45 West 55th Street (New York City, New York) | apartment building, commercial building

 apartment building, commercial building

5-story residential building completed in 1939. It is clad in tan brick above a 2-story base of stone, metal, and glass. The ground floor has a residential entrance at the east end, and two storefronts. The 2nd floor has two bays of wide tripartite windows with decoratively notched corners.

The upper floors have four bays of narrow double-windows, grouped into pairs. Most of the windows have upper transom panes, and the outer bays on the 3rd floor have brick surrounds with small brick round-arched topping them, ornamented by small stone imposts, keystones, and diamond shapes within the arches. Similar arches top the middle two windows on the top floor, but with only the diamond shapes as ornament. The outer bays on this floor are topped by stone roundels. Curved, projecting, iron balconette railings front the bottoms of the outer bays on the 4th floor, and the middle bays on the 5th floor. A paneled brick roof parapet tops the facade, with urns at the ends. The ground floor is occupied by Katsuhama restaurant, Natureworks restaurant, and Five Guys burgers.