467 West 46th Street, 656-666 Tenth Avenue (New York City, New York)

 apartment building, 1872_construction

A row of seven 5-story residential buildings completed together in 1872. The facade of the four south buildings is designed as a unit, clad in red brick above ground-floor storefronts. The storefronts have metal-framed plate-glass show-windows above stone or brick bases, with recessed entrances, and are topped by green awnings projecting from a green iron band. Three of the four have entrances to the upper floors with paneled wood-and-glass doors set between beige pilasters, covered by short, rounded, green-canvas canopies. The exception is the southernmost building, whose entrance is on 46th Street at the east end. It has a similar wood-and-glass door with a sidelight and a green canvas canopy filling the round-arch at the top. The beige pilasters are partially fluted and have Corinthian capitals supporting an entablature with a modillioned cornice.

The brick on this facade is painted grey-brown. At the west end the storefront wraps a short ways onto the south facade; to the right is a low, shallow, filled-in round-arch with keystone and impost blocks that formerly served as a basement entrance (now removed). The middle of the wall has two windows with white-painted bracketed sills and metal cornices, and a narrow secondary doorway with a cornice. Iron grilles cover the windows and secondary door.

At the upper floors of the south facade, the edges have white stone quoins, and there is three single-windows in the center, with another single-window at each end. All have white-painted, bracketed stone sills and metal cornices. On the west facade, each building has four bays of single-windows matching those on the south facade. The two end buildings of the group of four are both framed by white stone quoins. Each building has a black metal fire escape running down its middle two bays, and the facades are crowned by four green metal roof cornices with brackets, modillions, dentils, and panels, along with the south facade on 46th Street.

The northern group of three buildings are connected at the ground floor, continuing the line of storefronts and matching entrances. The southern two of these three are slightly shorter, and on all three the green roof cornices have smaller brackets and no modillions. The facades are clad in brick painted a darker shade of red, and the windows are slightly shorter. The windows (grouped into four bays at each building) have flat, white stone sills and lintels. There are no fire escapes on these three facades.

The rear facades are clad in grey parged brick, also with four bays of single-windows at each building. The three northern buildings, which don't extend quite as far back, have fire escapes on their rear facades. The ground floors are occupied by Mud Matters Pottery, Clothespin Laundromat, Midtown Medical Associates, Jadite Galleries, Erik's Barber Shop, Malcolm Management Corp., Beaupierre Wines & Spirits, Hell's Kitchen Dental, 10th Avenue Check Cashing, and Westside Animal Hospital.