21 East 21st Street

 apartment building, Queen Anne style (architecture), 1878_construction

6-story Queen Anne-style residential building completed in 1878. Designed by Bruce Price as a hotel, it is faced in red brick, limestone, and terra-cotta. It features a prominent 3-story oriel and a wealth of sculpted and incised ornament, as well as varied patterned brickwork, and a sloping mansard roof.

The 6-story, 2-bay structure rises from an English basement enclosed by an areaway with fence. (The brick facing of the areaway and basement is a recent replacement as is the fence.) At the ground floor brownstone steps with the original wrought-iron railings lead to the doorway with a replacement door topped by a segmental-arched transom. Accenting the door way is a carved limestone column, carried on a corbel of interlocking herons, with a capital of owls' heads set in foliation. This, in turn, carries a large ornamental corbel with foliate motifs and the intertwining initials "MC" (for Maria Corgell, the original owner) that supports the oriel above. To the east of the doorway are two segmental-arched window openings, flanked by limestone and terra-cotta panels. The easternmost panel is inscribed "Bruce Price. Archt - 1878 - D.H. King Jr. Builder."

A stone band course sets off the 2nd, 3rd & 4th floors. A 3-story oriel with three window openings per floor forms the western bay. Stone bands accent the window openings and mark the division between the floors. The 4th-floor windows are topped by trefoil arches adorned with flower motifs. A naturalistic foliate cornice surmounted by a railing tops the oriel. The bay to the east contains slightly recessed paired window openings. The 4th-floor window also is topped by a trefoil arch.

A band course adorned by sculpted bezants and carved animal heads sets off the top two stories. A 2-story gabled bay at the west contains a stylized Palladian window with boar's head motif at the 5th floor and a single square-headed window opening fronted by a railing at the 6th floor. The portion of the gable flanking the single window is faced with brick laid in a herring-bone pattern; the peak of the gable is filled with diagonally-laid brick and surmounted by a wrought-iron finial. The eastern bay contains a paired window. The tarred sloping mansard roof above contains an arched window opening set in a dormer with jerkinhead roof. All windows are replacements for the originals.

The building later served as the home of the American Institute of Phrenology, before being converted to apartments.