Madison Belmont Building

History and architecture

The Madison-Belmont Building, a transitional style building combining neo-Renaissance with early modern designs, incorporates many ideas from the growing European modern movement. The building was designed by the prominent and traditional New York architectural firm of Warren & Wetmore in an unusual style for this firm, showing a likely influence from the involvement of master iron smith Edgar Brandt as well as by the fact that Whitney Warren was spending considerable time in Paris where new concepts of Art Deco were taking hold.

The building was constructed in 1924-25 for the Merchants & Manufacturers Exchange of New York, a development company headed by Robert M. Catts and it was built as office and showroom space for silk companies in the developing Silk District of mid-town Manhattan. The Cheney Silk Company, with headquarters in Manchester, Connecticut, was the building’s major tenant and had its showrooms on the first three floors of the building. Cheney Silk, started by the Cheney Brothers in 1838, was the first successful silk manufacturer in the United States.

The company had numerous ties to design developments in France and had already established a relationship with Edgar Brandt, a pioneer in the Art Deco style in Paris early in the 1920s. Brandt designed the iron and bronze framing around the large showrooms of the lower three stories as well as the entrance doors and bulkhead grilles on the exterior of the building. These lower floors have been cited as one of the first instances of Art Deco architectural design in the United States.

The upper levels display more traditional ornamental motifs that have been flattened and stylized to reflect the newly emerging modern styles. The building’s shaft has continuous brick piers with recessed spandrels that emphasize the building’s height and a crowning cornice with upper floors marked by over-scaled terra-cotta ornament. These elements were created by the New York Architectural Terra Cotta Company, a firm that worked closely with these architects, and include window-framing pilasters, putti heads and egg and dart moldings that are similar to other Warren & Wetmore buildings but executed in a more modern style.

The building has a traditional arrangement of base, shaft and capital, with ornament located in traditional areas, but the broader, more stylized execution of this ornament as well as the unusual and distinctive Art Deco motifs on the three lower floors suggest the new design ideas that were just beginning to penetrate architectural circles in this country, making this an important transitional building between traditional and modern design.