Fitzroy Place

 apartment building, 1850s construction, Italianate style (architecture), housing cooperative

A long row of 4-story Italianate cooperative-apartment buildings originally completed in 1854-57 as individual townhouses. In the late 1970s they were redeveloped into a joint co-op apartment complex called Fitzroy Place. The name comes from a colonial-era north-south road near present-day 8th Avenue.

Nos. 428-432 are narrower than the rest of the buildings. They have rusticated brownstone ground floor with round-arched doorways and windows, and short stoops. A belt course crosses the facade at the second story level. The second floor parlor windows are full-length with heavy stone lintels with curving segmental-arched tops supported on console brackets. The third floor windows are similar as are those of the fourth floor except that they do not have any brackets. A continuous Italianate cornice unites all three sections.

To the west, Nos. 434-436 have rusticated brownstone basements with four stories of brick above, and are plainer than the other houses in the complex. The window lintels are flat with molded drip-caps. The stoops and railings are gone, but the original Italianate cornices with brackets and panels are in place.

No. 438 one of the only three buildings on the block to have a brick facade, was built for Henry Ivison, a publisher. The rusticated basement is of brownstone. The high brownstone stoop has been removed and the parlor floor entrance has beer altered to a window. The haunched window lintels of brownstone do not have brackets. The large Italianate cornice supported by six large console brackets is original to the building. From 1920 to 1933, No. 438 was leased to the Volunteers of America who operated a home for children and a nursery and daycare center there, as an adjunct to their main establishment on Staten Island.

No. 440 was built for Peter Morris. It is clad in brownstone, with the stoop removed and former main entrance altered to a window. The projecting lintels and window enframements, originally like those at No. 442, have been removed leaving only the sills and the small brackets beneath them. The original cornice has six console brackets between which are lozenge-shaped panels decorated with rosettes.

No. 442's facade has been covered with a thin cement wash. The brownstone stoop has been removed and the entrance lowered to the basement. The parlor floor lintels have been stripped of all decorative detailing, but the window lintels and surrounds of the upper three floors are in place. The original Italianate cornice which displays large and small brackets as well as large and small panels, is unusually elaborate.

Nos. 444-446 were the last of the structure comprising Fitzroy Place to be built, in 1857. The two houses have 4-story plus basement facades of brownstone. The entrances through the basements have narrow entablatures supported by plain pilasters. These simple enframements are probably the originals which were left exposed when the high brownstone stoops were removed in 1928-29. At that time the former entrances were altered to windows so that each parlor floor has three floor-length windows. All lintels above the segmental-arched window openings of both houses appear as flat arched bands with "lobes" at the sides. The matching original cornices of Italianate design have matched pairs of large and small brackets.