48 West 38th Street

 office building  Add category

150-foot, 12-story office building completed in 1912. Designed by Schwartz & Gross & B.N. Marcus, it is clad in buff-colored brick and terra-cotta above a 2-story stone base, five bays wide. The base is mostly faced in black granite, with grey granite panels above the three central storefronts, and framing the round-arched main entrance at the east end, which has recessed glass doors. The storefronts are modernized, in glass and stainless steel. The west end has a service entrance with metal double-doors. The 2nd floor has large window with rounded upper corners: double-windows in the end bays, and 4-pane-wide windows in the three middle bays. A narrow stone band course caps the base, with small Corinthian bases for the two middle piers, and angled projections at the piers around the end bays.

The upper floors have brick piers around the end bays, each highlighted by a narrow, angled, vertical strip running up the pier. The narrower piers between the center bays also have angled vertical strips. Framing the outside edge of the outer-middle bays are strips of terra-cotta with ornate carved patterns. Both of the end bays have double-windows, and the three middle bays are each divided into two sets of double-windows by intermediate piers with smaller angled projection strips. All the double-windows are separated by black iron mullions. The spandrels between the 3rd & 4th floors each have five square panels (six at the end bays) with carved shields inscribed in circles. The higher spandrels are simple brick with stone sills. There is a good deal of white replacement brick across the facade.

The terra-cotta bands framing the middle bays are joined across the top of the 10th floor. The spandrels between the top two floors are corbelled, and the facade is crowned by an ornamented brick roof parapet, broken by the piers, which end in finials reaching above the roof line.

The west elevation is clad in tan and reddish-brown brick, with a bay of paired windows at the front, and two more toward the rear; in the middle is one bay of single-windows; other have been filled-in. The ground floor is occupied by United Legwear & Apparel Co.