5 East 51st Street

 office building, historical layer / disappeared object, commercial building

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6-story Neo-Georgian office building completed in 1903 as a 5-story mansion. Designed by Percy Griffin for John Stevens Melcher, a lawyer, it is clad in red brick, although the ground floor was resurfaced in red granite when it was converted to commercial purposes in 1933. It originally had an elegant columned portico that formed a balcony to the French doors at the 2nd floor, and the rusticated limestone base sat behind a tall cast iron fence. The remodeled ground floor has a glass door to the upper floors on the left, and a set of small glass double-doors and plate-glass storefront window to the right.

The 2nd floor, set off by a stainless-steel band, has tall windows in each of the three bays, with transoms topped by splayed stone lintels with keystones at the outer bays, and with a flat lintel and keystone in the middle bay, which is topped by a round-arch with its own smaller keystone. The stone tympanum within the arch has a carved lion's head, ribbons, and garlands. Above the outer bays are simple, rectangular stone panels. The 3rd floor has stone sills and splayed lintels with keystones. The 4th floor is set off by a stone string course, and has paneled brick piers and slightly-smaller splayed stone lintels with keystones, capped by a projecting beige metal cornice with modillions and dentils.

The copper-clad dormers of the uppermost story sit behind an elegant balustraded, carved stone balcony. A recessed 6th floor has been added on top, which is not visible from the street.

By 1919, only 16 years after construction, the home became a private hospital for no more than 25 patients. The elite hospital lasted only a few years and in 1926 the mansion was converted again; this time to a “club house” for the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity of Yale College. In 1933 the club moved uptown, and the once-proud mansion underwent the first of many subsequent transformations. In 1933 the ground floor was renovated as a store with a showroom at the 2nd floor. Each of the upper floors contained five furnished rooms and an elevator was installed. The ground floor was occupied by The Prime Burger, originally called Hamburger Heaven, since 1938, until it closed in 2012. It is now occupied by Big Apple Food Service.