Under Irving T. Bush the Bush Terminal Co. created Bush Tower to bring buyers, manufacturers, and designers together. As such, the company promoted a "vast centralized marketplace under one roof where complete lines of goods can be examined without loss of time". The Bush Terminal Company attempted a similar melding of commercial displays and social space at Bush House in London, built in three phases during the 1920s, but that concept was not fully carried through.
Architecture
Site
The building site measured only wide and long, but the structure erected on it rose over to its highest point. The architects remarked that they wanted to make the building "a model for the tall, narrow building in the center of a city block". The New York firm of Helmle and Corbett —and specifically, architect Harvey Wiley Corbett—gave Bush Tower a Neo-Gothic appearance, in some ways similar in style to New York's landmark Woolworth Building, a skyscraper that had been completed just three years earlier. The structure's 50-foot width, and its function as an office building, precluded the need for conventional skyscraper :wikt:fenestration|fenestration. The windows are concentrated on the north and south facades. With the exception of a recessed mid-facade lightwell on the east facade, the east and west walls were left largely blank. Instead, Trompe-l'œil brickwork creates vertical "ribs" with a false "shade" pattern to enhance the verticality. High pointed arched windows lighted the top double-height floor. Even the water tower was hidden behind a mansard roof at the tower's peak.
Use
The tower's lowest three floors were planned for the comfort and convenience of buyers visiting New York. These floors were modeled after a traditional large metropolitan private club and housed the newly created International Buyers Club, which contained "that mysterious element called 'atmosphere' and 'social standing'", yet representatives of any "reputable" firm could join for free. The company wrote these floors were also designed to be "welcoming of women members". The club offered conference rooms, multiple lounges, offices, buffet service, and a large second-floor reading room staffed with trained librarians. The third-floor auditorium could host lectures, concerts, the viewing of manufacturers' own promotional motion pictures, or even "fashion parades" for "displaying gowns." These lowest floors featured extensive oak panelling, oriental carpets and antique furniture; according to the company's published promotional literature, this "Old English" style gave one "the feeling of having entered a hundred-year-old tavern". The upper 27 stories held displays of manufacturers' goods, a concept explained as "the museum idea applied to commerce" by a writer for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Bulletin.
The Buyers' Club on the lower floors was quickly replaced by a bank in the early 1920s, then by the Old London Restaurant in 1931. After the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company foreclosed upon the tower in 1938 the upper floors were converted for regular office usage. The new tenants included an association of dress manufacturers, who moved into the tenth floor in 1939; six commercial and office tenants in 1941; Herman's Stores, a sporting goods store that moved into the ground floor in early 1943; and the American Red Cross and two other tenants in late 1943. The tower was purchased and auctioned off by real estate investorJacob Freidus in 1945. It was subsequently bought by a syndicate co-headed by real estate developerJoseph Durst in 1951. By the early 1980s, the Times Square neighborhood and Bush Tower itself had deteriorated to the point where the owners considered demolishing the building. But it was instead renovated, with heating and electrical systems replaced throughout. The skyscraper was acquired in the 1980s by its present owners, by the LebaneseDalloul family. In 2002, the owners publicized their plans for a new building immediately to the west of Bush Tower. In a design by the firm of Gruzen Samton, a 23-story glass tower would be separated by a gap—necessitated by earthquake codes—but connected on every floor to double the original building's space. In October 2006, Dubai-based developer Istithmar World purchased the properties at 136-140 West 42nd St., between Bush Tower and Istithmar-owned 6 Times Square
