Continental Bank Building

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.

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.

The Continental Bank Building can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

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.

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.