244 5th Avenue (New York City, New York)

 office building  Add category

122-foot, 11-story Beaux-Arts office building completed in 1900. Designed by Robert Maynicke as a loft building, it is clad in limestone. The 2-story base features banded piers with festooned brackets supporting an ornate crown decorated with egg-and-dart moldings, metopes, and guttae. Above this, the 3rd floor has banded piers, molded architraves, and a central cartouche.

The upper floors are simpler, with continuous sill courses at each level. There are four bays per floor, with the two central bays joined into a wide triple-window at the 4th floor. The windows all have splayed keystones; the 11th-floor windows are round-arched molded architraves and splayed keystones. The facade is crowned by a projecting, black, bracketed roof cornice.

The north elevation is faced in beige parged brick with four bays of windows. The 2nd bay from the front ends in a sloped studio window below the level of the main roof line; the 4th bay from the front has a similar sloped studio window, one floor lower. The windowless rear (western) section of this elevation also ends one floor lower than at the front. A large, cylindrical water tower is mounted atop the middle bay. The south elevation is clad in brown brick, with windows only at the rear.

The building was originally owned by Andrew J. Connick, whose tailoring business occupied the ground floor. The upper floors were converted to offices in the mid-1900s. The ground floor is currently occupied by Nomad Tea Parlour.

hdl.handle.net/2027/uva.x001789119?urlappend=%3Bseq=65%...