McDonald's 42nd Street (New York City, New York)

 fast food restaurant, commercial building

6-story mercantile building completed in 1913. Designed by Harry L. Walker as a store-and-loft building, it is clad in beige marble above the remodeled lower three floors. These floor are now framed in black granite. Above the metal-and-glass entrance doors, there is an inner frame of white, uncompleted on the right side at the 2nd floor, where instead it makes a right-angle turn and runs horizontally two-thirds of the way across the top of the 2nd floor. There are plate-glass windows in the 2nd & 3rd floors, with horizontal wood-slat spandrels below each floor (wider below the 2nd floor). A vertical red metal bar runs up from the lower spandrel to the top of the 3rd floor, about one-third over from the west edge, and there is a small red metal canopy over the entrance. The lower three floors are occupied by a McDonald's, with the golden arches attached to the lower wood spandrel, and a projecting golden arches sign at the west end.

The top three floors, now used for storage, have bands of four windows, recessed at the top floor, with narrow pilasters separating the outer panes. Inscribed on the stone of the facade is "HALLET & DAVIS", piano makers who once occupied these floors as initial tenants of the building, moving out in 1926. A band course runs below the top floor, which has a wrought-iron railing fronting the windows. The facade is crowned by a brick roof parapet where a roof cornice originally was.

It is operated by the Fonesca Group.