The Hawthorne

 cooperative, apartment building

190-foot, 16-story Italian-Renaissance-palazzo-style cooperative-apartment building completed in 1924. Designed by Schwartz & Gross, it is clad in limestone with a high grey-granite water table. There are quoins lining the edges of the symmetrical facade. The central, main entrance has bronze-and-glass double-doors below a rounded, green canvas canopy, framed by a stone molding elaborately decorated with urns, shields, medallions, and faces, topped by a dentiled cornice. The entry is flanked on both sides by 2-story fluted pilasters with Corinthian capitals supporting an entablature with a shield at each end, and a frieze in between bearing three more shields linked by garlands. The cornice on top has an egg-and-dart molding along its upper edge. On either side of the central bay there is a single-window, and then a group of three windows, with a bronze-and-glass secondary door tucked into both ends. At the center of the 2nd floor, above the entry canopy, there are two more single-windows separated by a paneled pier (below the frieze and cornice). The 3rd floor has the same organization, with four windows in the middle and three slightly-narrower windows at each end; here the end-bay windows are joined by a continuous sill with a pair of small, decorative brackets.

Beginning at the 4th floor the center section changes to two bays of wider picture windows with a large, square pane and a narrower pane to the outside; the end bays remain groups of three small windows. Each of the bays has a stone surround at this floor, adorned with a small shield above each of the three windows, and above both of the picture windows in the center, surmounted by cornices. Shallow stone balconies with balusters project from the bases of each bay; the balconies at the two center bays are carried on pairs of console brackets. The quoins at the ends are also interrupted at this floor by panels carved with urns and flowers. A large cartouche, flanked by a pair of rearing lions, adorns the center pier at the base of the 9th floor.

The 12th floor also has balustraded balconies at the two middle bays, and the 13th has stone surrounds and bracketed sills. There is a band course setting off the 14th floor, with cartouches at the end piers, where the quoins end. The 14th & 15th floors have stone surrounds at each bay; the 14th-floor windows are topped by small cartouches, while those on the 15th floor have keystones. The piers between the bays have 2-story panels with carved decoration similar to that at the base. The 15th floor is crowned by a roof cornice with dentils and console brackets, paired at the ends. The 16th-floor penthouse is offset to the west, with terrace space on the east. The penthouse has floor-to-ceiling windows at the front.

The building was converted to a cooperative in 1984, with 56 apartments.

hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015012245042?urlappend=%3Bseq...