Gilsey House Cooperative (New York City, New York)

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8-story Second Empire-style cast-iron residential building completed in 1871. Designed by Stephen Decatur Hatch as a hotel for Peter Gilsey, it opened as the Gilsey House Hotel in 1872. The ornate exterior features a facade of white-painted cast-iron, with fluted columns, a variety of fenestration including round-arched windows and both rounded and triangular pediments, and multi-story mansard roof.

When designed, the entire lot was an assemblage of one large lot at the corner and three smaller adjoining lots on West 29th Street. The smaller lots on the side street were governed by an 1848 restrictive convenant that mandated an 8-foot setback which Gilsey honored. However, the restriction presented the architect with a sudden corner almost at the center of a very long facade. He dealt with the problem by slicing the corner of the West 29th front and at Broadway at an angle, creating two single-bay chamfers which he designed to recall pavilions. Both originally had entrances to the hotel; the Broadway corner now has a retail entrance, and the 29th Street corner has a residential entrance. Both chamfers are further enhanced by the use of Palladian-inspired windows in the bays above the ground floor. Flanking the ground-floor entrances and some upper-story windows are paired, freestanding columns with stylized Ionic capitals. Behind the columns are paired pilasters that visually tie the columns to the facade.

The impression of pavilions is heightened by the graceful, 3-story-high curve of the convex mansard towers. Each roof tower is pierced at its base by round-arched windows enframed with paired pilasters supporting a heavy broken segmental-arched pediment. To the side are handsomely turned volutes. From the break of the pediment rises another small window with a triangular pediment.

The top of the chamfered corner at Broadway and 29th Street features a large clock above the small window, held on the shoulders of two fanciful figures. The central chamfer on West 29th has a bull's-eye with radiating keystones.

The middle bays of the facade facing Broadway and the set-back section on West 29th are handled in a manner similar to the chamfered corner bays. Here, however, the paired columns end at the roof cornice line and carry low, broken segmental-arch pediments in place of mansard towers. The verticality created by the freestanding paired columns and continued above the roof line at the chamfered bays by the towers, is carried up at the central bays by decorated chimney flues, elements usually hidden within the roof.

The floor levels are clearly defined by cornices. There are low balustrades at some bays on the 2nd floor, including at the set-back portion on 29th Street, where each floor has a different window treatment. At the 2nd floor they are broken segmental-arches with urns; at the 3rd they have triangular pediments; and at the 4th they have rounded pediments. The 5th floor has round-arched windows with shallow enframements providing a transition to the round-arched and oval dormers of the mansard.

The hotel was luxurious – the rooms featured rosewood and walnut finishing, marble fireplace mantles, bronze chandeliers and tapestries – and offered services to its guests such as telephones, the first hotel in New York to do so. It also had a bar made up of silver dollars.

The hotel closed in 1911 after a legal conflict. Parts of the facade, such as cast-iron columns, which went over the property line were removed, and the building deteriorated, with rust, water damage and sagging floors. The ground-level storefront, however, were modernized in 1946. The building was finally sold in 1980, and converted to cooperative apartments. The facade was finally almost fully restored in 1992. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

The ground floor is occupied by Broadway Jewelers,Manhattan Perfumes, World Phone Hut, Jung Lee decor & gifts, Iwu's Fashion House, and Safenet Computers.