The Earle Building

 office building, night club, 1921_construction, commercial building, Beaux-Arts (architecture)

9-story Beaux-Arts office building completed in 1921. Designed by Joseph Kleinberger, The Earle Building was the original home of Birdland, Charlie Parker's legendary jazz club from 1949-65. After such incarnations as Ubangi, Ebony and Clicque, it now includes Sapphire Gentlemen's Club (formerly Flashdancers), as one of its commercial tenants.

The facade is clad in white stone, above a ground floor lined with a variety of storefronts. The main entrance is at the center of the west facade on the avenue, with glass double-doors framed by polished granite and covered by a stainless-steel canopy. The upper floors on the west facade span eight bays, and the south facade on 52nd Street has seven bays, each with a 2-over-2 window. The exception is the 2nd floor, which has plate-glass show-windows, although many of them are covered by horizontal billboards on both facades. The 2nd floor also has carved marble piers at the ends and is capped by a dentiled cornice.

The 3rd floor is topped by a narrower cornice with an egg-and-dart molding, and a dentiled cornice caps the 7th floor. At the top two floors the piers are paneled and green metal spandrels panels separate the two floors within each bay, except for the end bays, which have stone spandrels and projecting stone sills at the 9th-floor windows. There are moldings around the end-bay windows on both top floors, with keystones at the 9th-floor windows. The tops of the piers have flat, stylized Corinthian capitals, and both facades are crowned by a stone roof cornice with dentils, modillions, and short finials along the top edge.

There are two advertising billboards mounted on the southwest corner of the building, and another on the roof. The ground floor commercial spaces were remodeled in 2019.