Lefcourt-State Building, 1944.

The Lefcourt-State was the third of four enormous office and showroom buildings in the Garment District that Abraham E. Lefcourt erected on Broadway and the first designed by Ely Jacques Kahn. Built specifically to house jobbers in the high-end dress trade, the building offered 450,000 square feet of rentable space, all of which was leased months before completion.

In 1931, sixty-nine firms rented space in the building. The Times reported that "it is estimated that the annual shipments of wearing apparel from this building will reach a figure of over $75,000,000 the first year." Kahn was one of a circle of prominent architects who introduced Moderne, or Art Deco design to New York. For Lefcourt, he designed a powerful building with a four-story stone base, vertical massing, and evenly stacked setbacks, each ornamented with simple geometric detail. Intricate bas-relief brick spandrel panels beneath the windows ( gave additional interest to the façade. Typical of Kahn's buildings, the lobby was a lavish entry with inlaid marble floors, marble walls, complex molded plaster detail, bronze elevator doors, and other features, all now gone.