The Pythian Condominium

 condominium, interesting place, Egyptian Revival (architecture)

150-foot, 11-story Neo-Babylonian residential building completed in 1927 as a club building knows as the Pythian Temple. Designed by Thomas W. Lamb for The Knights of Pythias, it is clad in buff-colored brick, limestone, and polychrome terra-cotta. The Knights of Pythias which was a fraternity founded in 1864, and this building was constructed to serve as a meeting place for the 120 Pythian lodges of New York City.

As the organization's popularity declined, in the early 1940s the Pythians leased space in the building to Decca Records, which created an acoustically renowned music recording studio in it, transforming a very large third floor auditorium with balconies and wooden floors. On April 12, 1954, Bill Haley and His Comets recorded their epochal single Rock Around the Clock, and subsequently recorded all but two of their Decca recordings, at the Pythian. Other artists who recorded there included Buddy Holly, Sammy Davis Jr., and Billie Holiday. It was in use as a recording studio for over 15 years. In 1958, the building was purchased by the New York Institute of Technology as that college's main campus.

The ornament exhibits a mix of Egyptian, Babylonian and Assyrian motifs, and includes lotus leaves, hieroglyphics, ornately-carved columns, and mythical beasts. The double-height stone base has a central main entrance. There are bronze-and-glass double-door with flanked bronze-framed windows, each topped by a transom pane that steps upward toward the center. The doors and side windows are framed by projecting columns of bright blue, wound with gold, and with green foliage representations at the bases and capitals. These support a black stone panel above the entrance, lined in gold, that bears the inscription "IF FRATERNAL LOVE HELD ALL MEN BOUND, HOW BEAUTIFUL THIS WORLD WOULD BE", with Egyptian cobra and eagle ornament in gold to the sides. A rounded, green canvas canopy extends from above the doors out over the sidewalk. Topping the black stone panel is an entablature with an array of patterns in green, blue, gold, black, and red, surmounted by a pair of winged griffins facing a central inverted triangle with the Pythian symbol. Rising behind the griffins is a tripartite window with red-and-black metal framing. To either side of this grand entry pavilion the Pythian Temple’s ground-floor colonnade has paired columns closet to the entry and then two more columns on either side, with Assyrian-type heads at the capitals. Between these are three recessed bays of windows above non-recessed infill close to the ground. These include bronze service doors and rose marble panels, all framed by patterned bands of orange rosettes alternating with wavy lines of green and blue, and tan borders. Above these are yellow, blue, red, and orange wings and cresting where the bays set back to the recessed windows between the columns. The end pavilions project slightly, with another bronze service door at the east, and a set of beige metal service doors at the west. Above these are large windows with the same red-and-black metal framing, with an arrow indentation at the bottom. The base is capped by a dentil course and stone coping, stepped in up the center above the entry pavilion.

The originally-windowless middle section has three main middle bays and two narrower end bays that are framed by slightly-projecting brick piers. At the base of the end bays are large, grey stone panels with winged griffins that have Assyrian heads similar to those on the capitals of the base's columns. The three main middle bays have gold reflective glass curtain walls in red metal framing, and are split at the 4th floor, providing terraces for bedrooms on that level and showing both how the mass above is suspended on trusses and how the original 5-bay architectural façade was overlaid on a 6-bay structural frame, visualized by round blue columns set back within the recessed area of the terraces. Above the 6th floor the four central piers have protruding, red terra-cotta wolf busts with fearsome rows of teeth. There is a shallow setback at the middle bays here, crenelated at each of three bays, with geometric limestone caps on the piers.

There follow more shallow setbacks in the middle, and a major setback at the end bays, with four seated Pharaonic figures similar to those of Ramses II at Abu Simbel. These flank modern glass curtain walls with sloped roofs at the end bays, and there are also sloped-roofed, projecting glass sections at the centers of the 7th & 8th floors. These two setbacks rise to a highly colored Egyptian-style colonnade, and to giant urns carried by teams of yellow, red and green oxen at the ends of the 10th floor. A black metal-and-glass penthouse level crowns the building.

It was converted to an apartment building in 1979 (with new windows cut into the facade and some of the terra-cotta removed), and then to condominiums in 1983, with 84 units. The lobby has a double-height space in polished black marble, with Egyptian decor, like a winged orb over the doorway. Residents include Cynthia Germanotta.

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hdl.handle.net/2027/pst.000065812433?urlappend=%3Bseq=2...