36 East 20th Street

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8-story Beaux-Arts residential building completed in 1901. Designed by Franklin Baylies as a store-and-loft building, it is clad in red brick, limestone, granite and limestone-colored terra-cotta. Projected piers frame the facade and divide it into two bays; projected cornices articulate a 2-3-2-1 story grouping. On the two limestone-faced lower floors the piers are treated as giant rusticated pilasters resting on polished granite pedestals. The projecting metal storefront and the entrance bays are richly ornamented with Classical motifs including arabesques, wreaths, garlands, and rope moldings. All three entrance bays have molded metal surrounds and coffered ceilings and retain their original paired wood-and-glass doors and wood-framed transoms. There is a modern canopy over the store entrance. The bowed shopfront retains its metal supports, curved roof and transom windows. The ground floor is capped by a metal frieze ornamented with garlands and elements from a Doric entablature. On the 2nd floor narrow rusticated pilasters divide the bays into two units--each containing a single window. The 2-story limestone base is crowned by a limestone cornice decorated with paired console brackets.

The upper floors are faced in red brick with stone and terra-cotta trim. Here there are three windows per bay separated by small piers. On the 3rd through 5th floors the major piers are rusticated and the windows have stone sills and splayed lintels with console keystones. A terra-cotta cornice and terra-cotta cartouches on the piers terminate this grouping. On the 6th through 7th floors both the major and minor piers are articulated as giant pilasters with stone bases and terra-cotta capitals. Relief panels decorate the spandrels between the 6th and 7th floors and round-arched enframements with terra-cotta archivolts are used for the 7th-floor windows. A wide entablature separates this grouping from the 8th-floor attic which has square-headed windows and is terminated by the same type of cartouches and cornice as were used above the 5th floor.

The building's brick western elevation has an irregular roof line puntuated by an elevator penthouse and chimneys. This wall has two rows of square-headed windows. The building was converted to apartments sometime in the late 1900s.