201 West 34th Street
1929-30, Walker & Gillette
National Register of Historic Places - District

This five-story brick structure was originally built as a branch for the City Bank of New York, the largest commercial bank during the first half of the 20th century. The Moderne-style building features narrow curving corner, faced in cast stone with metal trim above the second-story windows and between the fourth- and fifth- story windows. Ribbed piers frame the first-floor windows and main entrance, which is also highlighted by two eagles surrounding a medallion, one of the bank's signature symbols. The design is the work of the prolific firm Walker & Gillette, which was active from 1906 to 1945. Alexander Walker was a Jersey City native, who graduated from Harvard University, while Gillette was from Massachusetts and had studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Both had apprenticed with prominent offices in New York. The firm was known for its townhouses and suburban mansions for the elite, but in 1921 it ventured into commercial architecture with the construction of the New York Trust Company Bank. Through the late 1920s they would design a dozen other neoclassical bank branches in the New York area, as well as skyscrapers. One of their most prominent civic commissions was the extension of the New York Historical Society, carried out in 1938. The building is located within the boundaries of the Garment Center Historic District, listed on the National Register in 2008.