60 West 68th Street

USA / New Jersey / West New York / West 68th Street, 60
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122-foot, 11.5-story Renaissance-revival (with Jacobean elements) cooperative-apartment building completed in 1920 as a hotel. Designed by George F. Pelham, it is clad in red brick, and opened as The Hotel Cambridge. The ground floor has a grey granite water table and there is horizontal brick banding on the 2-story base. The facade has a small center bay with narrow single-windows, and three bays of double-windows on either side. At the ground floor the bay to the left of the narrow bay has the main entrance, with glass-and-metal double-doors below a rounded, green canvas canopy extending out over the sidewalk, and the bay to the right of the narrow center bay has a segmental-arched window. The west end bay has a metal service door and small window in place of the double-window, and all the other bays at the ground floor have black iron railings across the lower halves of the windows. The 2nd floor has stone sills at the windows. Four 2-story limestone pilasters frame the center bays; they have simple capitals at the top of the 2nd floor, and extend through a brick band course (lined by stone at the top and bottom) that caps the base; the pilasters are adorned with simple roundels here, and have finials extending up into the 3rd floor that have foliate carving.

The center bays are also banded on the upper floors. The original stone lintels have been removed and replaced with brick. The center bays have a broad stone band below the 9th floor, where the two bays around the narrow center window have segmental-arched double-windows with stone lintels. There is a setback above the 9th floor at the end bays, and the 10th floor has three single-windows at each end, and three round-arch single-windows in the middle, flanking the small center window. The sides of the center section angle inward at the 9th-10th floors, forming a cut gable. The 10th floor has four round-arched windows, with the small center bay ending below. The ends have terraces atop the 9th floor roofs. A terra-cotta frieze and parapet crowns the roof line here, and there is a small penthouse level set farther back.

The building has a light well at both the east and west sides, which are also clad in dark-red brick. The building was converted to a co-op in 1986, with 73 apartments.
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Coordinates:   40°46'27"N   73°58'48"W
This article was last modified 6 years ago