The Albemarle (New York City, New York)

 apartment building, 1903_construction, Beaux-Arts (architecture)

125-foot, 11-story Beaux-Arts residential building completed in 1903. Designed by Samuel B. Ogden as an apartment hotel called the Carlton, it is clad in red brick with limestone trim, above a 2-story limestone base. There is a 2-step-up recessed entrance with glass-and-wood double-doors under a round-arch. A rounded, green canvas canopy extends out over the sidewalk. Wall sconces are mounted on the inner two of the four large, squared, 2-story piers (gently narrowing at the top halves) that framed the entry and support a large entablature topped by a cornice with a Greek fret motif that caps the base, extending out to both sides. Above the entrance, there are double-windows at the center of the 2nd floor, and single-windows between the columns on each side. At the ground floor there are smaller round-arched windows between the columns. Flanking this central section are two bays of large round-arched windows on each side, recessed in thick moldings, and fronted by basement areaways enclosed by iron fencing, rounded at the inner corners. At the 2nd floor, the ends have stone banding that crosses onto the surrounds of the square-headed windows, which are topped by splayed lintels with scrolled keystones.

The 3rd floor has stone banding across the red-brick piers, with beveled stone surrounds at the outer bays that are topped by lintels with keystones. At the middle three bays there is a projecting stone balcony with balusters rising from the entablature below. Behind it are round-arched single-windows flanked paired round-arched windows in the center. The arches are carried on columns with Corinthian capitals, and have elaborately-carved ornament in the architraves above them. A stone cornice caps this floor.

The 4th-8th floors have stone quoins at the edges, and paired single-windows in place of the larger openings in the bays next to the end bays. The middle bays have keyed stone surrounds with keystones and the outer bays have stone sills and large splayed stone lintels with scrolled keystones. There is a large stone balcony at the middle bays on the 5th floor, carried on paired and tripled ornate brackets and fronted by a stone railing with elaborate, decorative carved wreaths. Fluted columns frame the double-window at the center bay, with Ionic capitals, and an elaborately detailed entablature tops this bay. The two flanking bays at the 5th floor are topped by triangular pediments. The 6th floor has stone enframements and triangular pediments at each of the three middle bays, wider at the center bay. The stone surrounds continue on the 7th & 8th floor, with a matching balcony at the middle bays of the 8th floor, where the middle bays have round-arched windows.

Above a stone band course, the 9th floor has square-headed windows in each bay, with stone banding across the piers. Each pier has a long brackets (six of them oversized with exceptional detailing including bearded faces) carrying a broadly-projecting, black metal cornice. The 10th floor has stone surrounds at each bay, projecting forward at the double-windows in the center and next-to-end bays. The other bays have scrolled brackets decorating the lintels. A somewhat smaller metal cornice caps the 10th floor, and the 11th floor has a steep-sloped metal mansard pierce by two dormers at each end and a wide central dormer of three bays, with double-windows in the middle. The dormers are framed by elaborate stone pilasters and topped by triangular pediments, rising higher at the center bay.

The east elevation is clad in red brick, with one bay of single-windows at the front, and five more bays farther back, where the sidewalls are slightly recessed.

In 1906 the hotel changed names to the Hotel Lyndemon. It would be the first in a long list of name changes, as well as a number of disreputable business housed in the basement during Prohibition. In 1936, perhaps in an attempt to improve the hotel’s reputation—or simply to improve its clientele—architect Emery Roth was hired to renovate the building. Roth’s renovations resulted in seven apartments per floor, and a penthouse containing two. The improvements worked and in place of gangsters and thugs, the building now housed businessmen and entertainers.

Current owners have gone back to the name The Albemarle—at least the 7th name change in the building’s history. The building now contains 74 cooperative apartments.