309 West 23rd Street (New York City, New York)

 office building, commercial building

3-story office/commercial building originally completed in 1963. The building consists of a 3-story office section, with a 1-story commercial section wrapping around the east and north sides. The commercial section retains its original appearance, but the office section was renovated in 2012, with the original brick replaced by metal panels.

The main entrance is at the west end on 23rd Street, sliding glass doors and a metal canopy at the ground floor of a 3-story tower that anchors the west end of the building. Silver metal panels enframe a 2-story wall of black glass with aluminum framing at the upper floors. The rest of the south facade is slightly set back above the ground floor storefronts. The ground floor is clad in tan brick, with plate-glass windows, and a large metal-and-glass garage door-style opening next to the west tower area. A green metal band tops the ground floor, on both the south and east facades, as well as a section of the north facade.

The set-back upper floors occupy only the southern half of the site, and are clad in horizontal grey and silver metal panels, with the colors set in a random pattern, and also in varying widths. Projecting, bright blue panels were added to the facade in 2014, placed randomly. The south facade on 23rd Street has nine bays of recessed double-windows on the upper floors, and the east facade on the avenue has another nine. The north facade of the upper floors, overlooking the 1-story commercial story extending farther north, has another six bays at its east section, while the west end was not re-clad and still has the original tan brick with no openings.

The rear of the 1-story section has a number of brown-metal service doors. The office section and north end of the ground floor are occupied by Mount Sinai Doctors, and the rest of the ground floor by The Pho 2 restaurant, Dunkin' Donuts/Baskin Robbins, Chelsea Apothecary, and Dallas BBQ restaurant.