309 West 57th Street

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16-story Neo-Gothic residential building completed in 1928. Designed by Rosario Candela, it is clad in brown brick above a 2-story limestone base. The ground floor has paired iron service doors at the east end, framed by pilasters lined with square rosettes, ending in finials. To the left is a plate-glass storefront in one wide bay and two narrower bays. The west end of the ground floor has two arched entrances. The one at the west end is a tall pointed-arch with an intricate molding, containing glass double-doors. This space was at one point at Baptist church, later a recording studio, and then a nightclub, most recently named Providence, which closed in 2016. The smaller opening is a rounded segmental-arch with a different carved molding and a finial at the apex. It has two wood-and-glass doors opening into the main lobby, and is flanked by wall sconces. Between these two arches is a plate-glass window framed by thin brown pilasters with finials. The 2nd floor has a single-window above the main entrance, followed by two more single-window bays, a paired window bay, and another single-window at the east end. The base is capped by a band course with square rosettes.

The upper floors are also asymmetrical, with seven total bays - except for the 2nd bay from the west, which has single-windows, they all have double-windows. At the 3rd floor the piers around the end bays are lined with narrow stone quoins, and all the double-windows have thin, stone rope moldings. There are carved stone spandrels above the windows and the end-bay piers with Gothic foliate ornament. These have been removed at the two bays closest to the center, and replaced with simple brick infill. Two thin band courses run across the 3rd floor, above and below the spandrels.

At the 4th floor the double-windows have slender stone colonnettes framing the windows. The two outer bays of double-windows on each side are topped by stone spandrels with carved quatrefoil ornament, and finials capping the colonnettes, which extend up past the spandrels. The two middle bays have pointed-arch spandrels. The 5th-14th floors have simpler windows; they have no ornament and are separated in each bay by white metal mullions. Another double band course runs below the 15th floor, with ornate stone panels at the outer two double-windows on both sides. The 15th-floor windows have ornament matching that on the 4th floor, except that there are rounded pediment instead of pointed-arches at the middle bays, and the end bays are framed by large, projecting, octagonal stone pilasters. The top floor has rounded pediments above the end-bay windows, and the roof line is marked by a crenelated parapet, with triangular pediments at the the end bays.

The building has a light well at the middle of the east and west sides. The exposed western side walls are clad in red brick with no openings. The interior surfaces of the light wells are clad in beige brick and have bays of single- and double-windows. A number of protruding air-conditioners dot the front facade. The building, which has 103 apartment units, has a sculpture of the head of Bela Bartok (1881-1945), the composer of "The Miraculous Mandarin" on its ground floor façade because he lived his last year the building. The ground floor is occupied by Smoke N' Toke.