5 Bond Street: Great Neck Architect: Landmark Series

Great Neck Architects

Architect: Manoug Exerjia

5 Bond Street, Great Neck

This elegantly streamlined three-bay, three-story, brick building was designed with three retail spaces at the first floor, six offices and restrooms arranged around a center hall at the second, and a live/work apartment, most likely for the architect’s own use, at the top floor. Three horizontal zones in the smooth red-brick façade delineate each story. The storefronts have their original curved plate-glass windows. Store windows are framed with aluminum and stainless steel bases and aluminum fascias. The stucco panels over each storefront held the original shop signage (this treatment was also used by Exerjian at the Townhouse shops). These are now obscured by canopies. The second-story windows, in four groups of three, are separated by plain stucco panels. The rounded northwest corner heightens the sense that the windows run in a continuous band around the corner. The third floor penthouse is set back off a terrace that runs the full width of the building. Deeply projecting eaves create the sense of an awning over the terrace. A decorative brick pattern is used to call attention to the rounded corner The horizontal emphasis; use of smooth, flat wall surfaces and materials (e.g., stucco and aluminum); projecting thin-slab roof; rounded corner; and flush, banded windows are hallmarks of the Streamline Moderne. In addition, the building has vague nautical references in its setback penthouse terrace, which evokes the deck of an ocean liner, and in the spiral staircase connecting the second and third floors.


Manoug Exerjian also designed the Gilchrist Apartments at the southwest corner of Schenck Avenue and Gilchrist Road (1946), 10 Grace Avenue (1947), the Townhouse apartments on Cutter Mill Road (1948-49), and the Eden Terrace Apartments at 71 Grace Avenue (1956). At some point, probably in the late 1950s, the penthouse was converted to office space. Fire damage occurred in retail spaces in 1958, 1964, and 1984.

Source: www.greatneckplaza.net/historic/vsurvey.php?p=5bond