501 Madison Avenue (New York City, New York) | office building

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338-foot, 30-story Art-Deco office building completed in 1930. Designed by Kohn, Vitolo & Knight, it is clad in buff-colored brick above a 2-story stone base. The west facade on the avenue is organized into five bays, and the south facade on 52nd Street has four bays. There is a black granite water table and limestone piers (each with a thin vertical groove down the center) with green marble capitals and a green marble band capping the base. The main entrance is in the north bay on the avenue, with a set of revolving doors and a single glass door, recessed behind the piers. Above is a glass wall with a hanging light fixture in front, suspended from the ceiling of the recessed area. The other bays have plate-glass storefronts on both floors, divided by polished black granite spandrels with bronze upper and lower borders; the lower borders are larger and have geometric and foliate patterns. There is also a service entrance in the east half of the easternmost bay on 52nd Street.

The upper floors have projecting, curved, fluted stone piers with geometric-patterned bases and capitals at the 14th-floor setback. Between the piers the 3rd floor has triple-windows with black metal mullions, stone sills, and geometric-patterned lintels. The brick around each window bay is horizontally banded.

The 4th-14th floors have paired windows with thinner stone sills and joined brick lintels. The exception is the easternmost bay, which has three windows at each floor. On the west facade the north two bays only set back slightly, with an angled bay with a single-window receding back to the farther set-back south bays. From here the bays mostly have wider-spaced single-windows instead of pairs, and a series of additional setbacks begins at the south half of the west facade above the 17th floor, and above the north half above the 18th floor. The setbacks continue in alternating-floor fashion, each marked by a patterned band course. The south facade follows this same patterns, but without the angled bay at the 15th-16th floors.

The top three floors rise from the northeast corner of the site, topped by a brick-clad mechanical housing and water tank enclosure, crowned by a green copper roof with six sides sloping gently to a point. The base is occupied by Bremont New York Boutique, J. Press Pennant Label menswear, Hickey Freeman men's apparel, and Johnston & Murphy shoes.