240 East 21st Street (New York City, New York) | apartment building

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6-story Neo-Renaissance residential building completed in 1904. Designed by Horenburger & Straub, it is clad in red brick with limestone trim. A low stoop with metal handrails atop low sidewalls approaches an entrance with wood-and-glass double-doors and a short transom flanked by stone pilasters carved with foliate ornament and topped by brackets carrying an entablature also decoratively carved. To either side is a double-window and a single-window, framed by stone quoins. Each has a splayed stone lintel with an acanthus-leaf keystone. Below the eastern bays are basement windows behind an areaway enclosed by iron fencing.

The upper floors have six bays of single-windows, with each floor underlined by a stone string course, the one below the 4th floor also having dentils. The 2nd floor has simple banding at the brick piers, and beveled surrounds at each window, the middle two including egg-and-dart molding with cartouches at the top and crowning cornices with egg-and-dart moldings. The outer bays have scrolled pediments with small shells at the tops. The 3rd floor has a patterned string course across the shoulders of the windows, which has curved lintels with scrolled keystones. Those at the middle two bays are elaborately carved and have spiraled ends and egg-and-dart moldings, while the others have brick framed by rough-faced stone end posts and egg-and-dart moldings across the tops.

The 4th floor has a different patterned band across the window shoulders. The two middle bays have bracketed sills framing carved shells, and the outer bays have splayed lintels with scrolled keystones of a different design than those a floor below. The 5th floor has round-arched windows with brick voussoirs edged in egg-and-dart moldings, with keystones. The 6th floor is also banded, without ornament around the windows. A black metal fire escape with basket-style landings runs down the middle two bays of the facade, which is crowned by a dark-green metal roof cornice with brackets, dentils, and swags in the frieze.

The building contains 24 apartment units.