455-463 West 47th Street (New York City, New York) | apartment building, 1860s construction

 apartment building, 1860s construction

A row of five 3-story (plus English basement) residential building completed together in 1869. Each of the five 3-bay brownstone facades has undergone various alterations over the years, but all retain the original high stoops leading to parlor-floor entrances above tall English basements, and only the east building at No. 455 has lost its roof cornice.

No. 455 is painted brown with a round-arched doorway. There are two segmental-arched basement windows with iron grilles to the right of the stoop, and the square-headed upper windows have simple stone sills. At No. 457, the original stoop railings with balusters and octagonal newel posts remain, but the entrance has been altered to a black paneled wooden door framed by wall lanterns and pilasters supporting a dentiled cornice. The facade is painted light brown, and the parlor-floor windows also have iron grilles. The black metal roof cornice has brackets, panels and modillions.

No. 459 is painted white, and has a round-arched doorway with black wood-and-glass paneled double-doors below a fanlight. The windows all have black wooden exterior shutters, and basket railings at their bases. The roof cornice is painted white. No. 461 is painted light-brown, and has rustication at the basement level. The round-arched entrance has a white wood-and-glass door with a fanlight, and the roof cornice is black.

No. 463, the westernmost building, is painted pale beige-yellow, with its stoop painted red. It also has a round-arched glass doorway, but it is set within a white-painted frame with a large scrolled keystone topping the arch and capping the flat top edge of the frame. The windows above the basement have red-painted wooden exterior shutters, and the roof cornice is black. This building has a partial 4th floor at the rear half, with the front terrace on the roof enclosed by a wooden fence. The west elevation is faced in beige stucco, with 2nd- & 3rd-floor windows at the front and rear, and a single narrow window at the top floor.