The Lombardy Apartment Hotel (New York City, New York)

 hotel, aparthotel, apartment building

240-foot, 22-story Renaissance-revival apartment hotel completed in 1927. Designed by Farrar & Watmough, it was commissioned by William Randolph Hearst for his mistress, silent film star Marion Davies. The Lombardy has been the New York residence of film stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. It was turned into a co-op in 1957. Currently, the building still feels like a grand New York apartment house. The apartments are individually owned and decorated co-ops, mostly by wealthy non-US citizens, who may choose whether to put their unit in the hotel rental pool or not.

The hotel was renovated in 1996, at which time the front lobby was decorated by Robert Denning, whose Manhattan residence was here and whose firm, Denning & Fourcade, maintained offices in the building until his death. Several years earlier, Denning had redecorated the house restaurant. There are currently 160 studios, one, two and three-bedroom apartments in the hotel rental pool and additional units owned by permanent residents or used solely as second homes.

The facade is clad in buff-colored brick above a 3-story limestone base with a grey granite water table. The central entrance is set in a 2-story round-arch with multiple rope moldings inside an intricately carved foliate molding. There are bronze-and-glass double-doors with a diamond pattern, along with sidelights and transoms featuring the same pattern, below a rounded, white canvas canopy. There are five bays on either side. The bays next to the entrance have single-windows at the 1st & 2nd floors, with wrought-iron grilles featuring ornamental tops at the ground floor. To the east the 2nd floor has paired windows in each bay, with slender colonnettes dividing the windows, topped by small Corinthian capitals; carved griffins and gargoyles accent the imposts at the upper corners. The ground floor has metal service doors at the east end bay. The next bay has paired windows with iron grilles, followed by a bay with paired wood-and-glass doors, and then a bay with a plate-glass window. The three bays next to the east end bay have grey marble spandrel panels between the 1st & 2nd floors. The four western bays contain restaurant storefronts, with doors in the end bay and 3rd bay from the west, and plate-glass windows in the other two. There is a rounded, black canvas canopy over the end bay, and awnings over the other three. The 3rd floor has 10 bays, with double-windows like those on the 2nd floor at the middle three bays, and alternating bays of single- and double-windows on either side. The base is capped by a beaded band course above a band of small arches around rosettes.

The upper floors continue the pattern of alternating single- and double-windows outside of the three middle bays' double-windows, with black metal air-conditioning vents below them. There is a setback above the 9th floor, except for at the end bays, which extend to the 13th floor, where they have large setbacks. At the tops of the 11th & 13th floors the end bays have projecting corbel tables. A metal railing fronts the 9th-floor setback at the middle bays, and the three bays next to the middle three bays also set back above the 11th and 13th floors, with more metal railings enclosed the terraces created by the setbacks. The three middle bays have double-height round-arches at the 12th-13th floors, with 2-story colonettes separating the paired windows, which are round-arched at the 13th floor, encompasses by the larger arches of each bay. Corbelled brickwork marks the setback above the 13th floor at the middle bays.

There are more setbacks above the 14th & 15th floors, with low-sloped tiled roofs at the end bays. There are round-arched windows at the end bays on both the 16th & 17th floors, where they terminate. There is a cross-hatch brick pattern on the end bays at the 17th floor, and on the edges of the front facade as well as the narrow side walls of the projecting middle bays at the 17th-21st floors; at these floors, only the center bay has paired windows - the two flanking it have single-windows, all round-arched at the 21st floor. The recessed bay on either side has double-windows, and there is a further-recessed half-bay with narrow single-windows extending up from the tops of the terraces where the end bays terminate. A band course wraps around the top of the 21st floor, above a corbel course at the middle bays.

The top floor continues the arrangement from below, with double-height windows in the middle bays. It also features the cross-hatched brick pattern and has a crowning peaked pediment with an oculus window and a corbel course.

The west side of the ground floor is occupied by American Cut Steakhouse.

www.lombardyhotel.com/

daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-1927-lombard...
usmodernist.org/AMAR/AMAR-1928-01-03.pdf