Centro Espanol La Nacional

 social club  Add category

4-story (plus raised basement) club building completed in 1868 as a townhouse. It is clad in brownstone, with three narrow bays, and a rusticated basement. A stoop on the left leads up to a parlor-floor entrance with paneled red wooden double-doors and a transom framed by slender black iron rope moldings set in a brownstone surround. There are two tall parlor-floor windows to the right and a basement restaurant space below. The upper floors have three bays of single-windows, shorter at the attic floor, with simple sills. A black sheet-metal modillioned roof cornice caps the facade.

The building houses the Centro Espanol La Nacional, also known as the Spanish Benevolent Society - a private social club founded to serve the Spanish-American community in Manhattan. Its location on West 14th Street is at the heart of what once was Little Spain in Manhattan. The basement level is occupied by La Nacional restaurant.