the most part of it, from its base to the piers and trims, as well as the four-faced clock above the 30th floor. Cooper is used in the top pedestal with an ornamental glass sphere.

Sources

s-media.nyc.gov