Turtle Bay House

 condominium  Add category

233-foot, 21-story modernist residential building completed in 1959. Designed by Hyman Isaac Feldman, it is clad in white brick, with numerous terraces near the top at the corners. The ground floor is clad in black polished granite along 48th Street, and is lined with metal-and-glass storefronts and a black granite water table along the avenue. The south facade has seven bays, with an extra bay at a 1-story extension on the west end that contains a garage door and is topped by a fence. The three next bays to the east are recessed at the ground floor, with light-grey granite columns supporting the upper floors; the main entrance is in the eastern of these three, with glass double-doors and a rounded canvas canopy extending out over the sidewalk. The other two bays have a central, black metal door flanked by triple-windows on each side. The storefronts on the avenue have red, rounded-top box awnings.

The upper floors are eight bays wide on the east facade; from south to north these are: a double-window bay, a tripartite window bay, a double-window bay, a wide bay of two joined tripartite windows, a double-window bay, two triple-window bays, and a final double-window bay. Some of the bays have black metal air-conditioning vents below the windows. On the south facade, there are from west to east: a double-window bay, a tripartite window bay, a double-window bay, a wide bay of joined tripartite windows, and two double-window bays flanking a bay of paired single-windows. The west elevation, also clad in white brick, has a bay of double-windows at the south end, next to a bay of single-windows, and another bay of smaller single-windows. Further north, there is a triple-window bay that wraps around a corner where the facade recesses back. The middle section has another flat triple-window, and another wrapping around a second rounded corner. The more-recessed north section has a double-window bay and a triple-window bay. There is a final bay at the north end that is recessed half the lot's width, with triple-windows, narrowing to single-windows on the three floors above the 14th floor. The north elevation, above the base of the neighboring building, has five bays of single-windows (most of them small) and a west bay of double-windows.

Both the south and east facades set back at the corners and middle sections above the 14th floor, with additional shallow setbacks at the middle sections creating terraces, and angled corners sections ending at the 17th floor with larger terraces. Above, the two bays flanking the middle two bays angle back and create small terraces above the 18th floor. There is a final full-building setback above the 20th floor to the penthouse level and rooftop mechanical bulkheads.

The building contains 162 condominium units. The ground floor along the avenue is occupied by Turtle Bay Chemists, Artmosphere Art Gallery, Turtle Bay Cleaners, 2nd Avenue Barber Shop, and Jef Chinese restaurant.