Freehand New York Hotel

 hotel, NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, interesting place, 1928_construction

23 Lexington Avenue
New York, NY 10010

Freehand New York Hotel is a 197-foot, 20-story French Renaissance Revival hotel completed in 1930. Designed by Frank Mills Andrews and John Peterkin, it opened as the George Washington Hotel, intended for permanent residents rather than transients. At different times it has been used both as a brothel and as a boot-legging house during Prohibition. By the 1970's the hotel had grown seedy. It was later a dormitory for the School of Visual Art's citywide campus, after The Educational Housing corporation, a provider of student housing, had signed a 15-year lease on the hotel in 1995.

The facade is clad in brown brick above a 3-story base of warm orange and yellow terra-cotta. The building is symmetrical, with the main entrance centered on Lexington Avenue. It has two sets of glass double-doors framed by a large Doric column and layered, engaged pilasters on each side, that extend above the suspended metal canopy halfway into the 2nd floor. A red neon sign with "Freehand" in script is mounted atop the canopy. At the 2nd floor the columns form the base of an arch and entablature, recessed in which is a polychrome terra-cotta tripartite window frame dripping with intricate ornament. There are four more such arches and tripartite windows to either side, with modernized storefronts below them at the ground floor. In addition there are two narrower bays to either side, the first directly next to the center entrance bay, and the others before the end bays. These have additional storefront entrances at the ground floor (except the bay directly north of the main entrance, which has a poster board), and on the 2nd floor they have narrow double-windows framed by pilasters and topped by entablatures and rounded pediments with cartouches. The 3rd floor has 23 bays of single-windows, and the base is topped by a stone band course.

The upper floors have the same 23 bays of single-windows, each bay lined by vertical brick bands, and having spandrels panels of checkerboard patterned brick between floors. There are shallow, wrought-iron Juliet balcony railings at most of the bays on the 14th floor, and at the same bays there are terra-cotta surrounds on the 14th-15th floors, ending in round-arches at the 15th floor. There is a crenelated parapet at the 17th floor with four raised sections above which loggias near the ends of the building used to stand. The next floor is set back, and there is a 2-story penthouse at the center of the lower roof, topped by a sloping tiled roof. The north and south facades have the same basic design, both spanning three arches at the base, with five single-window bays on the upper floors.

In 2018, the investment firm AllianceBernstein remodeled the George Washington Hotel to the Freehand New York hotel, restored by Higgins Quasebarth & Partners with interiors by Roman and Williams for the Sydell Group. The ground-floor storefronts are occupied by Smile To Go cafe, Bar Calico, and Comodo restaurant.

freehandhotels.com/new-york/
www.hqpreservation.com/portfolio-items/george-washingto...
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