Ethical Culture Fieldston School (New York City, New York)

 school, Neoclassical (architecture), 1904_construction

6-story Neo-Classical school completed in 1904 as a 5-story building (plus basement). Designed by Robert D. Kohn with Carrère & Hastings and Charles B. Meyers as consulting architect, it is clad in red brick and limestone, and had a greenhouse added to the roof in 2012. The main floor is actually located above ground level, with banded brick. On Central Park West, the main entrance is in the center of the five bays, atop a staircase that expands wider at its base. The steps are flanked by a pair of stone pedestals topped by lampposts. The entry breaks the rounded stone molding at the top of the basement level and now has sliding glass doors below a transom. The doors are framed by thin iron pilasters decorated with a vertical row of open circles. There is an upper transom that is screened by an intricate metal grille, and the whole entry is framed by a limestone surround, the inner edges of which are carved with a spiral pattern of foliation. There is a keystone at the top, surmounted by a stone panel reading "ETHICAL CULTURE SCHOOL". This is flanked by console brackets ringed by garlands, supporting a rounded pediment with egg-and-dart molding that breaks the line of the stone lintel above the first floor. The other four bays have double-windows, as do the four bays at the basement level that is partially raised above the sidewalk and fronted by areaways behind iron railings. Most of the basement level is limestone, with brick in the piers between bays.

The upper floors have brick piers with slightly-projecting panels extending along their four floors. Each of the five bays has a double-window with grey-green iron framing and very slender colonnettes separating the panes. The spandrels are of the same metal, with geometric patterns along the upper edges and panels at the bottom. A limestone band runs across the top of the 4th floor, including across the piers, where there is simple decoration of circles within squares. Within the band there are splayed lintels above the windows. The 5th floor also has double-windows, these with wider, tan metal mullions. A stone cornice caps this floor, also with splayed lintels at the windows, these featuring keystones.

The south facade on 63rd Street has the same design elements, with four bays. The main difference is a wider west bay, with triple-windows. At the raised 1st floor, a metal door is inserted at the east opening in the west end bay, with a metal staircase descending to the left, with metal hand-railing.

Ethical Culture Fieldston School is a private, pre-kindergarten through fifth grade school. It is associated with the Ethical Culture movement founded by Dr. Felix Adler in 1877, which began offering school programs as a kindergarten. In 1880, elementary grades were added, and the school was then called the Workingman's School. In 1895 the name changed to "The Ethical Culture School", and in 1903 the New York Society for Ethical Culture became its sponsor. The school moved into its landmark Manhattan building at 33 Central Park West in 1904. The entire school was located in that building until 1928 when the high school division (Fieldston) moved to its 18-acre campus on Fieldston Road in the exclusive Fieldston section of Riverdale. The school ended its formal ties with the Society in the 1990s, although retaining its name and striving to maintain the ethical tradition of its roots.

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