545 Fifth Avenue

 office building, commercial building

164-foot, 13-story Neo-Classical office building completed in 1898 as a hotel. Designed by Jeremiah O'Rourke, it opened as the Hotel Lorraine, and was converted to offices in 1930. It is clad in buff-colored brick and terra-cotta above a modernized 2-story base of grey metal and glass. The two main facades meet in a rounded northwest corner. The base has double-height plate-glass show-windows along most of its bays, between narrow grey metal columns. The south bay on the avenue has a more traditional storefront entrance at the ground floor and show-windows on the 2nd floor. The main entrance is in the 4th bay from the east on the north facade, framed in stainless-steel. The three bays to the east are slightly recessed from the rest of the facade.

At the upper floors these three recessed bays have paired windows in the two end bays and two further-spaced single-windows in the middle bay. There is a bay of narrow windows at the east-facing sidewall where the west part of the facade juts out, the front corner slightly rounded. The west side of the north facade has a bay of two single-windows, four bays of paired windows, then a bay of single-windows, and three windows wrapping around the rounded northwest corner. The west facade has a bay of three windows flanked on each side by a bay of paired windows

All of the windows have terra-cotta surrounds and continuous terra-cotta sill courses. At the 3rd, 5th, & 9th floors there are triangular pediments above the bays of paired windows on the west facade, and on the outer bays of paired windows on the north facade. All of the other windows at the 3rd floor have terra-cotta cornices. At the 5th & 9th floors the bay with two single-windows on the north facade and middle bay with three single-windows on the west facade have smaller, individual triangular pediments over the windows. The other windows on the 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th, 10th, & 11th floors have terra-cotta cornices. The 12th floor is topped by a projecting, dark-green metal cornice with modillions and dentils. The top floor is slightly recessed and crowned by a smaller green roof cornice.

The ground floor is occupied by the NBA Store.