The Greenwich Savings Bank Building, also known as the Haier Building and 1356 Broadway, is an office building at 1352–1362 Broadway in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Constructed as the headquarters of the Greenwich Savings Bank from 1922 to 1924, it occupies a trapezoidal parcel bounded by 36th Street to the south, Sixth Avenue to the east, and Broadway to the west. The Greenwich Savings Bank Building was designed in the Classical Revival style by York and Sawyer.
The exterior, wrapping around the three sides of the building, consists of a base of rusticated stone blocks, atop which are Corinthian-style colonnades. Structurally, the building consists of a steel frame. Inside is an elliptical banking room with limestone Corinthian columns, granite walls, a marble floor, and a coffered, domed ceiling with a large skylight. The bronze tellers' screens contain sculptures of Minerva (symbolizing wisdom) and Mercury (representing commerce).
The Greenwich Savings Bank Building opened in May 1924 and operated as the headquarters of that bank until 1981. Afterward, the building was occupied by other banks for two decades. The building was purchased by Chinese appliance company Haier in 2001 and soon afterward was renamed for Haier. The banking space was turned into an event space called Gotham Hall, while Haier occupied the basement through 2014. The building's facade and lobby were made New York City designated landmarks in 1992, and the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.
Site The Greenwich Savings Bank Building is on the northern side of 36th Street, running the entire block between Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) to the east and Broadway to the west, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The building's lot covers . The building has a frontage of about on Broadway, on 36th Street, and on Sixth Avenue. Because Broadway runs diagonally to the Manhattan street grid, the lot is trapezoidal, with the western facade on Broadway running at an irregular angle.;
Prior to the construction of the Greenwich Savings Bank Building, the two-story Sheridan Building occupied the site. The land was owned by the Van Ingen estate immediately before the bank purchased it in 1921. The neighborhood had become dense after World War I with the construction of hotels and stores, as well as the development of what is now the Garment District of Manhattan. The site to the south once contained the New York Herald Building, the Renaissance Revival-style headquarters of the New York Herald. Because the Herald Building had a loading dock on 36th Street, the bank's design does not include any entrances from 36th Street to alleviate congestion there.
Architecture The Greenwich Savings Bank Building was designed by bank architects York and Sawyer in a Classical Revival style, with a limestone and sandstone exterior. It was built by Marc Eidlitz & Son.See:
The building consists of six stories above a basement,; with a steel-framed internal superstructure. When the building was erected in the 1920s, freestanding bank buildings in New York City were becoming more prevalent, and many such structures were being constructed with classical design details.; According to the New York City Department of City Planning, the building has a gross floor area of .
At the building's opening, The Wall Street Journal dubbed it "a wonderful piece of architectural work". Architect magazine wrote, "it seems worth while to express appreciation of all those concerned in the construction of the bank and in the furnishing of all its varied details".
Facade Wrapping around three sides of the building, the facade consists of a base of rusticated pink granite walls, above which are Corinthian-style columns. The main facade of the Greenwich Savings Bank Building is on Broadway, where there is a projecting rusticated podium, a portico, and an attic. The Sixth Avenue facade, at the rear, is similar to the Broadway facade but is slightly narrower because the Sixth Avenue frontage is the shortest of the three street frontages.; The building is tall, equal to a six- or seven-story building, but when completed it was smaller than many neighboring buildings.
Base
At the center of the Broadway facade is an entryway with a molded surround approached by four steps made of pink granite. The entrance doorway contains a double door made of bronze with classical reliefs. The soffits under the doorway have square and rectangular molded panels. An electric sign is hung beneath the top of the entryway. An eared tablet with the carved words is inscribed above the top of the entryway, flanked by carved griffins. There were once metal plaques with the owner's name on either side of the doorway. On either side of the entryway are three window openings. The opening closest to the entrance on each side contains bronze frames. The two outer openings on each side contain iron grills over them, surrounded by brass frames.;
On 36th Street, there are ten windows, grouped as five each on the west and east ends of the facade. The eight inner windows contain iron grills above them. There are no doors on 36th Street.;
On Sixth Avenue, the base is largely similar to that on Broadway. There is a molded doorway and bronze double doors near the center of this facade. Because the site slopes upward slightly toward the east, there are no stairs in front of this doorway. In addition, the eared tablet above the Sixth Avenue facade instead bears the carved word . There are three windows on either side of the doorway, the outer two of which have iron grills and the inner of which has bronze frames. South of the projecting podium is a single window at ground level. Because of the narrower width, there is no corresponding window on the northern end of the Sixth Avenue facade, which instead has an employee entrance and bronze gate.;
Colonnades
All three sides contain fluted Corinthian columns that measure about high and about in diameter. On Broadway, above the first-floor podium, is a Corinthian octastyle, a portico with eight columns. Behind the colonnade, the ceiling of the portico is divided into coffers. Behind the colonnade are rusticated blocks, as well as three large arched windows topped by archivolts. There are antae and unfluted pilasters on either side of the octastyle. The bottom of the colonnade consists of a dado, which corresponds to the second floor and is topped by a fret design. The dado contains five rectangular windows: three corresponding to the arches above them and two outside the colonnade. An entablature, with an architrave and frieze, runs above the columns and pilasters, wrapping around to the other two facades. Above that is a cornice with modillions, as well as cymatium containing lions' heads.
On 36th Street, the colonnade consists of nine engaged columns, which are all fluted. To either side of the engaged columns are unfluted pilasters. A dado runs across the second floor and contains eight windows, four on each end of the 36th Street facade. On each end, the windows are arranged as one between the pilasters and three beside the outermost fluted columns. When the Greenwich Savings Bank Building had been designed, the bank's building committee had decided it would be better to articulate the 36th Street facade with engaged columns instead of flat pilasters.
On Sixth Avenue, the colonnade is also an octastyle, and the ceiling of the portico is coffered. However, the arrangement of windows behind the colonnade is different from that on Broadway. Within the dado, there are four rectangular windows, two each on the extreme ends of the facade. Above is a single arched window with an archivolt, which is flanked by a pair of rectangular windows. There are antae and unfluted pilasters only on the south side of the octastyle.
Attic
On Broadway, the attic is faced with smooth limestone. The attic once contained letters with the bank's name on them, which were replaced by those of later owners. A long inscription above the attic on Broadway welcomed bank visitors.; This inscription was written by the Rev. Russell Bowie, who at the time of the building's opening served as Grace Church's rector. A similar modification has been made on the Sixth Avenue facade, which also had letters with the bank's name on them. There is also a covered inscription on the Sixth Avenue facade, a sentence about the building's founding and previous locations.; Above the attic is a denticulated cornice.
On 36th Street, the attic contains raised panels on the outer ends of that facade. The panels are aligned with the pilasters in the building's intermediate story. Three windows were installed on the attic sometime between 1967 and 1971 to allow computers to be installed in the attic. One window is installed between each set of pilasters, while the third window is installed above the leftmost column of the colonnade.;
Interior Vestibules
On the west side of the ground floor, leading from Broadway, is a vestibule shaped as an irregular octagon.; This vestibule has a travertine marble floor that is bordered by Belgian black marble. A strip of black-and-white tesserae and a double strip of black tesserae run around the black marble floor. The center of the floor surface has a lozenge measuring , which has a depiction of a black-tesserae triton within a green-and-white marble background and a black-and-white tesserae border. The walls have wrought bronze radiator grills. Above the double door facing Broadway is a transom window with five panes. The ceiling is made of plaster and has shallow coffers. The vestibule on the east side of the ground floor, leading from Sixth Avenue, has nearly identical materials to the Broadway vestibule, but with taller dimensions.; The Sixth Avenue vestibule is also cruciform and symmetrical, rather than being irregularly shaped.
From the Broadway entrance vestibule, a revolving door leads east to another octagonal space, a foyer. This room has a symmetrical shape consisting of alternating longer and shorter sides, with the longer sides corresponding to the four cardinal directions. The foyer floor is made of travertine with tesserae. The center of the floor surface has a medallion showing a brass ship on green marble waves, surrounded by the name of the bank. The foyer has a limestone wall interspersed with sandstone to create a warm tone. While the west wall has the revolving door, the walls to the north, south, and east have heavy decorative bronze grills. The shorter walls, which correspond to the intercardinal directions (northwest, northeast, southwest, southeast), contain radiator grills, above which are capitalized inscriptions with gold fillings. The ceiling design consists of a square at the center, with a rosette as well as a hexagonal lantern hanging from the rosette.
South of the Broadway foyer is an irregularly shaped space that was used as a comptroller's office. The comptroller's office has a coffered ceiling, moldings on the walls, two stone columns, and doorways from the foyer and banking room. North of the foyer is a stair hall with a coffered ceiling and smooth stone walls, which leads to a staircase with a barrel-vaulted ceiling. The western wall of this stair hall has a vestibule leading to the boardroom; this vestibule has wooden walls and a plaster ceiling. In both the stair hall and the boardroom vestibule, the floor is tiled similarly to in the Broadway foyer.
Banking room