N-Cinnamoyl-l-phenyl-alanine methyl ester.

As part of an ongoing investigation into the development of N-substituted amino acids as building blocks for dynamic combinatorial chemistry, we report the structure of the title compound, C(19)H(19)NO(3). This compound crystallizes as discrete mol-ecules. The cinnamoyl group is non-planar, with the phenyl ring and the amide twisted out of the ethyl-ene plane. The benzyl and ester groups lie above and below the amide plane. The mol-ecules stack along the crystallographic c axis, connecting through C(4) chains of N-H⋯O hydrogen bonds, with the extended structure stabilized by C-H⋯O inter-actions and π-π inter-actions [centroid-to-centroid distances 3.547 (8) and 3.536 (8) Å].