The Franconia

 apartment building  Add category

150-foot, 15-story Renaissance-revival cooperative-apartment building completed in 1925 as an apartment hotel. Designed by Herbert J. Krapp, it is clad in dark-tan brick above a 3-story limestone base. The 7-bay facade has a central entrance, with a revolving bronze-and-glass door set between two traditional bronze-and-glass doors, below a rounded, green canvas canopy extending out over the sidewalk. The entry is flanked by a pair of carved panels with floral ornament. To the left the ground floor has a black wood, glass, and stone restaurant storefront, and to the right it is rusticated, with a bay of double-windows, a tripartite window bay, and an end bay with a single-window and a grey metal service door. The double- and tripartite windows have black iron mullions, and all three west bays have basic keystones interrupting a band with a wave motif topping the ground floor.

The 2nd-3rd floors have double-height fluted pilasters overlaying the piers, each with a simple capital sporting a pair of rosettes. The three middle bays have double-windows, and the outer bays have tripartite windows. The stone spandrels between the floors have carved panels, the middle ones with roundels in the center panels and tulip-shaped ornaments in the end panels, and the outer ones featuring shields flanking vertically fluted central panels. The base is capped by a dentiled cornice with a frieze featuring a rosette above each pier, and smaller versions of the tulip-shapes in between.

The upper floors have the same window arrangement, with thin, projecting stone sills. At the 4th floor the outer two bays on each side are topped by stone lintels that slope down at the fluted ends, with a flat center section featuring garlands. The middle three bays have small, iron Juliet balconies at the 10th floor. The 14th floor is set off by a scalloped band course, and the 14th & 15th floors have slender, rounded pilasters framing each bay, with carved stone spandrels featuring shields between the two floors. Topping the bays of the 15th floor are rounded stone pediments with carved ornament. The main roof line is capped by a simple stone coping.

The west elevation is clad in the same brick, with a light well at the center. There is a bay of single-windows in front of and behind the light well, which is clad in lighter, buff-colored brick and lined with large and small single-windows. The building was converted to a co-op in 1983, with 166 apartments. The ground-floor restaurant space is occupied by The Ribbon.