The Wyoming

 apartment building, 1907_construction, Renaissance Revival (architecture)

151-foot, 12-story French Renaissance-style residential building completed in 1907. Designed by Rouse & Sloan, it replaced an earlier Wyoming, built by Edward Clark and designed by Henry Hardenbergh, started in 1880, the same year the same team started work on The Dakota. The building is clad in cream-colored brick with limestone accents above a 2-story white stone base. Above the ground floor it is divided by light wells into three wings along 55th Street and two wings on the avenue.

The ground floor on the avenue is lined with metal, glass, and stone storefronts, partially obscuring the original wall details. The building's main entrance is tucked between the storefronts, near the center, with glass double-doors. The ground floor is capped by a cornice with a band of dentils above an egg-and-dart molding, in turn above a paneled frieze. The storefronts continue onto the north facade, except for an original section at the east wing. Here the ground floor is taller due to the slope of the site, and there is a commercial doorway with sidelights under a rounded, brown canvas canopy. There is paneling on the high base of the wall on either side, topped by a pair of large round-arched windows and a smaller round-arch in the middle. The arches have scrolled keystones and thin, black iron balusters as their bases. Projecting, paneled pilasters separate the bays, highlighted by green-painted outlines, with triangles at the ends and circles in the centers. Medallions decorate the spaces between the arches, and the pilasters are topped with stylized capitals supporting the entablature crowning the ground floor. Matching entablatures crown the ground above the storefronts at the other two northern wings.

The center wing on 55th Street is only one bays wide, while the other two have three bays (with wider outer bays). The light well above the main entrance on the avenue separates that facade into a 4-bay north wing and a 3-bay south wing (all of equal width, with tripartite windows). The white stone 2nd floor has similar pilasters framing each bay to those at the east wing on the north facade, but without the green-painted highlights. The single-windows in the center bays of the east and west wings on 55th Street lack the framing pilasters. Another cornice caps the base at the top of the 2nd floor, with a tall finial at each pilaster extending up into the 3rd floor.

The 3rd floor has grey stone surrounds at each bay, topped by scrolled keystones, and there is horizontal stone banding between the bays, and stone quoins at the edges of each wing. The floors above have stone sills and splayed brick lintels with scrolled keystones. The 10th floor has a simple cornice below and a larger cornice above ornamented with modillions and egg-and-dart moldings. This floor also has stone surrounds and horizontal stone banding. The 11th floor is also banded, and has surrounds with projecting stone pilasters linked by a band course at the top, surmounted by a stone cornice with an egg-and-dart molding.

At the top floor there are low walls between each bay, transitioning into a steep-pitched metal mansard. The window bays have matching pilasters to those on the 11th floor, extending up into the mansard and ending in cornices crowned by tall, elaborate pediments; the middle ones are taller than the outer ones on the west facade. On the north facade, there is no crowning middle pediment at the west wing, and the east wing lacks any of the crowning ornament on the top two floors, save for the mansard roof.

The inner-facing side walls of the west light well are clad in brick, with two bays of tripartite windows flanking two smaller bays of narrow single-windows. The rear wall has a projecting, bowed bay of tripartite windows framed in black cast-iron, with decorative cast-iron spandrels between floors. Above the 10th floor cornice, which continues across this wall, there is another pediment breaking the mansard at the 12th floor.

The side walls of the light wells on 55th Street have three bays of single-windows, one positioned closer to the front and the middle one with smaller openings. They all have stone sills and splayed brick lintels with scrolled keystones. The surrounds and banding seen on the front facades extends only to the front bay. There are also two extra bays of smaller single-windows at the 7th-10th floors. The rear walls of the east light well has two bays of offset double-windows, with one wider pane and a narrower pane, also with stone sills and scrolled keystones. The rear wall of the west light well on 55th Street has two bays of tripartite windows, and there is a black iron fire escape running down it.

The east elevation, also in brick, has three bays of single-windows at the north half, with another bay at the front edge beginning at the 7th floor. The south half, set back just a bit, has four additional bays of single-windows. The cornices continue onto the north half of this elevation.

The building contains 79 apartment units. The ground floor is occupied by Radiance Tea House & Books, La Mode Organic Cleaners, and Carnegie Spirits & Wine.

www.853seventhavenue.com