Continental Bank Building

Continental Bank Building
  1. About the Continental Bank Building in New York
  2. Architect and team
  3. Architectural style
  4. Spaces and uses
  5. Structure and materials

The Continental Bank Building is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Cross & Cross, and built between 1931 and 1932, for a reported $20.0 million dollars, in New York, NY.

Continental Bank Building is not the only name you might know this building by though. The building is, or has also been known as 30 Broad Street.

Its precise street address is 30 Broad Street, New York, NY. You can also find it on the map here.

At the time of its completion in 1932 the Continental Bank Building incorporated solutions that were quite advanced at the time, these included the so called compensation chamber in the basement, which was used so that tenants could carry out transactions among themselves through pneumatic tubes.

The building underwent a major restoration between 2016 and 2017. The architect commissioned to undertake this restoration was MADGI, Jun Aizaki Architecture & Design.

Building's timeline

Construction begins
1931
93
Construction completed
1932
92
a
Restoration
2017
7
years ago
2024
  1. 2016 to 2017 - Renovation in the lobby, café and outdoor terraces. Adition of a new lounge room. The architect in charge was MADGI, Jun Aizaki Architecture & Design.

Architect and team

Cross & Cross 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 Morris and O'Connor.

Architectural Style

The Continental Bank 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 Continental Bank Building was completed in 1932, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

Spaces & Uses

The Continental Bank Building reaches an architectural height of 561ft (171m). It has a total of 51 floors, 48 above ground and 3 basements, which combined offer a total of 301,389 sqf (28,000m2) of usable space.

Ever since opening its doors to the public in 1932, the Continental Bank Building has mainly been used as Commercial space.

561ft (171m)
3 basements

Materials & Structure

The Continental Bank 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.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features limestone in the first 3 floors, and light from there on, with dark brick spandrels marking the different levels.

Other materials found at the Continental Bank Building include, granite, used in the interior floors, marble, found in ornaments, bronze, used in the entry doors and big windows frames, and bluish-green glass, used in the large windows, with 9 panels, each located on the first three floors.