20 West 38th Street

 office building  Add category

5-story office building completed in 1917. Designed by Charles E. Birge as a store-and-loft building, it has a 2-story base with an orange-stained wood ground-floor restaurant storefront. A recessed entrance to the upper floors is at the right. The limestone 2nd floor has three joined double-windows with dark-brown iron frames and mullions, above an iron base beam. A vertical sign is affixed to the west end of the 2nd floor, and the base is capped by a stone band course, supported by a keystone in the middle.

The upper floors are lighter-colored limestone, with three bays of windows. There are stone spandrel panels between the 3rd & 4th floors, small keystones at the tops of the 4th-floor windows, and projecting sills on the 5th-floor windows, which are topped by round-arches springing from simple capitals at the piers. Stone medallions that decorated the arches have been removed. The facade is crowned by a green copper roof cornice with brackets and panels. The ground floor was until recently occupied by The Westbury Pub.