88 Greenwich Street Building

88 Greenwich Street Building
  1. About the 88 Greenwich Street Building in New York
    1. Building Catalogations
  2. Architect and team
  3. Architectureal style
  4. Spaces and uses
  5. Structure and materials

The 88 Greenwich Street Building is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Lafayette A. Goldstone and Alexander Zamshnick and built between 1929 and 1930 in New York, NY.

88 Greenwich Street Building is not the only name you might know this building by though. The building is, or has also been known as Greenwich Club Residences.

Its precise street address is 88 Greenwich Street, New York, NY. You can also find it on the map here.

The 88 Greenwich Street 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 88 Greenwich Street Building was officially included in the National Register of Historic Places on May 22nd 2002.

The building has been restored 2 times over the years to ensure its conservation and adaptation to the pass of time. The main restoration works happened in 2000 and 2007.

Building's timeline

Construction begins
1929
95
Construction completed
1930
94
a
Restoration
2000
24
Added to the NRHP
2002
22
b
Restoration
2007
17
years ago
2024
  1. 2000 - Converted into rental residential units.
  2. 2007 - The building was converted to a designer condominium.

Architect and team

Lafayette A. Goldstone and Alexander Zamshnick was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design. But there was also one other architect involved, as far as we know. We are talking about Shreve Lamb & Harmon.

Architectural Style

The 88 Greenwich 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 88 Greenwich Street Building was completed in 1930, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

Spaces & Uses

The 88 Greenwich Street Building reaches an architectural height of 466ft (142m), with the last accesible floor being 427ft (130m) off the gorund. It has a total of 37 floors, 35 above ground and 2 basements.

When it opened its doors to the public in 1930, the 88 Greenwich Street Building was primarily used as Commercial space. That however, is no longer the case, and today it mainly provides Residential space.

About the residences

The 88 Greenwich Street Building has a total of 452 residential units throughout its 35 floors.

466ft (142m)
427ft (130m)
2 basements

Materials & Structure

The 88 Greenwich Street 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.

Another material found at the 88 Greenwich Street Building is East Indian Rosewood, used in some decorative details.