286 Madison Avenue

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292-foot, 23-story Renaissance-revival office building completed in 1918. Designed by Starrett & Van Vleck, and also known as 19 East 40th Street, it is clad in buff-colored brick above a 4-story limestone base. The east facade on the avenue has four bays, and the south facade spans seven bays. At the ground floor each bay has a tall round-arch, most with storefronts. The north bay on the avenue has metal louvers and a metal service entrance. The main entrance is in the middle bay on the south facade, with slightly-recessed glass doors and a suspended marquee. The two bays to the left have metal infill and louvers within the tops of the arches instead of the glass seen in the other bays. Silver metal numbers and letters at the southeast corner on both facade spell out "286 MADISON AVENUE". Above a narrow string course with small rosettes, the 2nd & 3rd floors have 2-over-3 windows with black metal frames and black metal spandrels between the two floors, ornamented with four panels with roundels. The 4th floor has shorter paired windows with stone sills, and a small dentiled cornice capping the base.

The upper floors have a lighter shade of brick at the wide southeast corner pier. Each bay has paired windows, and narrow string courses divided the facades into 2-floor groupings. The windows have stone sills and brick lintels; there are stone spandrel panels above the 5th-floor windows, but the rest have brick spandrels. A modillioned stone string course runs across the 17th floor. There are ornamented stone spandrels at each bay above the 18th floor, and round-arched windows at the 20th floor, encompassed by larger round-arches at each bay, with stone architraves. A corbelled stone cornice run above the arches, and he 21st floor has paired, recessed, square-headed windows. The two penthouse levels are setback above the 21st floor's cornice, and topped by a low-sloped copper roof.

The north facade is also clad in brick, with end bays of paired windows and four bays of single-windows in the middle, plus a metal vent pipe running up the center of the facade. The string courses and cornices from the main facades carry over onto this elevation. The two middle bays are slightly recessed. The exposed top floors on the west facade are similar. The ground floor is occupied by Dig restaurant.