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The Olcott

USA / New Jersey / West New York / West 72nd Street, 27
 condominium  Add category

170-foot, 16-story Renaissance-revival residential building completed in 1925 as The Olcott Hotel. Designed by George F. Pelham, it extends through the block, as originally built had 227 hotel rooms. It is clad in red ironspot brick above a 3-story rusticated limestone base with a grey granite water table.

The main, south facade is eight bays wide, with the entrance in the 3rd bay from the left. The entry is recessed within a carved foliate molding and has glass double-doors flanked by side windows. Above is a suspended metal marquee with cresting along the top edges, and hanging pendants of frosted glass and metal at the bottom. The other bays have double-windows, with the 2nd bay from the east having glass-and-metal double-doors entering into the ground-floor commercial space. At the 2nd floor the windows are round-arched, grouped together under encompassing arches at each bay. Double-height, slender colonnettes divide the two windows in each bay at the first two floors. At the 3rd floor, black metal mullion separate the windows, and also those on the upper floors. The base is capped by a dentiled stone cornice.

The upper floors have stone sills, brick lintels, and brown metal air-conditioning vents below each bay. There are shallow false stone balconies with metal railings fronting the 3rd bay from either end at the 6th floor, and at the center two bays at the 9th floor. A band course sets off the 13th floor, which has double-height stone colonnettes framing the windows at the 13th-14th floors; there are stone spandrels in between, and the round-arched windows at the 14th floor are again grouped under larger arches. The 15th floor has windows like those on the rest of the facade, and is capped by a bracketed stone cornice at the roof line. The penthouse level is set back on all sides and not visible from the street.

The north facade on 73rd Street is clad in a lighter-colored brick, with a high stone water table. It is narrower than the south facade, spanning only six bays, with a pair of loading docks at the center two bays, both framed by carved foliate stone moldings and topped by a black iron suspended canopy with cresting along the top. The rest of the bays match the design of the south facade, with double-windows. There are false balconies at the middle two bays on the 6th floor. On this facade, the bracketed stone cornice caps the 9th floor, where there is a large setback at the ends; the center two bays extend up to the 11th floor before setting back (with double-height round-arches enframing the windows), and there is a full-floor setback above the 12th floor, with another cornice. The final roof cornice matches that on the south facade at the 15th floor.

The side elevations are also clad in red brick, with multiple bays of large and small single-windows at the north end. Near the middle are shallow light wells lined with double-windows. The building was converted to condominiums in 2005, with 158 units. The ground floor on 72nd Street was formerly occupied by Dallas BBQ.
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Coordinates:   40°46'38"N   73°58'38"W
This article was last modified 6 years ago