Hayden House Cooperative

 cooperative, apartment building

133-foot, 12-story Beaux-Arts cooperative-apartment building completed in 1908. Designed by Isaac E. Ditmars, it was originally named the Bownett Apartments, after its developer Samuel W. Bowne. The facade is three bays wide, clad in beige brick, terra-cotta, and galvanized-, cast-, and wrought-iron above a 3-story limestone base that is rusticated at the ground floor. The central entrance is slightly recessed atop four steps, with glass-and-metal double-doors beneath a rounded, green canvas canopy extending out over the sidewalk. A segmental-arched molding frames the doorway, with a keystone at the top featuring an acanthus leaf, and flat pilasters on either side with short capitals. The pilasters and keystone support an entablature and cornice with an egg-and-dart molding and a bead molding. On either side of the entry is a narrow moat in front of the grey granite basement level, enclosed by iron railings. The outer bays at the ground floor have inset, segmental-arched windows above panels with a row of five inset roundels, the center one with a wreath superimposed. There are matching keystones over the windows, and console brackets with a variety of ornament carrying shallow stone balconies with balusters.

The upper floors have three bays of tripartite windows in white iron framing, subdivided into smaller panes. There are patterned iron panels above the 2nd-floor windows, and spandrels between the 2nd & 3rd floors with dentiled cornices below scrolls and small cartouches. Behind the cartouches are panels outlined in bead moldings, adorned by two handing pendants.

At the top of the 3rd floor are four sets of paired elaborate console brackets carrying a stone balcony and balustrade, with an egg-and-dart molding along the bottom edge. The double-windows on the upper floors have terra-cotta surrounds, and terra-cotta mullions between the windows, which are also subdivided into smaller panes. Alternating floors have either terra-cotta spandrels with rosettes and other floral ornament outlined by rectangle bead moldings, or stone balconies with intricate, white, wrought-iron railings; the balconies are carried on pairs of long, scrolled brackets with rosette-adorned blocks at the tops.

A large, modillioned and dentiled stone cornice above the 10th floor is carried on four oversized console brackets. The 11th floor is the starting point for a 2-story, steep-sloped mansard roof of green slate. Three square, terra-cotta dormers project from the 11th floor, each with paired windows. The 12th floor also has three dormers, each with a round-arched single-window in a terra-cotta surround with keystones at the top.

In 1938 the new owner, George Garfield, gutted the building, reconfigured the apartments, and renamed it Hayden House, after Charles Hayden, a banker who had the American Museum of Natural History's planetarium, completed in 1935 across the street, named after him. The building contains 36 apartments.