The Gramercy House

 apartment building  Add category

6-story Renaissance-revival residential building completed in 1903. Designed by John B. Snook & Sons as a store-and-loft building, it is faced with grey iron-spot Roman brick, stone, and iron and is articulated with a simple design employing neo-Renaissance elements. Brick piers articulated as giant pilasters with stone bases and Tuscan capitals divide the facade into four bays, each bay containing three windows set off by iron mullions. Entablatures above the 1st and 3rd floors reinforce the 1-2-3 story grouping established by the pilasters. A pair of corner entrances leading to the upper floors are set off by pilastered surrounds. These contain modern plate-glass doors and original wood-framed transoms. Original transoms also survive in the adjacent shop entrances but these have contemporary carved wood doors. At the center of the facade a projecting shopfront is framed by iron mullions which divide it into four sections and by cross bars which support transoms.

On the upper floors the windows are emphasized by projecting stone sill and lintel courses. The building is crowned by a sheet metal Doric frieze and a projecting galvanized iron cornice treated to look like copper. The building's eastern elevation is partially visible from 20th Street. Projecting beyond the building line of the adjacent Theodore Roosevelt Memorial, it has been faced with the same brownstone and coping as the house-museum up to the top of 20-24 East 20th's 4th-floor windows. Above the 4th floor the east wall is faced with brick--the portion of the wall nearest the street with the same gray brick used for the facade, the rear portions with rougher grey brick. The roof line is broken by a pair of elevator penthouses and a parapet.

For the early part of the century, the building was leased mainly to dealers in upholstery, fabrics and draperies. It was converted to cooperative apartments in 1977 by artists Gordon Matta-Clark and Les Levine; artists Julian Schnabel and Anselm Keifer also lived and worked here.