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 17,600 square feet (1,640 m2). The building has a frontage of about 106 feet (32 m) on Broadway, 159 feet (48 m) on 36th Street, and 99 feet (30 m) 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. 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 76,804 square feet (7,135.3 m2). At the building's opening, The Wall Street Journal dubbed it "a wonderful piece of architectural work". Architect magazine wrote, "it seems worth while [sic] 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 80 feet (24 m) 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 1356 broadway 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 985 sixth ave. 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
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