Upper East Side Gets “Cool” Stone

NEW YORK – A new branch of the First Republic Bank opened during the city’s hot summer … sporting a cool look of native sandstone.
The Upper East Side office of First Republic Bank now faces Manhattan crowds with a façade of Glacier Blue™ Devonian Sandstone, quarried upstate by Windsor, N.Y.-based Devonian Stone of New York Inc.
New York architects Kenneth Lill (KAL Architecture) and Jack Esterson (Studio A Architects) partnered on the design of the two-story contemporary structure at 79th St. and Lexington Ave. Lill handled all East-Coast interior projects for San Francisco-based First Republic for the past eight years, but – for the first new ground-up building for the bank on the East Coast – Esterson provided valuable assistance.
“Jack focused more on the exterior and I focused more on the interior, but that’s not exclusive,” Lill explains.
All of the bank’s projects use an extensive amount of stone, specifically Carioca Gold granite. For this project however, Lill chose Glacier Blue™ for several different reasons. First, the consistent blue-gray color of the Devonian sandstone compliments the stainless-steel-and-glass elements of the structure.
The stone, also used in the interior, works well with the contemporary style of architecture, and yet also blended well with some of the bank’s more-traditional standards.
“We’re very pleased with the outcome, and we’re more pleased that our client is very happy with the building,” Lill notes. “And I think the building has turned into a significant piece of architecture for New York City.”
Devonian Stone is a full-service stone mining and fabrication company that specializes in “high-end” cut-to-size Glacier Blue™ Devonian Sandstone products. This stone is part of projects from New York to California, including the courtyard of The Dakota apartment building in New York numerous estates in New York and California, The Smithsonian Institute, Yale University and many other residential, commercial and institutional projects nationwide.