The Orchid (New York City, New York) | apartment building

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5-story Flemish/Romanesque-revival residential building completed in 1890. Designed by Higgs & Rooke, it is clad in grey-brown brick and pressed metal above a rough-faced, rusticated limestone ground floor that has two metal, wood, and glass storefronts on the west facade facing the avenue.

The main entrance is centered on the north facade on 78th Street, atop a wide set of steps and recessed in a broad round-arch. It has brown wood-and-glass double-doors and sidelights. On either side a group of smaller, clustered columns supports the ends of the arch. Above the arch exquisite carvings fill the spandrels and the address is carved in the stone. This center entry section projects out slightly from the rest of the facade, with curved edges, and rises slightly higher than the rest of the ground floor. To the east is a single-window, a triple-window, a wooden secondary door, and an end bay with another single-window. To the west, farther down, is a 3-over-2 window with stone mullions, and a plate-glass storefront window at the end. Basement areaways front the facade on either side of the main entrance, enclosed by iron fencing.

The upper floors are symmetrical, with paired windows in the center bay, followed by a single-window, tripartite windows in metal-framed oriels with angled side panels receding into the facade, and two single-windows at each end; the inner of these at the west end has been bricked-in. The windows have stone sills and lintels, except for the metal bays, where the three windows are separated by slender colonnetes (beaded at the 3rd floor). Between the 2nd & 3rd floors these bays have metal spandrels with garlands. Three stone capitals on the piers flank the tops of the windows in the center bay at the 3rd floor. Every bay at this floor is topped by a rather tall splayed stone lintel, with a rounded string course setting off the 4th floor. The metal oriel windows continue on the 4th-5th floors, with ribbons on the spandrels in between. The rest of the 5th-floor windows are round-arched, with eyebrow lintels. A black metal fire escape runs down the center bay. The ends of the facade are topped by parapet that are Flemish in character, each with a pair of shelf-like protrusions, above which are short groups of columns and ogees at the roof line, with a square section sticking up the middle. The center of the facade has a band with a grid of recessed bricks, surmounted by modillions, and crowned by a central Flemish stepped gable with two small round-arched blind openings at its center.

The west facade on the avenue has three bays of single-windows in the center, and end bays with the same pressed-metal oriel windows, as well as all the same ornament seen on the wider north facade. It, too, is crowned by a Flemish stepped gable at the center. The ground floor is occupied by Chama Mama restaurant, and Daily Provisions coffee shop.