154 West 14th Street Building

History and architecture

The 154 West 14th Street Building (1912-13), a 12-story speculative loft structure constructed for lawyer-banker and real estate developer Leslie R. Palmer, was the first completed New York City design by architect Herman Lee Meader, with whom Palmer collaborated on five projects. The building’s location at the prominent intersection of 14th Street and Seventh Avenue anticipated the southward extension of Seventh Avenue and its new subway line, and benefitted from its proximity and direct access to the Holland Tunnel and west side freight terminals.

Arranged in a tripartite base-shaft-capital composition with large window areas, it is a striking and unusual example of a large loft building partly clad in terra cotta – on the three-story base, on the spandrels between the white-brick piers of the midsection, and on the upper portion. It is also a fairly early example of the use of boldly polychromatic glazed terra cotta (in hues of white, beige, mustard, cobalt blue, celadon, and green) in New York City.

The terra cotta was manufactured by the New York Architectural Terra Cotta Co., the city’s only major producer of architectural terra cotta, of which Palmer was a long-time director, and the building is a virtual advertisement for the material’s exterior use and, specifically, for the products of the firm. Meader’s sumptuous and eclectic ornamental scheme for the 154 West 14th Street Building incorporated Secessionist, Art Nouveau, Arts & Crafts, and Mission Revival style motifs. Although neither prolific nor well known, Meader produced other notable designs, such as the Cliff Dwelling Apartments (1914-17) at Riverside Drive and 96th Street, all of which employed interesting terra-cotta ornament. The top story of the 154 West 14th Street Building was altered c. 1950s-60s, though the Seventh Avenue facade is mostly intact.