The Dwight School

 school, interesting place

 Upload a photo

8-story Jacobean-revival school building completed in 1900 as a 7-story hotel. Designed by Clarence True, it was later renovated into apartments, and was acquired by The Dwight School in 1993. The main facades are clad in red brick and white stone and terra-cotta. The basement level (exposed by a moat along Central Park West and most of 89th Street) is clad in beige stone, as are two ground-floor bays on 89th Street.

The main school entrance is in the 2nd bay from the south (the east facade is four bays wide), with a grey metal-and-glass door and sidelights and transom below a rounded, grey canvas canopy extending out over the sidewalk. On either side, grey metal railings enclose the basement moat. This entrance bay has double-windows on the upper floors (except for the 4th floor, where a large plate-glass pane has been installed) with white stone mullions. The northern middle bay has single-windows. The two outer bays have slightly-projecting bays of single-windows framed by angled pilasters ornamented by hanging pendants. These end bays are flanked by bands of white stone quoins in alternating thicknesses, each beveled and projecting out to create a 3-D effect. There are white stone cornices above each floor, and white stone spandrels in between. At the 6th floor the end bays are framed by pairs of paneled stone pilasters with stylized bases and capitals, with flat stone banding behind them, that also runs across the middle portion of this floor as well. A projecting stone cornice sets off the 7th floor, which has flat stone banding only at the end bays, framed by single paneled pilasters with cornices. Scrolls angle out from the pilasters to meet the cornice below, and these bays are topped by rounded Jacobean pediments with floral ornament and scrolled keystones. The middle bays have white quoins at the 2nd floor, and there are splayed terra-cotta lintels at the 2nd-5th floors. The 7th floor has stone surrounds at the windows, and shallow, rounded pediments on the middle bays.

The south facade on 89th Street has end bays similar to those on the east facade, framed by projecting quoins, except that these have 3-window oriels, with the side windows angled. The middle section has a double-window toward the west end, followed by a single-window bay, and then three more single-windows spaced farther apart. At the ground floor, which has white stone banding, the two eastern bays of the middle section are in beige stone and both have banded, segmental-arched surrounds; the east one around a window with an iron grille, and the west one around another entrance, with wood, glass, and wrought-iron double-doors atop a granite step, with a rounded grey canvas canopy extending out over the sidewalk. There are string courses below each of the upper floors, with trim matching that on the east facade. At the top floor, the middle bays again have shallow pediments, and the four single-windows are shifted over slightly to form pairs, each with a stone panel in between that is elaborately decorated with bas-relief carvings of torches and flowers. Chimneys rise above the piers at the roof parapet above these panels. An 8th floor is set back from the lower roof line, faced in beige stone, with angled corners at the northeast and southeast.

www.landmarkwest.org/building/291-central-park-west/