History and architecture
The Starrett-Lehigh Building, constructed in 1930-31 by architects Russell G. and Walter M. Cory with Yasuo Matsui as associate architect and Purdy & Henderson as consulting engineers, is an enormous warehouse building that occupies the entire block bounded by West 26th and 27th Streets and 11th and 12th Avenues. A cooperative venture of the Starrett Investing Corporation and the Lehigh Valley Railroad, and built by Starrett Brothers & Eken, the structure served originally as a freight terminal for the railroad with rental manufacturing and warehouse space above.
A structurally complex feat of engineering with an innovative interior arrangement, the Starrett-Lehigh Building is also notable for its exterior design of horizontal ribbon windows alternating with brick and concrete spandrels. Considered in the forefront of "modern" architecture in New York City at the beginning of the 1930s, the building combined the practical functionalism of American industrial architecture with the influence of the horizontal aesthetic of European modernism of the 1920s. Today it continues to provide rental office, manufacturing, and warehouse space.
Sources and further reading
This history comes from the Landmarks app’s historical catalog. Names and building uses may reflect the period described.