Lefcourt Empire Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, historical layer / disappeared object

243-foot, 21-story Neo-Gothic office building completed in 1930. Designed by Buchman & Kahn, it is three bays wide, clad in buff-colored brick above a 4-story base of white terra-cotta. The original ground floor facade has been replaced by a plate-glass and stainless steel storefront and entrance. Above, the 2nd-4th floors has wide outer piers with textured terra-cotta tiles and decorative capitals, with an entablature capping the base. Each bay has a tripartite window with metal frames. The pilasters between the bays and the spandrels between floors are both ornamented with intricate patterns.

The upper floors have paired windows in each bay. The outer piers both have a pair of vertical grooves running up them, to notched capitals at the top. The spandrels have 4x3 grids of projecting brick, and stone sills below the windows. Above the 15th floor is a projecting, grey terra-cotta band course with a pattern of diamonds and two oval embellishments at the piers. The spandrels above the 16th and 17th floors have pairs of vertical brick projections at each window. There is a setback above the 17th floor, and another above the 18th, both topped by the same type of spandrels and grey stone copings. At the main roof line there are additional pairs of projecting brick bars and grey stone copings; notched capitals topping the piers rise slightly higher. A tall penthouse level is further set back, rising from the east half of the roof.

The south facade, above the adjoining Haier building, is also clad in brick. It has a bay of paired windows at the front and two at the rear, with a projecting brick chimney in between that rises above the roof line. The spandrels between each window have brown brick panels. At the 18th floor, above the first setback of the main facade, a pattern of dark-brown brick with pairs of horizonal bars alternating with blank square, each outlined in brown brick, framed the top and bottom of the floor. Vertical stripes of brown brick mark the pilasters between the windows at this floor as well. The main roof line and the penthouse are striped with a geometric grid of dark-brown brick.

The north facade has similar detailing with dark-brown brick, but has a bay of three windows at the front. Although there is no trace of it today, in the late 1920s a giant neon beacon blazed out from the building's roof, making this one of the most prominent nocturnal landmarks in the city. The big neon beacon made its appearance here as an advertising ploy for the American Neon Light & Sign Corp., which organized in 1927.

The ground floor was occupied by Bead Center.

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