359 Westside

 apartment building  Add category

7-story residential building originally completed in 1873 as a church. Designed by D. & J. Jardine, the only remnant of its days as a church are the twin white stone buttresses ornamented with rosettes that grace the facade up through the 6th floor. Faith Chapel moved here in 1896 and remained until 1942, when it moved uptown and the 48th Street building was became the St. Nicholas Albanian Orthodox Church.

A 499-seat theater was built into the building in 1968, when the facade was almost completely rebuilt - excepting the pair of imposing buttresses. Originally known as the Playhouse Theater, it was sold in 1983 and renamed the Jack Lawrence Theater, until it was again sold for redevelopment into apartments in 1987.

The facade is clad in red brick above a white-painted, rusticated limestone ground floor behind an iron fence. There are three bays between the buttresses and an end bay at the outer edges. The ground floor has a central entrance with a glass-and-metal door and sidelights, under a rounded, red canvas canopy that extends out to the fence. The other four bays have square windows with iron grilles, and the two buttresses project out from the rest of the facade.

The upper floors also have square windows, with brick lintels, stone sills, and air-conditioning vents cut below them. The 2nd-floor windows also have iron grilles. Brick extensions of the paneled buttresses continue onto the top floor, and a simple stone coping caps the roof line. The building contains 39 apartment units.