37 West 37th Street

 office building  Add category

150-foot, 12-story office building completed in 1915. Designed by Herman Lee Meader, it is clad in brown brick above a 3-story limestone base. The ground floor has a tall, plate-glass storefront in the middle, and entrances at both ends. The main entrance is on the east side, recessed behind a pink granite frame and topped by a small cornice with an elaborate cartouche and acanthus leaves carving. The west end has a service entrance, also with a pink granite frame, but with a metal vent above instead of the stone ornament over the main entrance. The end bays have tall, narrow single-windows at the 2nd & 3rd floors. The lower ones have stone sills, and there is a stone panel with a carved torch between the floors at the end bays. The middle of the 2nd & 3rd floors has five windows divided by narrow, rounded metal columns. There is a band with a Greek-fret motif below the 2nd-floor windows, and both stone and metal spandrels between the 2nd & 3rd floors. The base is capped by a frieze decorated with carved swags, circles, and diamond-shapes, with a center panel bearing an eagle in a wreath. At the four main piers are lions' heads, with metopes descending onto the piers at the 3rd floor, and topped by urns.

The upper floors have five single-windows in the middle section, and single-windows in the end bays, all with stone sills and brick headers. At the top floor the middle section's window have stone surrounds. The facade is crowned by a roof parapet with stone coping, stair-stepping up toward the center. On the east elevation, in front of the set-back neighboring hotel, there is one bay of newer single-windows installed near the front edge.