The 59 West 12th Street Building is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Emery Roth & Sons and built between 1929 and 1931 in New York, NY.
Its precise street address is 59 West 12th Street, New York, NY. You can also find it on the map here.
The building underwent a major restoration in 1986.
Emery Roth & Sons was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.
Emery Roth & Sons 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 at the very least we know that there was one other part involved, that was Bing & Bing as the Main Developer.
The 59 West 12th Street 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 59 West 12th Street Building was completed in 1931, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.
Ever since opening its doors to the public in 1931, the 59 West 12th Street Building has mainly been used as Residential space.
The 59 West 12th Street Building has a total of 103 residential units throughout its 17 floors.
From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features light gray stone panels covering the first and second floor, with decorative engravings surrounding the main entrance and separating the sone from the bricks which continue the facade from there on, also in light tones.
