Murray Hill Plaza Cooperative (New York City, New York) | interesting place, apartment building

 interesting place, apartment building

210-foot, 16-story cooperative-apartment building completed in 1916. Designed by Arthur Loomis Harmon as an office building, it was converted to a cooperative in 1984, with 180 apartments. Both main facades are clad in brown brick above a 3-story limestone base. The east facade on the avenue is six bays wide. At the ground floor, the main entrance is at the south end, with metal-and-glass doors covered by a red canvas awning that projects out over the sidewalk. The building address 244 is mounted above the canopy in silver numbers, and also on the wall, to the right, in gold numbers. A modernized storefront of glass and stainless steel is in the northern bay, wrapping around the corner to the north facade. In the middle, five 2-story piers with Corinthian capitals divide a series of small storefronts, and support an entablature with a carved frieze and dentiled cornice. The four center storefronts have red box awnings topped by metal grilles. Above these, black iron spandrels adorned with swags separate the 2nd floor, which has wide 3-over-2 windows with transoms in the four middle bays. The end bays at the 2nd floor have similar square 2-over-3 windows with transoms, as do all six bays on the 3rd floor. At the top of the base are rows of swags and rosettes, along with carved urns and ribbons in soft relief, capped by a band course.

The upper floors have the same style of windows in the end bays, while the middle bays have pairs of narrower 2-over-2 windows with transoms. All the windows in the upper floors have stone sills, and some have metal vents cut below. At the 14th floor the windows revert to six square openings of the same size, like those on the 3rd floor. The tops of the piers at this floor have stone panels with swags and ribbons. The top two floors are faced in limestone, with 2-story fluted piers, doubled around the end bays. Shallow round-arches are cut above the windows at the top of the 16th floor. Stone medallions decorate the spaces above the doubled piers at the end bays, and a simple coping caps the roof line.

The north facade on 38th Street matches that on the avenue, with the exception of the western bay, which is split into two narrower windows like the middle bays, instead of matching the wider openings of the other end bays. At the ground floor the modernized storefront has stainless steel piers replacing the original limestone in the middle section. Between the metal vents, the piers are ornamented with vertical panels of colored tiles. The far western bay is clad in dark-grey stone and metal at the ground floor, with a small, red, pointed canopy above the commercial doorway. The plate-glass of the modern storefront is tallest at the east end, and narrows as it slants to the west, with translucent green panels encroaching from the top and bottom the further it goes.

The ground floor is occupied by Jewels of Madison, Madison Avenue Liquors, and The UPS Store.