Built in 1902 as a showroom for Studebaker Brothers vehicles - luxurious horse-drawn carriages like the Grand Victorias, dashing Spider Phaetons, smart single-seat traps and, for the truly adventurous, those self-propelled devices called automobiles - the once elegant 10-story building at 1600 Broadway, also facing 48th Street and Seventh Avenue, served over the years as the backdrop for countless postcards and snapshots of the Great White Way.

Its rooftop has been a pedestal for enormous signs advertising Maxwell House, Chevrolet, Braniff and Sony. Long after the Studebaker roadsters and coupes moved out, its ground floor was home to the Ripley Believe It or Not! Odditorium ("Curioddities From 200 Countries"), Howard Clothes and Tony Roma's A Place for Ribs.

Columbia Pictures may be said to have been born there, since it was in an office at 1600 Broadway that Harry Cohn, Joseph Brandt and Jack Cohn formed the C.B.C. Film Sales Company in 1920. Four years later, tired of the nickname "Corned Beef and Cabbage," they renamed the company Columbia. The building also housed the National Screen Service Corporation, suppliers of movie posters and other promotional materials.

In other words, 1600 Broadway was one of New York's most familiar unknown buildings.

As recently as the 1980's, its architectural integrity was intact and it still looked much the way it did when Long Acre Square - like the London street, Long Acre - was the heart of the harness and carriage trade.

But in the 1990's, the building fell under the shadow of the 26-story Renaissance New York Hotel Times Square, immediately to the south. Its deep cornice was stripped off and V-shaped sign boards sprouted from its upper corners. Finally, much of its facade was wrapped in a four-story vinyl billboard for Absolut vanilla vodka.

Now there is another addition: demolition scaffolding.

Sherwood Equities, the owner of the property and the developer of the Renaissance hotel, has applied to the city's Buildings Department to construct a 25-story, 136-unit apartment tower at 1600 Broadway. It would be designed by Einhorn Yaffee Prescott Achitecture & Engineering, working with Schuman Lichtenstein Claman Efron. It would rise 290 feet, almost three times as high as the Studebaker Building, which is not a landmark.

Jeffrey Katz, the chief executive of Sherwood, said that he had seriously explored renovating the 102-year-old structure but that doing so would not be feasible.

"It's drastically out of place at this time," Mr. Katz said. "It wants now to become something else."

Indeed, the history of the building itself is one of constant change.

Designed by James Brown Lord, the architect of the Appellate Division courthouse on Madison Square, the Studebaker Building was notable for its broadly arched ninth-floor windows framed by ornamental stonework medallions. Its corners were slightly cut away, or chamfered.

Studebaker Brothers had been at Broadway and Prince Street, and its emphasis soon shifted from horse-drawn carriages to motor cars.

"No other concern in the world manufactures and markets as great a range of self-propelled vehicles," Studebaker boasted in a 1909 advertisement, which invited readers to its "mammoth emporium" on 48th Street. "You should seek the Studebaker headquarters as a haven of refuge from the silvery tongued salesmen who, not knowing themselves, blindly essay to lead the blind."

Only a year later, Studebaker was on the move again, as the center of gravity of Automobile Row shifted northward along Broadway. By the 1930's, the clothier Joseph Hilton & Sons had an outpost at 1600 Broadway, where it sold $22.50 worsted suits.

The base of the building was remodeled in 1939 for the Odditorium, exhibiting the curios collected by Robert Ripley in his travels around the world. "In addition to the inanimate objects," The New York Times reported, "there also will be presented daily performances in which individuals of varied talents will take part." The Odditorium filed for bankruptcy within a year, after which Howard Clothes moved in, offering $73.95 Dacron-worsted men's suits in the late 1960's. Atop the building was a commanding sign position, especially in the days when the block between 47th and 48th Streets was occupied by low buildings. Sony had the last spectacular sign on the rooftop, which Mr. Katz, the landlord, said was designed personally by Sony's co-founder, Akio Morita. By agreement with Sherwood, the horizontal crossbar of the Sony sign went dark when the Renaissance hotel grew high enough to obscure it. In recent years, Sherwood has installed smaller vinyl signs on the rooftop, now for Amstel and Heineken. Sherwood purchased the building in 1986 from the Robbins family, which controlled National Screen Service. "We took it over it at a low point, when Times Square was the old Times Square," Mr. Katz said. "When we bought it, we knew we wouldn't develop it for a long time." But that time has come. Because Times Square has changed again.

LEAD: BUILT for the venerable carriage manufacturer as it was entering the automobile business in New York in 1902, the Studebaker Building recently lost its elaborate cornice and with it, almost certainly, any possible landmark protection against demolition.

BUILT for the venerable carriage manufacturer as it was entering the automobile business in New York in 1902, the Studebaker Building recently lost its elaborate cornice and with it, almost certainly, any possible landmark protection against demolition.

The building, at 1600 Broadway at 48th Street, is on a prime development site.

By 1900, the area in and around Longacre Square - now Times Square -had become the center of the carriage industry in New York and it soon attracted the automobile business. The 1908 New York-to-Paris automobile race began there, and around that time, Benz, Renault, Oldsmobile and other auto manufacturers were settled on Broadway between 42d and 50th Streets.

The Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company had been established in 1852 in Indiana and by the turn of the century was the largest vehicle manufacturer in the world. According to Michael Quinn, an editor of Turning Wheels, the magazine of the Studebaker Drivers Club, the company introduced an electric automobile in 1902 and its first gasoline-powered automobile in 1904 as part of an expansion program.

Studebaker first came to New York City in 1895, and in 1902 work began on its huge, 10-story factory/office building. Offices and sales rooms were on the first floor, but a huge elevator could shift automobiles between the battery-charging rooms, storage areas, assembly finishing and repair rooms on the other floors.

It is an unusual structure, a high-rise office-factory for both automobiles and carriages. Nothing else like it has ever been built in New York City.

The exterior is of red brick and terra cotta with the repeated use of the anthemion motif in the terra cotta and in the huge projecting copper cornice at the roof level. It was designed by James Brown Lord, who also designed Delmonico's restaurant on 44th Street and Fifth Avenue and the elaborate Appellate Courthouse on 25th Street and Madison Avenue.

According to Mr. Quinn, the early 1900's were boom years for Studebaker; in 1910 it received the largest request ever for automobiles, an order by Gimbel's for 150 delivery vehicles.

But the Studebaker Building's glory years were short-lived. In 1902, the huge Astor Hotel, at 44th Street and Broadway, had been started and in 1903 plans were filed for the Times Tower at 42d Street and Broadway. They presaged a totally new development of the area as theaters, restaurants and hotels displaced the older buildings.

In 1911, Studebaker deserted its recent building for space in one at 57th Street and Broadway, and its flagship building was reconstructed for office use.

Ironically, the wave of tall buildings did not materialize - at least not until recent years. Now high-rise building projects ring the old Studebaker Building and Cushman & Wakefield's Directory of Manhattan Development lists the site for future development by Sherwood Equities, the present owner.

In 1979, the staff of the Landmarks Preservation Commission included the building in a list of over 200 recommended for landmark designation or consideration, but the panel never acted on it. But the 1979 report missed the Studebaker identification, treated the structure as a standard office building, dated it as 1912 and attributed it to a minor architectural firm, all of which undercut the structure's significance. The errors had not been corrected as of late last month.

LAST October, Robert Redlien, engineer for the owner, filed plans to ''repair ornamental cornice.'' But Mr. Redlien now says, ''We're just taking it off.''

He and the owner say that the cornice is dangerous, that pieces have fallen to the ground. But no violations have been lodged against the cornice. And a facade inspection of 1987, filed with the city, called it ''safe,'' according to Vahe Tiryakian, a spokesman for the Department of Buildings.