Alwyn Court Cooperative

 landmark, Eclectic (architecture), cooperative, interesting place, apartment building

149-foot, 12-story French Renaissance style cooperative-apartment building completed in 1909. Designed by Harde & Short, it has elaborate white terra-cotta ornamentation by the Atlantic Terra Cotta Co. in the Francis I style covering the entire main facades, and is the city's most ornate building. The interior courtyard has a painted architectural facade by artist Richard Haas. Some prominent early residents included Jacob Wertheim, president of United Cigar Stores and Frederick Steinway, president of the Steinway & Sons piano company. The building was constructed with huge 14-room, 5-bathroom apartments which were subdivided during the Depression when Seventh Avenue was no longer a desirable address - there were only six residential telephone listings in the building in 1936. By 1937, the building was empty, and was taken over by Edgar Ellinger and the Dry Dock Savings Institution, who gutted the building and removed the very large original cornice and balustrade. Louis S. Weeks was the architect of the remodeling, in which the entrance was moved from the corner, which became retail space and eventually the very lavish quarters of the Petrossian Restaurant.

There is hardly any surface of the two main facades - on the west and north - left undecorated. They are organized into a 4-story base, 5-story midsection, and 3-story crown, with a prominent rounded northwest corner. These three parts are separates horizontally by strong projecting decorative bands between which pilasters with Corinthian capitals divide the 7th Avenue elevation into four bays and the 58th Street elevation into five. The shafts of the pilasters, treated as Renaissance panels, have a profusion of details The tripartite windows are each floor are separated by richly decorated mullions and spindles; the spandrels between floors are divided into three panels each heavily decorated. The ornamentation consists of French Renaissance detail, including the crowned salamander, symbol of Francis the First, King of France. Other shapes and figures include urns, floral motifs, vines, mythical animal figures, grotesque human faces, archways, medallions, and putti.

There is an exposed basement level on 58th Street, with a light moat enclosed by an equally ornate wrought-iron fence. At the east end is a service entrance, and just past the edge of the building is a gate leading into the alleyway behind the building. The main entrance is in the 2nd bay from the south on the avenue, covered by a rounded black canvas canopy extending out over the sidewalk. A modern storefront has been inserted in the south bay, and farther south is a segmental-arched gateway leading back behind the building.

The east and south elevations are clad in red brick, with single-windows and none of the intricate detailing present on the main facades. On the ground floor since 1984 is the Petrossian Restaurant, famed for its caviar. The building contains 75 apartments. In 1980, when the building was converted to a co-op, a restoration of the façades was undertaken under the direction of the architectural firm of Beyer Blinder Belle and Richard Haas, the painter, was commissioned to paint a trompe l'oeil mural the full height of the building's central courtyard, which was covered with a skylight to become an atrium. The building’s interior was redone and the number of apartments increased to 75.

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