LIM College (New York City, New York)

USA / New Jersey / West New York / New York City, New York / East 53rd Street, 12
 institute, school, fashion retailer, interesting place

5-story Neo-Tudor Gothic education building originally completed in 1871 as a mansion. Designed by Griffith Thomas for Charles Moran, it was later owned by Walter G. Oakman, the Chairman of the Board of the Guaranty Trust Company, who sold it in 1905 to Harvey Edward Fisk, a successful banker. He commissioned architect Raleigh C. Gildersleeve to completely renovate the old house. Gildersleeve was responsible for the neo-Tudor and Collegiate Gothic buildings of Princeton University where Fisk had studied. Gildersleeve did away with the outdated stoop and opted for an up-to-date American basement with the home’s entrance at street level. The elimination of the stoop made it possible to move the façade forward 8-1/2 feet, and a 19-foot extension was added to the rear where the former Moran stables had stood—the residence was now a full 27-1/2 feet deeper than before.

The mansion was sold again just four years later to William L. Harkness. Fisk had been forced to sell by financial setbacks. The price he got from Harkness, no doubt, helped greatly relieve his money problems. For the house, including the furnishings, artwork, antiques and tapestries, Harkness paid a staggering $400,000—an unprecedented sum for a house. Harkness died in the house in 1919, with the funeral held at the residence. His widow sold it in 1921 to Proctor & Co., interior decorators and dealers in furniture, fabrics, draperies and Oriental rugs. Among their alterations was a show window punched into the ground floor. Just three years later the company sold the house to the Automobile Club of America. On the 2nd floor was a restaurant; the 3rd floor offered a library, sitting room, lounge and card rooms; there were baths, locker rooms and dressing rooms on the 4th floor; and executive offices above.

The Great Depression took its toll on the Automobile Club of America and in 1932 it was forced to dissolve. The Mutual Life Insurance Company acquired the building in foreclosure that year. The mansion apparently sat vacant for six years until the Symons Galleries leased it from Mutual Life in 1938. Rooms throughout the former house were dedicated to the display of tapestries, porcelains, bronzes, paintings, and Renaissance jewelry. With the expiration of the Symons lease the building was offered for sale and in December 1948 the national advertising agency, Maxon, Inc., purchased the building.

The asymmetrical 5-story, 2-bay facade is clad in limestone with Tudor-arch window and door openings. The main entrance at the left has wooden double-doors and is recessed within a four-centered arch framed by a crocketed hood molding and stepped buttresses; to the right is a show-window and service door; the show-windows has a drip molding above it.

There are leaded-glass, wood-framed windows with stone mullions and transoms at the 2nd, 3rd, & 4th floors, although the stone mullions, transoms and tracery removed from segmental-arched window in west bay of the 2nd floor and replaced by current leaded-glass casement and transom windows. The east bay above the entrance has a 5-pane projecting bay window, with transoms and stone mullions, behind the finial extending from the entrance arch. It is topped by a crenellated parapet .

At the 3rd & 4th floors the west-bay windows are wider, with five panes instead of the double-windows at the east bay. The west bays also project out from the facade, underlined by arcades of pointed-arches, taller below the 4th floor. The top floor features a balcony with a balustrade and recessed, copper roof with a flat-roofed dormer at the east bay, and the west bay has a copper-roofed cross-gable with a stepped parapet, crenellations and pinnacle. There is a chimney at the parapet of western party wall. Small gargoyle faces decorate the bases of the crocketed arch at the main entrance, the string course molding above the two bays at the 4th floor, and at the base of the pinnacle at the west bay's crowning gable.

In 1964 it was sold to the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising, who still owns it today. It is adaptively reused as their main campus building until they moved in 2022.

www.limcollege.edu/about-lim/33.aspx
s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/2406.pdf
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Coordinates:   40°45'35"N   73°58'30"W
This article was last modified 12 months ago