342 West 56th Street

 apartment building  Add category

7-story Neo-classical cooperative-apartment building completed in 1895. It is clad in rusticated tan brick above a rusticated white-painted limestone ground floor. The facade has an angled bay at each end, and a central entrance atop a low set of grey stone steps. It has glass double-doors and transom flanked by fluted pilaster that are fronted by fluted columns supporting an entablature with a triangular pediment. To either side is a narrow single-window with another fluted pilaster to its outside; the entablature continues over these windows, with a carved frieze. Farther out is another bay of single-windows, these with bowed wrought-iron grilles at the base of the windows, matching those on the angled end bays. On either side of the stairs is a basement areaway enclosed by a black iron fence.

The 2nd floor has paired windows at the middle bay, both flanked by flat pilasters with small, stylized Ionic capitals supporting a white stone entablature. The windows to the outside, and on the angled end bays, have splayed lintels with keystones bearing fret designs, and there are tan quoins at the edges of the facade (before the angled sides), also with fret designs. Above the ground floor, only the angled end bays have iron grilles.

Subtle band courses set off each of the upper floors, which have four bays of single-windows, plus the angled end bays, all of which have splayed lintels with fret-patterned keystones. The top floor is stone, with full window surrounds, ornamented piers, and a low iron railing across the entire floor. A black metal fire escape with decorative railings on the landings runs down the middle two bays of the facade, which is crowned by a black metal roof cornice with dentils and a frieze featuring swags and lions' heads.