The Hermitage

 condominium  Add category

161-foot, 17-story Romanesque-revival residential building completed in 1928. Designed by Jacob M. Felson, it is clad in beige brick with some Byzantine-style façade decoration, above a rusticated limestone ground floor with a grey granite water table. The Hermitage has a vertical miniature light court above the main entrance extending the height of the building, giving the the impression of two buildings if viewed from a slightly offset angle.

The central entrance has glass-and-wrought-iron double-doors below a fanlight and rounded, navy-blue canvas canopy extending out over the sidewalk. Projecting Byzantine stone pilasters frame the bays to either side, capped with finials above the cornice across the ground floor. The are single openings with round-arched windows on either side of the center bay, followed by a bay with three openings (two round-arched windows flanking a wood-and-glass door below a matching arch, and end bays with paired openings (both round-arched windows at the end east, and a window and service entrance at the west end). The arches above the doors have carved decoration including urns and ribbons, and also have keystones.

Above the ground floor the light well in the center bay has two sets of double-windows, and single-windows on the inward-facing side walls. Outward from the light well is a bay of single-windows and then three bays of double-windows on both sides. At the 2nd-3rd floors the double-windows are enframed by 2-story spiral colonnettes ending in round-arches at the 3rd-floor windows. The stone spandrels between the two floors are accented by diamond shapes around quatrefoils. The 3rd floor is capped by a scalloped band course with rosettes within each of the many small arches.

The upper floors are edged by brick quoins, with iron mullions dividing the double-windows. There is a projecting stone balcony fronting the middle of the three double-windows bays on each side at the 9th floor, carried on two brackets and having the front stone wall decorated with a shield and flanking garlands. Three more such balconies front the outer bays on each side of the 15th floor. The 14th floor is set off by another scalloped band course (but without the rosettes), and the piers around the two single-window bays are framed by brick outlines. A band course runs between the balconies below the 15th floor, with a carved panel above the 14th-floor single-window bays. The double-windows bays of the 15th-16th floors are flanked by double-height stone pilasters and the windows divided by spiral colonnettes crowned by cartouches. The stone spandrels between the floors at these bays match those between the 2nd & 3rd floors.

The 16th-floor roof line is marked by a short stone cornice. The penthouse level is set well back from the roof line, and there is a larger light well at both the east and west sides. The building was converted from rental apartments to condominiums in 2001, with 125 units.