161 West 16th Street (New York City, New York)

 high-rise, apartment building, 1930_construction, housing cooperative

213-foot, 19-story Neo-Gothic cooperative-apartment building completed in 1930 as part of the unfinished Chelsea Corners development for Henry Mandel. Designed by Farrar & Watmough, it is clad in buff-colored brick with Gothic style terra-cotta decoration. The 2-story limestone base has rustications on the ground floor, and on both floors of the extra-wide piers that frame the retail entrance on 7th Avenue. At the tops of these piers are small gargoyle-like brackets that support a cornice over this entrance. Additional brackets of the same design are found at the top of the base on both facades, supporting angled white stone projections that run up the facades. The show windows at the ground floor are topped by dark-grey canvas awnings with a modillion course above them. The residential entrance is at the center of the16th Street side, segmental-arched and framed by white stone in Gothic designs. A green canvas canopy extends out over the sidewalk.

The west elevation has eight bays of paired windows, with the outer bays spaced farther apart from the rest. The south elevation has 13 bays, with single-windows in each, except for the end bays which have double-windows. On both facades the middle bays are framed by the angled white stone projections running up the sides, with a stone band course across the top of the middle bays at the 4th floor. The four center windows on the west side, and the three on the south, have Gothic white stone spandrels between the 3rd & 4th floors.

A stone band course sets off the 15th floor, which has round-arched windows in the end bays and the center bays. There is a setback above the two sets of outer bays, with a small railing above the more central outer bay, and a corbelled brick cornice above the end bay. The angled white stone projections at the center bays continue up past the setback to the 17th floor, where they terminate in similar gargoyle shapes to those at the base. White dentils run between each one. At the 18th floor, each bay terminates is a white stone panel resembling a balustrade, and the penthouse level is further set back, crowned by a brick parapet and thin stone cornice.

The building contains 155 apartments, and the base was occupied by Loehmann's apparel store until the chain faced bankruptcy. The 2nd floor on the avenue side bore a large gold-lettered sign with the store's name. The base was then home to the downtown location of Barneys New York until it closed in 2020.