Sierra Leone Chancery Building

 consulate / consular section / consul residence, diplomatic / foreign mission / representation

3-story (plus raised basement) Italianate diplomatic building originally completed in the 1870s as a townhouse. More recently it has served as the Sierra Leonean Consulate & U.N. Mission, or the Sierra Leone Chancery Building, housing the offices of the Consul-General of the Republic of Sierra Leone in New York. Scandal has followed its recent history, as dating back to 2011 an allegation of corruption under the former president Ernest Bai Koroma’s APC government has emerged. It is alleged that over $3 million was transferred by the current Bio-led government for work to be carried out to the building which disappeared into a black whole, leaving the building in a horrible state of disrepair. Over the past decade, it had been left to significantly deteriorate to be point of being inhabitable, and the Mission was forced to evacuate to another building. As of 2023, reconstruction work still had not begun.

The facade is clad in brownstone, with a high stoop on the left with iron handrails leading up to a round-arched, slightly-recessed parlor-floor entrance with paneled wooden double-doors. To the right are two single-windows, with two shorter and wider basement windows below. There is also a round-arched basement entry in the side of the stoop. The upper floors have three bays of single-windows, and all the window openings are segmental-arched. The building is crowned by a black metal roof cornice with brackets, modillions, and panels.

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