The Oliver Cromwell

 apartment building, 1927_construction, Renaissance Revival (architecture)

335-foot, 30-story Italian Renaissance-revival cooperative-apartment building completed in 1927 as an apartment hotel. Designed by Emery Roth, it is clad in buff-colored brick above a 3-story heavily-rusticated limestone base and a brown granite water table. The 7-bay facade has a central entrance, in a recessed, double-height round-arch. It has glass-and-bronze double-doors flanked by additional doors, and covered by a rounded, dark-green canvas canopy extending out over the sidewalk. Within the arch, the 2nd floor has a double-window flanked by a pair of bronze lion heads. The arch is edged in splayed stones, with alternating stone having a dimpled surfaced, and the keystone at the top bearing a helmeted bust. The center bay at the 3rd floor and the rest of the upper floors has three windows.

To the outside of the center bay, the next bays have wide single-windows on the ground floor, replaced by narrow double-windows on the floors above. The next bays have paired windows at the base, and wide double-windows at the upper floors, and the end bays have narrow double-windows (with a wide single-window at the ground floor's east end. The west end has two smaller secondary entrances at the ground floor, both next to single-windows. A broad band course caps the base, overlapped by stone balusters at the end bays and the two bays flanking the center bay. At the 4th floor these bays have paneled pilasters with scrolled brackets at the tops carrying triangular pediments broken by cartouches held by flanking putti (cherubs). Except for where the stone pilasters are at the 4th floor, each bay on the upper floors is framed by a vertical columns of horizontal bricks, and there are spandrel panels between floors outlined with the same style of brick.

The 3-window center bay has a small balustrade at the 5th floor's middle pane, with stone panels on either side adorned with garlands. A molding surrounds the middle window, decorated with hanging pendants, and a cartouche and broken rounded pediment at the top, where there is another set of stone panels with garlands. A simpler surround frames the middle window at the 6th floor, topped by a triangular pediment. The facade is dotted with protruding air-conditioning units.

The 15th floor is underlined by a double string course and capped by a cornice, where there is a major setback, except at the end bays. The two bays next to the center bay as well as the end bays at the 15th floor have ornament matching that on the 4th floor, with the stone balusters replaced by wrought-iron railings. The two end bays extend up another three floors, with large dentiled pediments at the top broken by cartouches, and a cornice running across the recessed middle bays at another setback above the 18th floor.

The center section sets back again above the 18th floor, sightly more so at the outer bay on each side. The center bay still has three windows, but the other four bays have single-windows on this upper shaft section. The 26th floor is framed by a band course at the bottom and cornice at the top, with the bays flanking the center bay again having balustrades, pilasters and pediments with cartouches. The end bays terminate in sloped red tile roofs at the 19th floor, and then the next-outer bays terminate at the 26th floor. The bays flanking the 3-window center bay have stone surrounds at the 27th & 28th floors, topped by triangular pediments at the 28th floor, with a balustrade between them. At the 29th floor only the center bay remains, with stone surrounds at its three windows; the corners of the upper tower are chamfered, and the tall top floor consists of a single bay with paired, arched windows on each facade, featuring balusters, pilasters, and rounded pediments. An octagonal mechanical penthouse crowning the tower has a sloped metal roof, and an oculus window on each of its eight facets. Rising from the center of the penthouse roof is a small, octagonal, green-glazed terra-cotta lantern cupola with round-arched openings and a peaked roof at the apex.

On the east and west elevations, above the termination of the end wings with the red tile roofs, there are three floors with two bays of single-windows and then three floors with wide bands of four windows (only two floors on the west facade, with another set of two single-windows on the top floor). These bays set back at this level, with spiked finials at the corners. The top floors and the crown mirror the design of the north facade, except for having only one window in the center bay on the east facade.

The building was converted to a co-op in 1984, with 174 apartments. The west part of the ground floor is occupied by Weill Cornell Medicine Primary Care - West Side medical offices.

hdl.handle.net/2027/pst.000065812402?urlappend=%3Bseq=1...
usmodernist.org/AM/AM-1934-06.pdf
www.urbanarchive.org/sites/h2XtBhTuuVM
nbmdc.pastperfectonline.com/photo/886612D3-7DB9-4448-92...