159 East 55th Street | apartment building, commercial building

 apartment building, commercial building

5-story residential building completed sometime around 1880 as a 4-story townhouse. The stoop was removed and the English basement converted with a new ground-floor entrance and commercial storefront sometime after 1900. The facade is faced in brownstone, painted off-white. The entrance has a glass-and-wood door framed by grey-painted pilasters; both it and the storefront on the left are down a couple of steps.

The upper floors have three bays of single-windows. There are sill courses across the 2nd & 3rd floors, and individual sills on the top two floors. A black metal fire escape snakes its way down and across the facade from right to left, and the building is crowned by a black metal roof cornice with brackets, modillions, and panels. The east elevation is clad in reddish-brown brick with three widely-spaced bays of single-windows. The ground floor is occupied by Teppen Ramen restaurant.