50 Madison Park Condominium

 condominium, interesting place

122-foot, 11-story postmodern residential building originally completed in 1896 as a 5-story Italianate building designed by Renwick, Aspinwall & Owen, for the headquarters of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The ASPCA moved out of the buidling in 1950.

The Madison Avenue side is five bays wide, with rusticated stone on the first two floors, and quoins extending up on the edges of the 3rd floor. The projecting center bay has the main entance, recessed under a round-arch; it is flanked on either side by a narrow window with brass bars, bith of which are framed by flat columns with Tuscan capitals, supporting an entablature and dentiled cornice that runs along the top of the ground floor. The cornice has four small lions' heads above the four columns. To the south of the entrance is a storefront entry and a window, and to the north are another storefront entry and a service door, all with stone surrounds.

The 2nd floor also has a projecting center bay, with four rusticated flat Tuscan columns framing narrow windows and supporting an entablature topped by a panel outlined by an egg-and-dart molding. To either side are stone-enframed windows. These are echoed on the 3rd floor, where they also have bracketed cornices. Also at the 3rd floor begins the center bay design of symmetrical window openings with panes of various sizes, framed in grey metal. These main windows groups are flanked by a smaller window on each side, and there are screens of horizontal metal bars between the floors at this bay. The pre-cast stone facade of the rest of the upper floors have tripartite windows in each bay, and additional metal bar screens across the bays of the 10th floor, except for the south bay, which sets back above the 9th floor. The rest of the facade sets back above the 10th floor to a recessed penthouse.

The 25th Street elevation is two bays wide, with a pair of windows at the ground floor, and a balustraded stone balcony supported on four large console brackets at the 2nd floor. The rest of the design details match those on the east facade, minus the center bay and the metal screens. A projecting balcony extends from above the 9th floor.

In 2005, it was rebuilt as a condominium building for Samson Management, with the lower three floors adaptively reused, and eight new postmodern limestone-colored-precast panel-clad upper floors added. The new design is by Platt Byard Dovell White. The ground floor is occupied by 10/10 Optics, and Art Gallery.

streeteasy.com/building/50-madison-avenue-new_york


www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuUk7uac6Gk&ab_channel=Pres...