309 West 43rd Street (New York City, New York)

 apartment building  Add category

5-story Neo-Grec residential building completed in about 1880. It is faced in brown-painted smooth stucco above a beige-painted stone 1st floor and basement. There is a low, central stoop leading up to a slightly-recessed door, framed by two pairs of blue-grey pillars (round in the front and squared in the back) with paneled bases and Corinthian capitals supporting an entablature. On either side of the steps, a low iron fence surrounds the basement areaway; there is a window on the west side only. Flanking the doorway are large windows with segmental-arches above them, with carved faced as keystones. There are rough-faced quoins on either side of both windows, and cornices with elaborately carved friezes above them; carved panels also appear below both windows.

The upper floors have four bays of windows with projecting surrounds, also decorated with foliate carvings.The sills have small brackets, and additional brackets support cornices above each window. The two middle windows on the 2nd & 4th floors have triangular pediments highlighted by carved faces. A black iron fire escape runs down the middle two bays of the facade, which is crowned by a black metal roof cornice with brackets and panels.