45 West 45th Street

 office building  Add category

190-foot, 16-story Neo-Classical office building completed in 1924. Designed by Schwartz & Gross, it it clad in buff-colored brick above a 3-story, white-painted limestone base. There are entrances in both end bays; the west side has metal service doors and retains its original, dentiled, triangular pediment on elongated brackets, while the east side has the main entrance, with modern glass-and-metal doors under a modern metal canopy. The center of the ground floor has a wide storefront, with a central entrance flanked by two large show-windows in black metal framing, topped by a row of nine almost-square windows; the center window is wider, and framed by iron pilasters with stylized capitals. A broad, brown iron band course with paneling tops the storefront.

The 2nd floor has double-windows with brackets sills and transoms in the end bays, while the middle section has wide tripartite windows with transoms flanking a square center window. The 3rd floor is set off by band courses above and below, and has double-windows in the end bays (divided by black iron mullions), and four sets of paired windows in the middle.

The brick upper floors have lightly banded end bays with double-windows, and the middle four bays also have double-windows, all divided by black iron mullions. Each double-window has a stone sill. A thin string course sets off the 10th floor, and stone spandrels panels with roundels separate the bays between the 10th & 11th floors. At these two floors, the two middle bays are joined into one wider bay of four single-windows, and the light banding extends to the piers framing this bay as well.

A broader band course caps the 11th floor, above which the middle bay extends for three more floors, and the ends set back. The banded side piers end at the 13th floor, which is topped by a triangular pediment with a medallion. The set-back bays have double-windows, with a final shallow setback above the 15th floor. All the setbacks are marked by stone copings.

The building was fully renovated in 2016, with a new outdoor roof deck and lounge area. The ground floor is occupied by Valerie cocktail bar, and Greek From Greece restaurant.