The Alexandria Condominium

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259-foot, 25-story postmodern residential building completed in 1991. Designed by Frank Williams & Associates with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, it is clad in red and tan-orange brick and green metal. Its most notable features are the indented, turreted southeast corner with handsome white grill balcony railings, and atop the series of cascading setbacks at the upper floors, the distinctive watertank enclosure that is a wonderful postmodern concoction of Egyptian motifs. The design plays off of and complements the much older Ansonia one block to the north.

The 3-story base has double-height black metal-and-glass storefronts on the lower two levels, divided by brick piers with organic stylized stone capitals. There is a chamfered corner, and the main entrance is in the 3rd bay from the west on 72nd Street, where the 2-story infill has shiny bronze instead of black metal; there are two sets of glass double-doors at the ground floor, separated from the 2nd-floor window glass by three panels of green metal spandrels. The transitional 3rd floor, in red brick, has 14 bays of windows on the south facade, alternating in pairs of double-windows and tripartite windows in aluminum framing, with each bay separated by a pier of dark-green brick.

The upper floors of this facade continue the same pattern of window bays, with the paired double-window bays clad in tan-orange brick, and the tripartite bays in red brick. The double-windows bays are recessed, and the ends of the tripartite windows have an extra pane angling back toward the recessed sections. There are black metal air-conditioning vents below each window bay. At the 4th floor there are white balcony railings fronting the recessed bays. The corner turret at the southeast consists of a recessed, roughly-octagonal form clad in green metal, with projecting grey concrete balconies wrapping around every second floor, with white iron grillework railings.

The east facade along Broadway has three different sections on the upper floors to the north of the corner turret. The southernmost is clad in red brick and has what appears to be bands of four windows, but the southern pane is replaced by a green metal panel. The center section is recessed and clad in tan-orange brick with three bays of double-height windows divided into many small panes by white metal framing. The northernmost section is clad in red brick and has two bays of double-windows. There is decorative brickwork around the top of the 15th floor, where the series of small setbacks on both main facades begins.

These top floors are clad in tan-orange brick on the south facade and the south part of the east facade, with ribbon bands of windows, while the north end of the east facade is clad in red brick, with separate bands of windows. Glass railings line the narrow terraces at each floor created by the setbacks. The top of the building narrows up to the crowning watertank enclosure.

The west elevation is clad in tan-orange brick and has grey concrete bands between floors. There is a bay of tripartite windows at the south end from the 9th-12th floor, changing to two double-windows at the 13th-14th, one double-window at the 15th, and then shifting northward as the setbacks commence. There is also a bay of single-windows farther north up to the 12th floor, with double-windows above. The north elevation is clad in red brick at the east half, with the lower floors having one bay each of triple-, double-, and single-windows at the east end, and a mix of window types on the upper floors. To the west the north elevation is cut away with a large setback area, all clad in tan-orange brick, forming a sort of L-shape. At the junction of the L, there are projecting, angled bay windows. There is a setback above the 11th floor at the west end of the north facade. The lower floors below the setback have three sets of projecting balconies with angled ends; the upper floors have more balconies of varied widths.

The building contains 201 condominium units. The ground floor is occupied by FedEx Office, and Bloomingdale's Outlet Store.

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