User:Epicgenius/sandbox/draft3


 * 304 East 44th Street/Beaux-Arts Institute of Design Building
 * http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/1667.pdf
 * ("304 east 44th" or "304 e. 44th" or "304 east forty-fourth" or "304-06 east 44th" or "304-06 e. 44th" or "304-06 east forty-fourth" or "306 east 44th" or "306 e. 44th" or "306 east forty-fourth" or (("Beaux-Arts" "institute" or "Beaux-Arts" "society" or "reeves sound" or "reeves studio" or "reeves studios") and ("forty-fourth" or "44th"))) and ("Manhattan" or "New York") Not ("Classified Ad" or "Display Ad" or "Spare Times")



304 East 44th Street (originally the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design Building) is a diplomatic mission building in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, housing the Permanent Mission of Egypt to the United Nations. Located between Second Avenue and First Avenue, the structure was built as the headquarters of the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design.

Site
304 East 44th Street is on the south side of 44th Street, between Second Avenue and First Avenue, in the East Midtown and Turtle Bay neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. The "L"-shaped land lot covers 5,924 ft2, with a frontage of 68 ft along 44th Street and a depth of 100.42 ft. The structure is adjacent to the southern Beaux-Arts Apartments building at 310 East 44th Street to the east. The building is also near Tudor City and the Ford Foundation Building to the south and the Millennium Hilton New York One UN Plaza hotel and the Church Center for the United Nations to the east. In the early 20th century, a large portion of Turtle Bay's population was involved in the arts or architecture. Structures such as the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design and the residential Turtle Bay Gardens, Tudor City, and Beekman Tower were constructed for this community.

Architecture
The firm of Dennison & Hirons designed 304 East 44th Street for the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design. The structure rises five stories; the top story is a penthouse. The structure covers most of its land lot and originally measured 50 by across and 70 ft tall. The building was expanded 18 ft to the west in 1961. In early plans for the structure, the ground story was considered as the basement. The sculptor Rene Paul Chambellan designed three terracotta spandrel panels for the building, which were made by the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company.

Facade
The facade is mostly made of buff brick with Flemish bond and limestone trim, except for the water table, which is made of light-toned granite. It was originally divided vertically into three bays, but a fourth bay was added to the west during the 1961 expansion. At ground level, the main entrance is through an oversized opening in the second-easternmost bay, which is reached by two granite steps. The doorway is flanked by stepped blue-purple piers with blue-and-orange floral decorations on their capitals. The doorway itself contains a glass-and-wood double door, topped by a transom window. The double door and transom window are flanked by sinusoidal iron grilles, with circles overlaid on the grilles. On either side of the center bay is a single rectangular window with a grille and a window sill. To the right of the main entrance, the second-westernmost bay contains a double-door service entrance. Above the first story, a frieze runs horizontally across the facade, with the text "Beaux-Arts Institute of Design" inscribed into it. The westernmost bay has no opening on the ground story.

On the second through fourth stories, triple-height piers separate the three original bays, and there is a multi-light casement window on each story. Each of the windows on the second story contains two window sills and a pedestal. The pedestals were supposed to serve as the bases for sculptures that were never installed. Above the second story are multicolored spandrel panels, which measure 8 ft wide and are made of terracotta. From left to right, the panels depict the Parthenon, the Beaux-Arts de Paris's courtyard, and St. Peter's Basilica. There are egg-and-dart moldings on the third-story window sills. Above the third story are brick spandrels with rectangle and square patterns. There are Ionic stone capitals at the tops of the two middle piers, above the fourth story. A frieze runs above this story, with limestone relief panels at either end, which depict architectural figures. The frieze is topped by a cornice, which is delineated by two horizontal brick courses. The westernmost bay has one simple window on each of the second through fourth stories and is sparsely decorated, without any of the spandrels or cornices of the original building.

The fifth story was originally recessed behind a terrace. When the building was expanded westward in 1961, the fifth-story facade was moved forward so that it was nearly flush with the rest of the facade. In addition, the facade was widened to cover the entire frontage. There are casement windows in all bays except for the second-westernmost bay (the original westernmost bay).

Features
As planned, the building was five stories high including its penthouse, but excluding the basement. Within the basement were boiler and machinery rooms, storage space, a kitchen, a dining room, and a place for clay storage. Exhibition spaces were located on the first and second stories. Both stories had high ceilings; the first story measured 16 ft high, while the second story measured 14 ft. A small vestibule was situated just inside the entrance. Behind the vestibule was an exhibition room measuring 65 by, with a mezzanine-level balcony surrounding it. This mezzanine was converted into a full story in 1952. The rear of the first floor included space for offices, as well as trap doors that allowed drawings to be lifted to the basement. On the second floor was even more space for an exhibition room, as well as a library sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation.

The third and fourth stories both contained workshops and had ceiling heights of 11 ft. The third floor was a loft space used mostly for ornamental sculpture classes, and it also contained an executive secretary's office. The fourth floor was very similar except it hosted life classes and a studio for the executive secretary. The penthouse was on the fifth story and measured 40 to 44 ft across, 9 to 10 ft tall. There was a terrace and a caretaker's apartment at the front of the fifth floor, as well as a roof garden in the rear.

History
The Society of Beaux-Arts Architects, later the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, had been founded to train architects in the style of the French École des Beaux-Arts. The first headquarters of the society was at 126 East 75th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, which opened in 1914. The original building provided classes in architecture and later other subjects such as sculpture, interior design, and murals. After World War I, the group expanded its programs significantly, and the first building had become too small for the institute. Furthermore, the 75th Street location was relatively far from the business centers of 42nd Street and 59th Street. The institute's president Kenneth Murchison and his business partner Raymond Hood were tasked with finding a site that was "somewhere nearer the architects' and draftsmen's zone of activity" in Turtle Bay. The institute decided on a site at 304–306 East 44th Street, which was within two blocks of both 42nd Street and Grand Central Terminal. The organization sold its 75th Street headquarters for $167,250.

Development
On November 17, 1927, the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects hosted a brief architectural design competition for its new headquarters, where contestants had to draw up detailed plans within four hours. Each contestant was required to draw up plans for a four-to-five story building, with specific dimensions, for the 44th Street site. To encourage members to participate, Murchison asked that members pay $25 to enter the competition or $35 if they wished to sit out the competition; the contest attracted 72 participants in total. A jury gave out four prizes, with the first-place winner, Frederic C. Hirons, being invited to design the building's facade. That month, the institute finalized its sale of the site at 304–306 East 44th Street, on which it planned to build a four-story building, for $125,000.

A construction contract for the building was awarded to Mark C. Trennedick & Co. in February 1928, and plans for the clubhouse were filed that month. Throughout early 1928, the plans were modified slightly. For instance, the entrance was moved from the side to the center, and the planned marble-and-limestone facade was substituted with brick to save money. Three sculptures would also be added to the second-story windows when there was enough money to add them, although the sculptures were never added. The institute dedicated its new building on November 21, 1928; the structure had cost an estimated $250,000.

1930s to 1980s
After opening the new headquarters at 304 East 44th Street, the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design acquired two adjacent plots to the east and developed the Beaux-Arts Apartments, which opened in 1930, on these sites. The institute's headquarters building hosted such events as exhibitions on drawings and on murals, as well as architectural competitions. The competitions were part of the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design's curriculum, which consisted of free courses provided at the institute's headquarters. By 1933, the classes attracted 2,500 architects per year. The institute hosted the merit-based Paris Prize competition at the building every year, locking contestants in windowless cubicles on the second or third floor to prevent them from cheating. The institute also held the "Corkscrew Ball", an annual costume party, in the building's exhibition hall, the Beaux-Arts Hall. Although the building was valued at $138,000 in the 1940s, the institute paid no taxes on the building because it was a tax-exempt institution.

The Beaux-Arts Institute of Design sold 304 East 44th Street in March 1945 to Three Hundred Four Corp., which took over two mortgages of $60,000 and $9,000. This corporation was headed by Hazard E. Reeves, who operated the Reeves Sound Studios; the studio was to occupy much of the building, but the institute retained a lease on a small office there. Reeves converted the building to recording studios, offices, film editing rooms, and screening rooms. The structure was also used for such activities as FM radio tests. The architect Joseph Lau filed plans in 1952 for $5,000 in modifications to the building; this involved converting the mezzanine above the first floor into a full story. RCA tape-mixing equipment was installed there in 1959. The architect Henry George Greene filed plans or a $100,000 renovation of the building in 1960, and the building was expanded westward the next year.

Reeves Communications continued to use the building as a post-production facility through the 1970s, and 304 East 44th Street was also used as a facility for sound recording and mixing. A Reeves subsidiary, production firm Sound Shop, moved into the building in 1974, using the Reeves studio's facilities. An "audio sweetening" studio was added at the building for the Sound Shop in 1982. Two years later, Reeves bought the building outright for $2.5 million. By 1985, Reeves Communications chairman Marvin H. Green Jr. reported that an undisclosed company had made an offer to buy 304 East 44th Street as well as the Sound Shop. Reeves shuttered its post-production division in June 1986 and sold 304 East 44th Street to a real-estate development group for $5.7 million.

1990s to present
The building was designated as a New York City designated landmark in 1988. It was rehabilitated from 1989 to 1992. Following the renovation, the American Federation of Musicians and the Employers Pension Welfare Fund used the building as office space.

The building was converted into offices for the Permanent Mission of Egypt to the United Nations in 2008. The structure continues to serve as the Egyptian mission to the UN.