The Kingsbridge Armory, also known as the Eighth Regiment Armory, is a decommissioned armory at Jerome Avenue and West Kingsbridge Road in the Kingsbridge Heights neighborhood of the Bronx in New York City. It was built in the 1910s, from a design by the firm of then-state architect Lewis Pilcher to house the New York National Guard's Eighth Coast Defense Command (258th Field Artillery Regiment after November 1921), a regiment-sized unit which relocated from Manhattan in 1917. It is possibly the largest armory in the world. In addition to its military function, it has been used over the years for exhibitions, boxing matches, and a film set. After World War II the city offered it to the United Nations as a temporary meeting place. In 1974 it was designated a city landmark, and eight years later it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Its military use ended and it was turned over to city management in 1996. Since then it has remained vacant as various proposals to redevelop it have failed. One such proposal, by the administration of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, turned into a dispute over living wage policies. In 2013, a new plan to redevelop it as the world's largest indoor ice center was announced, called the Kingsbridge National Ice Center, but this plan failed in 2021. Another redevelopment plan was approved by the New York City Council in 2025. One National Guard unit has continued to use an annex in the rear until a new headquarters can be found.
Site The armory complex occupies almost the entire 5-acre (2.0 ha) block between West Kingsbridge Road on the south, Jerome Avenue on the east, West 195th Street on the north, and Reservoir Avenue on the west. Above Jerome Avenue is the Kingsbridge Road station on the New York City Subway's 4 train, from which the armory is visible. An empty moat runs across the front entrance of the building. There are parking lots and sidewalks along the side. At the center of the northern side are two smaller buildings: a garage, as well as a locker room and classrooms. Both are considered non-contributing to the Register listing. On the north are public schools 86 and 340, with Jerome Park Reservoir to the northwest and Lehman College of the City University of New York about a block north. On the other three sides is dense urban mixed-use development. St. James Park is a few blocks to the southeast, and the James J. Peters VA Medical Center, overlooking the Harlem River and Major Deegan Expressway (Interstate 87), two blocks to the east. The terrain slopes slightly toward the river.
Architecture
Exterior The building is a nine-story red brick edifice with a curved, sloping metal roof, with corrugated fiberglass panels in the field at either end. Its brickwork has been considered among the city's finest. Stone is used for trim, especially around the slit windows at regular intervals. A corbeled stone string course runs below the parapeted roof the length of the building. Above the corbels, and at the corners, are turrets. In the middle of the south elevation is the two-story office wing and main entrance, a section known as the headhouse. Two semi-engaged towers with conical roofs rise at its front above the roofline. The transition to the office wing from the main wall is marked by angled walls, two low round towers with conical roofs and cupolas and two square towers. Between them is the main entrance, a round arch with heavy iron gates and paneled double doors with stone steps and walls. They are topped with a stone projection on corbels and a crenellated parapet. In the brick above the entrance is the regimental motif in terra cotta, a shield over an eagle with draped flags.
Interior
Inside is a 180,000-square-foot (17,000 m2) drill hall and an 800-seat auditorium. A four-centered double truss 100 feet (30 m) high spans the ceiling. Two cellar levels, which used to house military vehicles, also provide space for storage, lecture halls, and fitness rooms, that included a basketball court and a 400-foot (120 m) shooting range. In the office wing, the entry hall has square brick piers supporting the segmental arches that frame the groin vaults. Brick quoins decorate the piers and intrados. The commander's office, upstairs, is done in the Colonial Revival style, with engaged columns, fielded panel walls and an Adamesque fireplace mantel.
Aesthetics Architect Lewis Pilcher's design was an engineering feat, probably inspired by the large trainsheds of contemporary railroad stations. Six years after its 1917 completion, the Architectural Record described it as epitomizing "simplicity, directness, convenience, and adaptation to special requirements". The Record quoted Pilcher himself as saying it was "perhaps the most interesting of all the armory designs in the country. The necessities of mobilization ... were successfully met." Subsequently, it has been described as "schizoid", appearing as "two distinct and incongruous buildings." The medieval architecture of the office wing echoed social concerns of the 1880s, when the National Guard was frequently called out to suppress civil unrest such as strikes. The towers and crenellation suggested the authority and power of the military of an earlier time. By the early 1910s, the Guard was more integrated with the Army, and their units became more focused on national defense purposes, training and equipping for the battlefield instead of the streets. The design of the drill shed reflects this changing function, its steel and glass making the whole a stylistic hybrid similar to the Brooklyn Bridge and the 1901 Squadron C Armory in Brooklyn, also designed by Pilcher's firm, the first armory in which the steel drill hall is a prominent element when seen from the outside. "It points toward a moment when historical ornament will be stripped away," writes David Bady of Lehman College, "leaving engineering to be admired as architecture."
History
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