WFIFTY8 (New York City, New York)

 condominiums, 1900_construction, Neo-Renaissance (architecture)

11-story Neo-Italian-Renaissance residential building originally completed in 1900 as a 5-story telephone exchange office building. The building was purchased in 2003 from the Bureau of Jewish Education, who had occupied it for 40 years. Converted to condominiums, it had a set-back 6-story addition built on top, designed by Cetra/Ruddy.

The original lower section is clad in white brick with beige stone trim above a banded, white-painted stone ground floor. The cenral entrance has multi-paned glass-and-wood doors framed by wide pilasters, atop a low set of steps. A fan-shaped, suspended, frosted-glass canopy covers the doorway. To the west are three single-windows, and to the east are two windows and a secondary glass-and-wood door at the end. A band course caps the base.

The 2nd-5th floors have a center bay of tripartite windows, and single-windows in the other six bays. All of them have beige stone surrounds, keyed at the outer edges. The 2nd-floor windows feature slender scrolled brackets and cornices, and the 3rd-floor windows have transoms above, surmounted by slightly smaller cornices. There are paneled stone spandrels between the bays of the 3rd & 4th floors. There are bracketed sills at the 4th-floor windows, which are topped by rounded pediments. A projecting band course sets off the 5th floor, which is crowned by a beige cornice with modillions and dentils.

The building has a central courtyard, with the upper addition wrapping around it in a U-shape. The design of the addition is clad in clear and frosted glass, metal panels and stainless-steel. It has wide bands of windows with panes of unequal width on the west and east, projecting from the rest of the upper facade. The recessed center section is lighter colored and has narrow, horizontal slit windows. The west section has projecting balconies with glass railings at the 7th-9th floors, and there are modern-styled cornices capping the east and west window sections.

The east elevation is grey-painted concrete with no openings. The rear, south-facing facade has, on its lower floors, two bays of single-windows at the west, a bay of paired windows in the middle, and three closer-spaced windows at the east. Above the original roof line at the 5th floor, there are two 4-story wings framing the central courtyard opening, both with two bays of windows and projecting glass balconies at the 8th & 9th floors. The top two floors are set back behind the courtyard, with a more recessed center section that has bands of windows with white metal spandrels.

The building contains 16 condominium units.