The Guilford

 apartment building  Add category

144-foot, 13-story Renaissance-revival residential building completed in 1924. Designed by Emery Roth, it is clad in brown brick above a limestone ground floor (lined with storefronts along the avenue) with a grey granite water table. The main entrance is through a gated courtyard on the north side. The intricate wrought-iron gateway includes a central lantern hanging from an arching overhead span. At the interior of the courtyard, the ground floor is clad in beige brick, with the upper floors in the same brown brick as the exterior facades. The doorway, at the back wall, is framed in limestone and topped by a cornice carried on a pair of console brackets.

There are four bays to either side of the gateway on the north facade. To the east there is a plate-glass show-window and a metal-and-glass commercial door cutting through the water table; two bays of tripartite windows, and an end bay of paired windows. To the west there are no openings in the first bay; smaller, square plate-glass windows in the next two bays, and a continuation of the west facade's storefronts at the end bay. The ground floor is capped by a stone band course.

The upper floors of the two wings created by the courtyard are symmetrical and matching. They have paired windows in the end bays and tripartite windows in the middle bays. The tripartite window panes are framed by stone pilasters on the 2nd-3rd floors, with small stylized capitals (scrolled at the 3rd floor). These two floors are separated by the middle bays by paneled stone spandrels with wreaths and foliate ornament at the center of each bay, and a shield with foliate surround at the pier between the bays. A stone band course caps the 3rd floor, with a small projecting cornice over the middle bays.

At the 8th floor there is a narrow stone balcony with a low, iron railing at the middle bays. Each window of the tripartite groups at this floor are topped by ornamented, stone round-arches. A broad band course sets off the 10th & 11th floors, with a projecting, modillioned frieze below the middle bays, from which spring slender, squared limestone columns framing each window and rising to round-arches enclosed by a larger round-arch at each middle bay at the top of the 11th-floor windows. A corbelled brick band course runs above the 11th-floor windows at the end bays, and sets off a parapet of lighter-colored brick. The main roof line marked by the parapet at the 11th floor is capped by a dentil course and is stepped and up peaked at the center of each wing on the north facade. Surmounting the parapet at the four corners are finials on ornamental bases, with small spheres at the points. The rear wall of the courtyard is lined with bays of paired windows; the front side walls both have a single bay of windows nearest the north facade.

The west facade on the avenue is organized into five main bays. The middle and end bays have three windows, while the other two bays have tripartite window groups flanked by single-windows. The tripartite windows mirror all of the design features on the north facade, except that the spandrels are only three panels wide, with a wreath in the center, and the middle pane at the 3rd floor is topped by a scalloped rounded pediment. Both of the tripartite window bays end in peaked pediments at the roof parapet. There is another finial at the southwest corner.

The south facade, above the neighboring building, has three bays of double-windows on either side of another light court, this one on the south side, but not extending all the way to ground level. The 12th-floor penthouse level is recessed, rising up from the west and east wings, but not in the center. At the west wing, there is a square tower in the middle of the facade. It has three windows at the 12th-floor level, and three round-arched openings at the top level, on all four sides, crowned by a sloped red tile roof above a corbel course. The east elevation has a bay of single-windows at the north end, followed by various bays of paired and single-windows, with two black metal fire escapes.

The building contains 188 apartment units. The ground floor along the avenue is occupied by Cafe Metro, First Class Barber Shop, 99-cent Fresh Pizza, and Dunkin' Donuts, with Diamond Spa and Lenvie Hair Studio on 46th Street.