[10] The land lots on the city block were first platted in 1858,[8] when records indicate that Isaac E. Smith and Ichabod T. Williams operated lumber yards on the site.

[5][16][15] The building features large setbacks, polygonal corners, and alternating bands of steel strip windows, brickwork, and concrete floor plates.

[27] As of 2022[update], the roof terrace was planned to be redesigned with landscaping, seating areas, a pergola, a fountain, an art garden, and glass parapets.

[29] At ground level, each bay has either a loading dock, a roll-down gate, cinderblock or brick walls, storefronts, louvers, or vehicular openings.

[43] The columns on the first two stories are spaced irregularly[15][44] to coordinate with the railroad track arrangements and to allow delivery trucks to maneuver within the building more easily.

[57] When the building opened, it had a gas station and auto repair shop, a newsstand, a barbershop, a clinic, cafeterias, executive offices, and other amenities.

[60] By the early 2020s, some of the upper stories' truck bays had been repurposed with amenities such as a billiard room, indoor golf machines, and a shuffleboard court.

[70][71] The Thirteenth Avenue and West Twenty-sixth Street Corporation acquired the city block that April and hired the George A. Fuller Company as the main contractor.

[21][22] The 15-story building was to contain about 1,750,000 square feet (163,000 m2; 40 acres; 16.3 ha) of space above the LV's existing tracks, as well as 10-by-30-foot (3.0 by 9.1 m) truck elevators serving each floor.

[76] The LV submitted plans to the New York City Department of Buildings for an 18-story edifice in July 1930,[77][78] at which point excavations at the site were underway.

[84][85] The cost of construction increased unexpectedly due to the difficulties of erecting the foundation, which had forced the architects to modify their plans to an 18-story building.

[87] The building was substantially completed on October 1, 1931,[88] and members of a local civic group, the 23rd Street Association, toured the edifice the next month.

At a hearing in July 1935, Interstate Commerce Commission officials claimed that the LV was contributing to the building's unprofitability by giving certain companies up to a year's worth of free rent.

He received a third mortgage of $1.3 million in 1973, by which point only about 2,000 people continued to work at the Starrett–Lehigh Building amid a decline in demand for loft space in Manhattan.

[38] However, some tenants complained that the building had been allowed to deteriorate, with broken windows, holes in the walls, and leaking pipes, and that Helmsley-Spear had not done anything to fix these issues.

[59] To attract tenants, the owners also added a ground-level food court[130] and evicted a diner on 12th Avenue to make way for an upscale restaurant.

[133] Media firms and art galleries began replacing the industrial tenants,[132][134] and many photography studios, which had moved into the building in the mid-1990s, were forced out.

[134] Other tenants included photography studio Day for Night, whose presence "helped put Starrett-Lehigh on the fashion map" according to The New York Times;[59] as well as a business incubator.

Tenants also complained about intermittent heat and electricity; cockroach infestations; missing fire alarms; and diesel emissions created by portable power generators.

[140] The large vacant spaces began to attract fashion companies in the mid-2000s, such as Club Monaco, Hugo Boss, Tommy Hilfiger, Comme des Garcons, and Carolina Herrera.

[148] Rechler announced plans to spend $50 million on renovating the lobby, as he believed that the upcoming 7 Subway Extension to 34th Street–Hudson Yards would increase the area's desirability.

[151] Because of a shortage of restaurants in the area, in 2012, RXR began operating a "food truck court" for employees and visitors on the upper floors during weekdays.

[158][159] The same year, RXR hired the firm ICRAVE to design 43,000 square feet (4,000 m2) of exposition space in the building, including an 11,000-square-foot (1,000 m2) food hall.

[161] RXR hired Studios Architecture in 2021 to redesign the building as a "vertical campus";[151] the work, expected to be completed in 2023, included converting some of the truck bays to amenity areas.

[46] In August 2022, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) approved RXR's plan to build a roof garden above the tenth floor, to be designed by HLW International and Studios Architecture.

[51] When the building was completed, The New York Times characterized the structure as being "in modern style, with an unusual amount of the usual wall space taken up by windows".

"[174][175] In 1931, Lewis Mumford wrote in The New Yorker that "the contrast between the long, continuous red-brick bands and the green-framed windows, with sapphire reflections or depths, is as sound a use of color as one can see about the city"; he objected only to the presence of water towers and the central bay.

The New York Times described the building in 1987 as "a classic of Art Deco industrial architecture sheathed in dramatic ribbons of glass, concrete and brick".

[176] Christopher Gray, of the same paper, characterized the Starrett–Lehigh Building as "the flashy main course" as compared with the "chastely elegant appetizer" of the B&O terminal to the south.

[177] John Freeman Gill of the Times wrote in 2022 that the building was "hailed as a masterwork of industrial modernism, a triumph both of engineering and of International Style architectural aesthetics" when completed.