155 East 55th Street

 apartment building, commercial building

144-foot, 13-story modernist residential building completed in 1961. Designed by Paul Resnick, it is clad in light-grey brick above a 3-story darker grey brick base. The ground floor has a central entrance with glass double-doors below a rounded grey canvas canopy extending out over the sidewalk. The middle bays is flanked by beige variegated brick piers. On either side are metal-and-glass storefront, and at the east end is an entrance to the underground parking garage.

The 2nd & 3rd floors have five wide bays of six windows, each with short upper and lower panes around the middle panes. The windows have white metal framing and there are black metal spandrel panels between the two floors in each bay, with the metal mullions from the windows crossing the spandrels. The base is capped by a metal coping and metal railing in front of the terrace created by the setback to the upper floors.

The two outer bays at both ends of the upper floors are set back slightly farther than the six bays in the center. Each of the ten total bays have tripartite windows with light-grey metal framing, and there are small, slit vents below each group. The end bays terminate at the 10th floor, and the outer bays of the middle section set back above the 11th floor, where there are slightly-projecting balconies with metal-and-glass railings. The 2nd & 3rd bays from each end set back above the 12th floor, also topped by railings. A large, concrete mechanical penthouse rises from the center of the roof; its south-facing side has seven tall, recessed grooves.

The building contain 56 apartment units. The ground floor is occupied by Sherwin-Williams Paints, Midtown Dental Group, and Shun Lee Palace restaurant, an acclaimed Chinese restaurant founded in 1971 by Michael Tong..