Theresa Towers

 NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, interesting place, historic landmark

The Theresa was developed in 1913 by Gustavus Sidenberg, who manufactured ladies’ collars and then took a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. It appears that the apartment hotel was his only development project, for which he hired the three-year-old firm of George & Edward Blum. Apparently born well-to-do, both brothers went to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

The hotel was designed with lavish ornamentation. Spandrel panels — the rectangles below the windows — consist of diamond shapes made up of crisscross lines, something like the Islamic decoration of the 14th-century Alhambra. But looked at in another light, they could be the zigzag Art Deco of the 1920s. At the third-floor level runs a band of varying ornament, including projecting panels of glazed terra cotta surrounding roughened, sandpaperlike rectangles. From the 10th floor up, the main facade is covered with diaper-patterned terra cotta, a sort of tapestry of diamond shapes. This section ends in superscaled square-topped pediments, another Blum trademark. The window arches of this upper section are great half-rounds of sinuous, Art Nouveau-type ornament surrounding bulging orbs like mushroom caps.

Fidel Castro stayed here in 1960. This historic Harlem landmark is now used as an office building.

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