32 West 39th Street

 office building  Add category

170-foot, 14-story Neo-Classical office building completed in 1925. Designed by Schwartz & Gross, it is clad in beige brick above a limestone ground floor. There is a shorter 4-story extension on the west side of the building. The main entrance is in the easternmost bay, where the piers sit on black granite bases. To the right is a storefront, a service entrance, and two smaller storefronts in the extension bay on the west end.

Above the ground floor, the main facade has five windows in the middle bay of each floor, with transoms and green-painted iron frames, flanked by end bays with single-windows. The west extension has four windows per floor. The iron spandrels between the 2nd & 3rd floors are decorated with swags and small heraldic shields. The 3rd floor is capped by a broad stone band course with roundels at the piers, and an egg-and-dart molding, extending across the full facade.

The 4th-9th floors have black iron mullions between the windows, and smaller windows in the end bays. There are stone sills, and patterned brickwork in the spandrels of the middle bay. The 4th floor at the extension is capped by a stone coping. A stone band course sets off the upper floors on the main facade, with a stone cornice above the 11th floor, supported by paired brackets. At the 10th & 11th floor, the middle bays narrows the three windows, and there are two end bays on each side, with single-windows. The stone spandrels between these two floors have decorative cartouches and swags.

A series of shallow cascading setbacks begins at the outer bays above the 11th floor, while the middle bay rises another two floors before also setting back. The piers framing the middle bay at these two floors have stone panels ornamented with elaborate carvings, and there is a stone cornice around the top of the 13th floor.

The west and east elevations are clad in brown brick, with redder brick at the front edges, up to the setbacks. Both side elevations have a bay of single-windows near the front (bordering the red brick portion). The west elevation has a bay of smaller single-windows further back, and a bay of double-windows near the rear, while the east side has a smattering of small single-windows around the center. The ground floor is occupied by Colbeh party lounge and restaurant, a Subway sandwiches, and Curry & Tandoor restaurant.