145 West 55th Street

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161-foot, 16-story Neo-Classical residential building completed in 1921 as a hotel. Designed by John E. Eaton, it is clad in brown brick above a 3-story limestone base and grey granite water table. The facade is seven bays wide, with the middle three grouped together. The square-headed openings at the ground floor are separated from the round-arched openings at the 2nd floor by paneled stone spandrels with heraldic shields. The main building entrance in in the center bay, with glass double-doors under a peaked, grey canvas canopy. The storefront bay to the right has wood-and-glass multi-paned double-doors with green framing and a transom, under a rounded, red canvas awning. The next bay has a plate-glass show-window, and the east end bay has a glass door, window, and transom below a rounded, navy-blue canvas canopy extending out over the sidewalk. The bay left of the main entrance has a wood door with many small glass panes, and a 3-panel sidelight, below a flat metal canopy extending out over the sidewalk. The next two bays have plate-glass show-windows with ornamental wrought-iron framing. The arched 2nd-floor openings have tripartite windows with wide iron mullions. The 3rd floor has simple paired windows, and the base is capped by a band course with a frieze.

The upper floors also have paired windows, with simple stone sills and brick surrounds. The end piers and the piers framing the middle section of three bays have brick banding, and a number of protruding air-conditioning units dot the facade. There are projecting stone balconies with no railings at the middle bays of the 10th floor, each carried on three brackets, and these bays have 2-story round-arches from the 10th-11th floors. There are paneled stone spandrels between the floors in these bays, and round-arched windows at the 11th floor, with small roundels below the apex of the enclosing arches. The two outer bays on each side set back above the 12th floor, topped by stone cornices. The middle bays extend up to the 14th floor, where the end windows drop off, with the 15th floor having a central bay of paired windows, and single-windows at the ends. Above the end-bay setbacks, the recessed upper floors extend up to the 15th-floor roof line, above which is a recessed, small penthouse level faced in white stone, with six bays of arched windows. A mechanical bulkhead rises up from the center of the roof.

The east elevation is clad in brick, with one bay of single-windows near the front, from the 8th-12th floors. There are light wells at the middle of both side elevations, lined with windows and fire escapes. The building contains 90 apartment units. The ground floor is occupied by New York Nails and Spa, Between the Bread sandwich shop, and Daria Salon.

Tennessee Williams lived in the penthouse of the building here in 1965-66, deeply depressed over the death of his lover Frank Merlo.