From the National Register application:
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"The New York Life Building at the corner of Wall and Ninth Streets in Kansas City, Missouri is a large stone and brick building of Neo-Renaissance design built between 1887 and 1890. It is an H plan structure possessing two ten story arms linked together by a twelve story square tower. A classical facade design is applied to its south and west street elevations, while the north and east inner block sides remain unadorned.
EXTERIOR
The south facade of the New York Life Building is visually divided into a series of several major horizontal sections. The first two stories constitute the first of these sections. They are faced with ranged brownstone ashlar and cut by five arches, each thirty-three feet high. The central arch is the widest of the five and serves as the main entrance. Inside of the central arch are two polished granite monolithic columns of the Doric order. They rest on pedestals of Worcester granite and support a brownstone transom beam upon which appears "The New York Life Insurance Company." The semi-circular transom is fitted with a wrought iron grille.
The remaining four arches symmetrically flank the entrance, two to each side, and serve as frames for the first and second story window spaces.
The third story elevation of the south facade is purely transitional in design. Like the two floors below it, it is faced with brownstone and visually divided into five verticle areas. Over the central entrance is an open roof with a stone screen wall in front to soften the transition. To each side of the screen are two pairs of simple rectangular windows arranged directly over the windows of the lower levels. The window motif is repeated on the face of the tower wall.
The brownstone facing terminates at the fourth floor with a string course of that material, and the remainder of the building is common bond brick with quoins of brick and terra cotta to strengthen the corners. The fourth to seventh floors of the structure constitute the next horizontal section. It consists of five arches arranged in line with the arches at the lower levels, one on the tower elevation with two to each side on the arm facades. -The arches are four stories high and encompass a series of window pairs identicle to those of the third story. A band of terra cotta ornament separates the sixth and seventh floors, while a terra cotta string-course terminates the section.
The next two floors make up the fourth architectural segment. Four two-story arches extend across the facade of each arm, each arch framing two windows placed one above the other. At this level the tower no longer repeats the fenestration of the arms, but only reflects it with two small windows in the center of the tower's eighth and ninth floors.
The fenestration of the arms ends with a series of eight small windows, four to either arm, which are placed directly above the line of lower windows and alternated with large circular terra cotta ornaments. The building terminates in a terra cotta architrave-cornice topped with antifixae.
The elevation of the west facade identically repeats the design of the south in eight verticle sections. The north and east sides are devoid of any ornamentation.
The tower above the roof line is broken on all four sides by three arch-framed windows. Above them is a terra cotta string-course which forms the base of three rectangular openings on each of the four sides. Each void is filled with a single, smooth, Ionic column. The tower is capped with a hip roof and finial reaching a total height of 210 feet.
Centered over the main entrance of Ninth Street is a sculpture of an eagle with outstretched wings, protecting her young from a large snake. The group is cast of one piece of bronze and weighs two tons. The eagle's wings measure twelve feet from tip to tip. (The Kansas City Star. Wednesday, February 25, 1891.)"