The Opera Cooperative (New York City, New York) | Gothic revival (architecture), apartment building

 Gothic revival (architecture), apartment building

279-foot, 24-story Neo-Gothic cooperative apartment building completed in 1930 for the Manhattan Congregational Church. Designed by Tillion & Tillion, it was originally built as a hotel tower above a church. The congregations had been organized in the 1890s. Its pastor, Edward H. Emmet, said that the new building would offer rooms to tenants 'who are in accord with the high principles for which a church stands' and that it would lease only to stores that agreed to close on Sundays. The hotel would be operated by a separate company, Manhattan Towers Inc., which would pay the church $20,000 a year in rent. The architects trimmed the upper floors with Gothic-style details, put a large cross atop the tower and developed an elaborate neo-Gothic screen at the lower floors, centered on the church's main entrance. The hotel, named Manhattan Towers, had 626 rooms on the upper floors, with a lounge, coffee shop, grill room, card room and barber shop, and a dance floor in the basement. The church had a 3-story-high sanctuary seating 550 people.

By 1931, Manhattan Towers Inc. had gone out of business and the building was in receivership. The Manhattan Congregational Church was dissolved a few years later. At some later point much of the lacy Gothic-style ornament over the entrance was removed. In 1938 the building was put up for auction but drew no bids, and in 1943 the city took it over for back taxes, with the building was used for Navy housing until 1946. By 1973 the building was a single-room-occupancy hotel, with many residents welfare recipients. The next year a new owner evicted two-thirds of the occupants and changed the name to the Hotel Opera after a $1 million alteration. It was converted to a co-op in 1980, with 113 apartments. The Promenade, an Off Broadway theater, took over most of the old church sanctuary, later changing to the Women's Project Theater. The basement level is occupied by Design Within Reach furniture.

The building is clad in brown and beige brick above a 3-story stone base (with a double-height ground floor) along Broadway, that used to house the church. The building wraps around a small 4-story commercial building at the southwest corner, and has a narrow south wing extending to 76th Street, where there is a 2-story stone base.

Facing Broadway, the main facade is organized into three bays. At the stone base, the center bay has a tall pointed-arch, and the outer bays have wider, lower, and shallower arches, all with black metal infill at the upper parts framing arcades of narrow pointed-arch windows. The stone of the base is in various light shades, and the large projecting piers between the bays form buttresses coming to peaks as the extend upwards past the 3rd floor; the two middle ones are taller, actually passing the 4th floor. The main residential entrance is in the north bay, with a set of wood-framed glass double-doors at the north end, and two sets of matching double-windows to the south (although the southernmost pane is replaced by a metal vent). A large, suspended, black metal marquee with a curved front covers this bay. The center arch is slightly recessed with an angled border around it. It has a set of glass-and-metal double-doors at the lower level, flanked by sidelights. The south bay has the entrance to the theater and basement gym, with two sets of glass-and-metal double-doors. The outer arches are both topped by a small stone shield and ribbons. In the space above the three large arches there are slender, projecting bars of vertical and horizontal tracery, with a row of trefoils across the top of the double-height ground floor. Above the ground level there are three windows within each of the three bays. At the 2nd floor they are tall, pointed-arch double-windows with tracery within the arches; each window is separated by slender pilasters narrowing to points at the sill course running below the 3rd floor. This floor has shorter windows with flatter pointed-arches. The outer bays have brick between the windows, while the center bay remains all stone. The center bay is also topped by a row of square and rectangular panels bearing swirling Gothic shapes and completing the transition to the brick upper floors.

The brick piers framing the bays on the upper floors each have a pair of vertical grooves, and the simple single-windows have black metal frames without sills or lintels. Within the outer bays, a stone string course crosses below the 13th floor, and below the 14th floor at the center bay. The outer bays set back above the 14th floor, and the center bay above the 15th, each capped by a stone pier between the windows and a stone panel with a quatrefoil above each window. The next setback is a full-floor setback above the 19th floor, marked by a simple stone band course. The south two bays set back farther, merging into one bay of five single-windows, and ending at a lower roof line at the 23rd floor, with a small glass solarium structure atop the south end. The north bay is more shallowly recessed, and has tall windows at the 24th floor, with stone arches above them. This section rises higher, with stone finials at the corners, creating a small tower crowned by a mechanical enclosure clad in black metal and topped by a pyramidal roof.

The north and south elevations has wide light wells, giving the building an overall H-shape. Running back along the spine of the tower above the lower roof line is a 24th-floor penthouse faced in white stone with a sloped red tile roof. It continues onto the east end of the "H" in a T-shape, merging with a red brick-clad mechanical penthouse at the northeast corner.

The front part of the south elevation, above the 4-story corner building, is clad in beige brick with no openings, and has brown brick at the edges. At the upper floors there are two single-windows just above the first setback on the main facade. The light well to the right is also clad in beige brick. Its rear, south-facing wall has a bay of paired windows at the east, followed by a single-window bay (ending at a small setback above the 19th floor), another bay of paired windows (the western one changing to a wider triple-window at the 17th-20th floors), and a single-window bay at the west end. The east-facing sidewall of the light well has three bays of single-windows up to the 19th-floor setback, with one bay of narrow windows continuing up above that. The west-facing sidewall has three bays of single-windows, and the south portion extends farther out to meet the street, with two windows at the 9th & 11th floors, and one at the 13th.

The narrow south wing has a pointed arch at the center of the 2-story stone base, filled by a metal gate at the service entrance. It is flanked by a doorway with a roll-down metal gate at the right, and a mesh, swinging metal gate at the left. The 2nd floor has three double-windows between the tops of the end piers that come to triangular peaks just above, also framing a sloped roof-like section of stone that resembles shingles. The upper floors have three single-windows and are framed by end piers with pairs of vertical grooves. Some of the lower openings are replaced by metal louvers. There is a setback above the 12th floor, and the next two floors have angled ends, with windows at the 14th floor, while the south-facing middle has a wide center window flanked by regular windows. Above another setback at the 14th floor, the window plan changes to two bays of single-windows. Above the next setback at the 17th floor, the 17th-19th floors have angled ends, but without windows on them. This section sets back again above the 19th floor, and has a final shallow setback above the 21st, with angled ends up to the lower roof line.

The east elevation is clad in plain red brick with a bay of single-windows in the middle, and a mix of tripartite and single-windows at the north; there are also a few windows at the top floors on the south end. The north elevation has no openings on the east and west sections, but the light well is lined with paired and single-windows.