Sanctuary Hotel (New York City, New York)

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9-story/7-story hotel completed as two separate buildings in 1904 and 1908. The taller, older building was designed by Robert S. Townsend, and the other by Schwartz & Gross. Combined as a single hotel, it operated as the Hotel Rio, and then the Portland Square Hotel beginning around 1980, before reopening as the Sanctuary Hotel in 2007.

The 9-story western section is clad in light-brown brick above a 2-story white-painted, rusticated limestone base. The ground floor has the main entrance for the hotel in the center, with black and gold bronze doors surrounded by a molding and topped by a cartouche. A portico extending out in front of the doors has paired fluted Doric columns supporting an entablature with metopes, which forms the base of a balcony at the 2nd floor. To either side of the entrance is a large window fronted by planter boxes. The 2nd floor has four bays of recessed segmental-arched windows with gilded lion's head keystones. The balcony spans the two middle bays, with a balustrade running between paired end posts topped with squat urns. The outer bays have smaller, oval-shaped, black iron Juliet balconies with wrought-iron railings and planter boxes, springing from rounded stone bases formed from elaborate cartouches. The base is capped by a band course with an egg-and-dart molding.

The upper floors have four bays of windows with stone surrounds. At the 3rd floor they are topped by rounded pediments enclosing small cartouches; a band course above the windows connects the base of each pediment. The windows above have bracketed sills and patterned moldings around the edges of the stone surrounds, and there are scrolled keystones on the windows of the 4th floor. The 9th floor has a band course running along the base of the window surrounds, and keystones meeting the dentil course of the projecting, white roof cornice. The projecting part of the cornice has alternating modillions and rosettes. Lighting fixtures are attached to the piers between the windows at the 9th floor.

The 7-story east building is clad in grey-brown brick above a 2-story, white-painted, rusticated limestone base. It also has a central entrance (this one for the hotel's restaurant, Tender). There are projecting, modern glass and black metal doors with a peaked top extending out from the original, elaborately ornamented doorway that features a central cartouche with flowing grape vines around it. On either side are large, intricately carved brackets that probably once supported a balcony, which has since been removed. The end bays at the ground floor have large, recessed double-windows with large keystones, and the 2nd floor is set off by a band course. The 2nd floor has four bays of windows, narrower at the end bays, each with a slanted red canvas awning, and fronted by individual wrought-iron railings with gilded crests. Small, gilded, lion's head keystones above the end-bay windows support a band course that caps the base, and four small brackets support a narrow stone balcony at the middle bays.

The upper floors also have four bays, with narrower windows at the ends. The balcony at the 3rd floor has a black metal railing with gilded trim, including a swag at the center, and hanging pendants at the ends. Smaller, individual railings front the end-bay windows at the 3rd floor, decorated with gilded crests, and all four 3rd-floor windows also have slanted red awnings. Two projecting flagpoles are mounted inside of the end bays. The windows above have simple stone sills, and the 7th floor has a full-width stone balcony carried on small brackets. It has a black metal railing with three gilded swags and hanging pendants at the ends. There is a roof deck with a glass railing above the roof line, between stepped up ends of a roof parapet that are topped by round-arches.

The west elevation is clad in brown brick; the middle section of this wall is slightly recessed and has seven bays of single-windows. Also visible from this side is the glassed-in roof deck on the taller building, which houses the Haven lounge. The hotel has 115 guest rooms.

www.sanctuaryhotelnyc.com/