page_title: 21 West Street
section_title: Facade
hierarchical_section_title: 21 West Street / Design / Facade
caption_attribution_description: English: Building at 21 West Street This is an image of a place or building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States. Its reference number is 99000316.
context_page_description: 21 West Street, also known as Le Rivage Apartments, is a 33-story building located in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City, on Morris Street between West Street and Washington Street. It was built in 1929–1931 as a speculative office tower development in anticipation of an increased demand for office space in Lower Manhattan. The building was converted into apartments in 1997 and was renamed Le Rivage.
  The building has an Art Deco design with many lavish architectural finishes and a series of setbacks which taper toward the top floors. It was designed by Starrett & van Vleck, who at the same time designed the adjacent Downtown Athletic Club. 21 West Street was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999 and designated a city landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1998.
context_section_description: The facade of 21 West Street was designed with molded and oversized brick "to emphasize the structural lines and to enrich the texture of the materials". Brick and terracotta were used in red, orange, and yellow tones, a design feature influenced by Harvey Wiley Corbett's plan for the Master Apartments in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. For instance, the light-tan vertical piers highlight the building's vertical dimension, while other brick patterns give the impression of a "skin", including the horizontal lines of the spandrels between the floors. At each setback and on the three lower levels, the parapets have various designs of molded brick to provide surface texture to the building's exterior. The southern facade is hidden behind the Downtown Athletic Club building to the south.
  The corners of the building were outfitted with windows wrapping around the edge at a 90-degree angle, instead of structural columns as had been provided in previous buildings, making 21 West Street possibly the first commercial building in the U.S. to have wrap-around corner windows. Prior to the construction of 21 West Street, corner windows had only been used on residential structures.
  Despite its address, 21 West Street's primary entrance is at the center of the Morris Street facade, beneath the one-story arcade, which includes ten bays at ground level on this side of the building and has multicolored mosaics on its ceiling. The arcade, storefronts, and main entrance contain decorative metalworks painted in silver and gold tones, which extend into the interior, described by the National Park Service as "an unusual design feature". The piers and interior walls of the arcade are outfitted with bronze panels and lighting installations. The arcade's arches mostly consist of stepped brick, except for the fifth bay from Washington Street, which is a square marble-framed arch that leads to the main entrance. The spandrels above the arcade are textured in a chevron (V-shaped) design with tan and purple brick. The arcade continues in reduced form on the West and Washington Street facades, each being five bays wide.
  Above the ground floor, each floor of 21 West Street generally contains two rolled steel windows per bay, with wrap-around windows at the corners, each of these windows having four panes, two on each side. One exception to this is the second floor, which has three windows per bay, also with wrap-around windows at the corners; the second-floor bays are separated by purple and tan brick piers. Below the setbacks on the 21st and 26th floors, the corners facing Morris Street are replaced with a single diagonal chamfered bay.
caption: Underside of one of the corners, facing the arcade
  on Morris Street
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