Mosdot Shuva Israel

 temple, commercial building

5-story French-Renaissance-style commercial building completed in 1929. Designed by La Farge, Warren & Clark, it was built as the home for The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society. As originally built for The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, it was designed with a large ornate theater on the ground floor. The 2nd and 3rd floors were both primarily large meeting/reception areas, and the top two floors had a sprawling library.

The 5-bay facade is clad in red brick above a rusticated limestone ground floor with a grey granite water table. The central entrance has dark-grey wooden double-doors with leaded glass sidelights and transom, framed by Doric stone columns supporting an entablature with a frieze and dentiled cornice. To either side is a small window with decorative wrought-iron grille, and the end bays have service doors.

At the upper floors, six limestone piers divide the bays. The three middle bays have multi-pane windows on the 2nd-4th floors, with stone sills (the 2nd floor has iron railings at the window bases - a wide railing atop the cornice in the center bay, and smaller, rounded railings at the other two). The 2nd floor has splayed brick lintels, and the 3rd floor has splayed limestone lintels. At the 4th floor the three middle bays have segmental-arched windows, set under 3-story slightly-recessed arches in the brickwork. The end bays have somewhat smaller windows positioned between the 2nd & 3rd floors, and between the 3rd & 4th.

The four middle piers have Corinthian capitals at the top of the 4th floor carrying a large stone cornice, with a frieze like that at the ground floor, topped by a balustrade. The top floor has stone-enframed, square-headed windows in the middle three bays, and decorative brickwork panels in the end bays; the piers are paneled at this floor. A smaller stone cornice caps the 5th floor, with a wide, 3-bay, rounded pediment rising up above it. The pediment is framed in limestone, and the brick infill is ornamented by a large medallion flanked by swags.

The building was bought in 2009 by Mosdot Shuva Israel, a Jewish non-profit organization, and intended to be used as a synagogue, school and administrative offices.

cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/a-short-second-li...