Lefcourt Normandie Building

 office building  Add category

322-foot, 23-story Neo-Classical office building completed in 1928. Designed by Bark & Djorup for Abraham E. Lefcourt, it is clad in buff-colored brick above a 5-story limestone base, three bays wide on Broadway, with five bays along 37th Street. The main entrance is centered on Broadway, clad in brass with the building's address (1384) above the revolving doors. The other bays have storefronts of metal, glass and dark-brown granite, except for the freight entrance in the easternmost bay on the north facade.

The other four floors of the base are separated by 4-story piers with stylized capitals. Each bay has brown cast-iron frames, ornamented with decorative patterns, organizing tripartite windows. There are glass spandrels between the 2nd & 3rd floors, while those between the 3rd & 4th, and 4th & 5th floor are iron, with ornamental patterns in the panels - different on each floor. The piers support an entablature at the top of the base, with the words "LEFCOURT NORMANDIE BUILDING" inscribed on it (on both facades), and topped by an egg-and-dart molding.

The upper floors have three windows in each bay, with uninterruptd brick piers. The brick spandrels all have the same simple pattern of three recessed panels, except for between the 6th & 7th floors, where instead there is a small, recessed square notch in the center, filled by a projecting half-sphere, and a stone lintel, stepping down at the ends. The first setback is above the 18th floor, marked by ornamental brickwork. On the Broadway facade, the two southern windows of the northernmost bay, as well as the two northern windows of the middle bay, extend another floors before setting back, with angled walls at the ends. There are additional setbacks every two floors to the main roof line, all marked by ornamental brickwork and some colored terra-cotta tiles.

The building's most notable feature is the rather cylindrical tower near the northwest corner, which rises above the main roof line. The tower's 11 main facets each have a double-height, narrow window ending in a round-arch. Above a series of small doubled buttresses, it tapers slightly and is crowned by 10 pointed, stone-capped finials arranged in a circle.

The ground floor is occupied by Sweetgreen restaurant, a Citibank branch, and Times Square Exotic smoke shop.