209 West 78th Street (New York City, New York)

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4-story (plus raised basement) Renaissance-revival residential building completed in 1890 as a 3-story row house. The four houses in the row to the west were demolished in the early 1920s to make way for a larger apartment building. A modern new floor was added to the top of the house in 2011.

The facade is clad in brownstone, rough-faced and rusticated on the lower levels. A stoop on the left, with iron handrails, leads up to a parlor-floor entrance with paneled black wooden double-doors and a transom, framed by Corinthian columns with fluting on their midsections, supporting an entablature with carved Renaissance ornament and a cornice. The two windows to the right have carved panels below and a wide carved panels above, all with more and varied ornament; the upper panel is topped by another cornice. The basement level has two windows with iron grilles, and there is a basement entrance in the side of the stoop. The rusticated stonework extends all the way up to the bottom of the 2nd-floor windows, unlike the neighboring building to the east, where is stop at the top of the parlor-floor windows.

The upper floors have three bays of single-windows, with keyed surrounds topped by hooded lintels with Renaissance ornament and cornices. The original facade is crowned by a black metal roof cornice with paired brackets and panels. Above rises a glass curtain wall for the rooftop addition, in the form of a cube.