18 East 48th Street (New York City, New York)

 office building  Add category

285-foot, 23-story Art-Deco office building completed in 1928. Designed by Robert D. Kohn and Lafayette A. Goldstone, the 4-bay facade is clad in buff-colored brick above a 3-story limestone base. The ground floor has the main entrance in the east bay, with bronze-framed glass doors. A large stone panel above the doors has a recessed trapezoid area. There is a grey granite water table, with the piers rising from slightly-projecting bases. The three west bays have large tripartite windows with upper and lower transoms in black metal framing, above lower bands of additional tripartite panes; a secondary door is placed in the 2nd-from-east bay. Black marble spandrels with white metal framing separate the 2nd floor in the three west bays. The 2nd & 3rd floors have tripartite windows divided by white metal mullions, and the base is capped by a dentiled stone cornice with small paired brackets at each pier.

The upper floors have paired windows with 3-over-2 panes and thin stone sills in each bay. The end bays set back above the 15th floor, and the outer window on both of the middle bays drops off, replaced by an angled side wall with a window on each floor, to a full-floor setback above the 17th floor. The end bays set back again above the 19th floor, with angled side walls at the middle of the 20th & 21st floors, and a shallower full-floor setback above the 21st floor. There is one more pair of shallow setbacks at the end bays above the 22nd floor, and angled side walls at the middle of the 23rd, where the facade is topped by a triangular gable with a single round-arched opening. The gable extends from the steep-sloped green copper roof that rises to a ridge with brick chimneys at both ends. Four small, square dormers pierce the north face of the roof, and the lower-east corner has a section where the metal is replaced by a glass skylight.

The rear, south-facing facade has full-floor setbacks above the 14th, 16th, 18th, 20th & 22nd floors, and the steep copper roof has two small, square dormers in the middle, and two larger vent openings at the east and one at the west. The west elevation is clad in brick, lighter colored except for at the north and south edges, with three bays of paired windows, dropping off at some of setbacks to a single bay at the top three floors.