227 East 45th Street | office building

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214-foot, 18-story Art-Deco office building completed in 1928. Designed by Gronenberg & Leuchtag, it is clad in buff-colored brick above a 2-story white limestone base. At the base the facade has seven bays, with the main entrance at the east end, with glass doors (including a revolving door) under a rounded glass canopy. The west end has black metal-and-opaque glass service doors. The narrow middle bay has paired glass-and-metal doors, flanked by bays with paired glass-and-metal doors and a window, and four windows. There are transoms above the doors and windows of the five middle bays, where pale light-blue metal spandrel panels separate the two floors of the base (except for the center bay, which has a black metal panel). The 2nd floor has large windows, with two panes in the center bay, three in the flanking bays, four in the next bays, and the end bays have four at the east and three at the west. The 2-story piers are lightly banded, with rough-textured bases. The base is capped by a modillioned stone cornice.

The upper floors have six bays of paired windows, narrower at the end bays. The windows pairs are slightly recessed between the piers in the middle bays, where there are also brick spandrel panels decorated with simple cross shapes in brick. The four middle bays set back above the 8th floor, creating end pavilions. Additional setbacks occur above the 10th, 12th, 14th, & 16th floors, including the end bays. The first two setbacks are marked at the middle bays by fluted panels above the windows and abstract, Art-Deco styled eagle-shapes topping the piers. The first setback at the end bays also has fluted panels and medallions flanked by wide, wing shapes. While the end bays and two middle bays reach the 18th floor, the two intermediate bays end at the 16th.

The rear, north-facing facade is clad in dark-red brick, with six bays of paired, square windows. There are multiple, shallow setbacks matching those on the front facade. The window pairs change to single-windows in the end bays at the 3rd setback, and there are no openings in the end bays above the 4th setback. At the east end there are small, projecting, concrete balconies at the top three floors.

The west elevation is clad in dark-red brick, except at the front edge (the sides of the front three setbacks), where brown brick piers are framed in beige brick with three bays of single-windows. The center of the west elevation has a double-outlined rectangle of beige brick with a stylized top.