302 Columbus Avenue

 apartment building  Add category

5-story Renaissance-revival residential building completed in 1890. Designed by Cleverdon & Putzel, it was built for James Madison Horton, to house a store of his J.M. Horton Ice Cream Company on the ground floor, with tenements above. The facade it is clad in red brick. The ground floor has a metal-and-glass storefront at the left, while the residential entrance is at the north end, with a glass door, sidelight, and transom framed by black cast-iron pilasters.

The upper floors have three bays of single-windows. Each floor has a brownstone sill course and flat brownstone lintel course. There is a band of 45-degreen angled dentils below the 3rd floor sill course, and the spandrels between the 3rd & 4th, and 4th & 5th floors have foliate terra-cotta carvings. The top floor has round-arched windows with keystones. A black metal fire escape runs down the north two bays of the facade, which is crowned by a prominent black metal roof cornice . There are three brackets at each end, and the center section is raised up above a dentil course, labeled with white lettering reading "THE J.M. HORTON ICE CREAM COMPANY", and topped by a wide triangular pediment.

The J.M. Horton Ice Cream Company was formed in 1872, and within a decade it was the one of the most recognized name in ice cream in the country. Along with this store building, a factory and office was constructed on 125th Street. The ground-floor ice cream depot closed in 1908, but Horton still owned the building, leasing the ground-floor space to a grocery run by Henry A. Flagg. The building was sold in 1921, and renovated in 1978, when the apartments were rearranged, and a restaurant space built at the ground floor. The Red Bull Grill opened here in 1993. Today the ground floor is occupied by Lenwich sandwiches.