Roseph Sholom School (New York City, New York)

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5-story Renaissance-revival school originally completed in 1895 as a pair of 4-story mirror-image religious buildings. Designed by Thom & Wilson, one housed the Blessed Sacrament Convent, and the other the Academy of the Blessed Sacrament. The convent was home to nuns of the Sisters of Charity order and, in addition to the Academy next door, they ran the Academy of Mount St. Vincent on the Hudson upstate. By 1909 there were sixteen Sisters of Charity involved with the Academy which was briefly run as a coeducational school. By 1947 the Sisters of St. Ursula had taken over the property and moved the girls' preparatory Notre Dame School into the structure. In the late 1980s the school moved to St. Mark’s Place and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese sold the buildings in 1989 to the Fleming School. The school initiated a $4 million renovation that coupled the former convent and academy buildings, installed a gymnasium and updated the facilities. Only three years later the Fleming School filed for bankruptcy and the buildings were on the market again.

The Roseph Shlomon School, a Jewish elementary/middle school opened in a building on West 84th Street in 1970, expanding to this building as well in 1993. In 1998 the 78th Street portion of the 79th Street building opened, converted from three 1890 row houses, and additional classrooms and the Taitz Auditorium were created. The 78th/79th complex was renovated again in 2009, to include new gym and expanded classroom space.

The 4-story facade on 79th Street is clad in brownstone, rusticated at the basement level and banded at the 1st floor. A pair of stoops at the center abut each other and lead up to matching doorways with paneled wood-and-glass double-doors below transoms. The doorways are recessed behind three plinths holds Doric columns, which support a band course across the top that is carved with Renaissance ornament with dentils across the top and serves as a shallow balcony with an iron railing at the center of the 2nd floor. Immediately flanking the outer columns at the 1st floor are windows that curve back to the recessed area. Farther out there is another single-window on each end. The basement level also has single-windows with iron grilles, the inner ones also curving inward. The upper floors have two bays of single-windows in the recessed center section, flanked by curved single-windows and end bays with single-windows. All of them have molded surrounds that differ at each floor. Those on the 2nd floor are notched in at the sides, those on the 3rd floor have cornices on top, and those on the 4th floor have bracketed siils and cornices on thin console brackets. The surrounds all have delicate bead moldings, and the windows have thin metal railings across their bases. The facade is crowned by a black metal roof cornice with dentils and modillions that also curves around the bays flanking the recessed center section. The west elevation facing a small alleyway is clad in brick brick with no openings.

The three row houses added to the complex on West 78th Street are also clad in brownstone. They have matching stoops at the right side of each facade, leading up to parlor-floor entrances with matching wood-and-glass double-doors and transoms. The basement levels next to the stoops are rough-faced and there are round-arched, gated basement entrances in the sides of the stoops. The obvious difference in No. 167 at the west end is the projecting west bay and the sharply-angled connecting bay, both with single-windows. The other two facades have paired windows at the basement level, with iron grilles. The entrances atop the stoops are framed by fluted pilasters topped by short, spiral colonnettes supporting entablatures with swirling vines and topped by dentiled cornices. There are also iron grilles on the tall paired windows to the left of each entry, that are also flanked by fluted pilasters, have fat egg-and-dart moldings along upper edge of the windows, and are topped by cornices joined over both windows.

The upper floors at the eastern two facades have two bays of windows, while there are three bays at No. 167 (one in line with the rest of the row, one angled, and one projecting). These all have stone surrounds, fluted at the sides, with projecting sills that have pointed brackets and rows of pointed dentils, egg-and-dart moldings along the tops, and small cornices above. The facades are crowned by a unified black metal roof cornice with brackets, dentils, and panels. Set-back 5th floors have been added to the roofs of all three 78th-Street buildings.

The low-rise space in between the 79th Street and 78th Street buildings has been renovated with a new gymnasium and cafeteria. A new glass facade in the rear allows light into the classrooms while a new garden on the roof of the gymnasium addition and a new vertical "green screen" contributes to the green space at the center of the block and serves as a buffer between the school and the neighboring buildings.