55 West 47th Street (New York City, New York)

 office building, apartment building, commercial building, jewelry store/shop

131-foot, 13-story early-modern multi-use building completed in 1963. Designed by Hyman Isaac Feldman, it proclaims itself as "The World's Largest Jewelry Exchange" which may (or may not) be an exaggeration, but it was the largest on the block, with some 115 dealers on the first three floors. The building also has about 49,500 square feet of office space and 10 residential units.

It is clad in white brick above a 2-story base. The ground floor has banded, speckled, pink granite end piers and water table, with a recessed storefront of aluminum and glass in between. Near the ends, the storefront angles sharply back to a glass door on each side, then projects forward again at a shallower angle, bulging out to a point at the center that is roughly aligned with the ends. There are two more recessed glass doors set in the angled middle sections. Plate-glass display cases top the water table around each of the doors, with taller, angled plate-glass windows (also recessed above each door) above an aluminum band course that follows the various angles. A large black band above the storefront has silver metal lettering reading "WORLD'S LARGEST JEWELRY EXCHANGE". At the east end, next to the wide storefront section, is the main entrance, with glass doors and a metal service door, framed by another banded granite pier. There are steel panels above the doors, and a shiny, silver metal panel above that, continuing the black band to the left. The 2nd floor is framed on the side and top by similar shiny metal bands, with a long band of eight continuous triple-windows with transoms. A metal railing and downlighting caps the shallow setback above the base.

The set-back upper floors have wide bands of windows; they consist of tripartite windows (single middle panes, and 2-over-2 end panes) separated by metal panels, and double-windows at the ends. The lower floors are dotted with protruding air-conditioning units. There is another setback above the 8th floor, with the top five floors matching the design of floors 3-8. A tall, white brick mechanical penthouse rises up from the east end of the roof.

The north and east elevations are clad in red brick. There are no openings on the east side, but the north (rear) facade has two bays at the east, each with a band of five windows, and four bays of triple-windows at the west.