35 West 54th Street (New York City, New York)

 apartment building  Add category

5-story Beaux-Arts cooperative-apartment building completed in 1905 as a mansion. Designed by Foster, Gade & Graham, it is clad in limestone and red brick. The rusticated ground floor has a wide, low stoop with iron railings; the east handrail curves around to enclose the basement areaway on the right, atop a low stone wall. The entrance is arched, with the doors set behind a wrought-iron gate. To the right of the entry is a pair of arched windows separated by a slender column; both have wrought-iron grilles that bow out at the bottom and have ornate tops.

The 2nd-3rd floors are brick, with keyed limestone edges, and also limestone surrounds at the windows, also keyed at the edges. Both floors have triple-windows with transoms separated by limestone framing. At the 3rd floor there are low wrought-iron grilles at the windows, covering the bottom halves of the outer windows and the bottom third of the center window. The 2nd floor has a shallow stone balcony carried on modillions, with intricate carved lyre patterns on the front.

A wider modillioned stone balcony lines the 4th floor, with an ornate wrought-iron railing. This floor has a pair of recessed windows in surrounds topped by triangular pediments. Copper cresting flanking the pediments fronts the 5th floor's steep-sloped copper mansard roof, pierced by three round-arched dormers.

The house was originally erected in the 1870s, but was redesigned and rebuilt with a new facade in 1905 for Dr. Allan M. Thomas, who headed the maternity ward of the State Emigrant Hospital on Ward’s Island. The doctor and his wife lived in the house until 1916 when it was sold to Walter Tower Rosen, an esteemed lawyer and banker. He died in the house in 1951, and his widow Lucie Bigelow Rosen lived on in the house until her death at age 78 on November 27, 1968. In 1977 the mansion was converted to apartments.