157 West 79th Street

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133-foot, 12-story Italian Renaissance cooperative-apartment building completed in 1911. Designed by Schwartz & Gross, it is clad in brown brick, white stone, and terra-cotta above a 2-story limestone base. The central entrance has bronze-and-glass double-doors below a rounded green canvas canopy extending out over the sidewalk, set in a segmental-arched stone molding with some floral ornament and a keystone flanked by leafy fronds. To either side is a single-window and end bays with double-windows divided by black iron mullions. Above the ground floor there are three single-windows in the middle, and double-windows in the end bays.

The 3rd floor is transitional, with projecting band courses on top and bottom, and panels on the stone piers that have slightly-projecting stone frames around brick squares or rectangles, within which are inscribed smaller white stone panels. The upper floors have bracketed sills at the single-windows, and segmental-arched brick lintels with keystones. At the end bays there are terra-cotta surrounds with quoins, each with a keystone and console brackets supporting shallow stone balconettes with black iron railings at the windows above. Topping the 9th-floor end bays are escutcheons, with shields at the upper corners.

The 10th floor matches the 3rd, except that the upper cornice sits above a patterned frieze with a smaller shield at each pier as well as both end bays. The top two floors have 2-story, white terra-cotta surrounds at each bay, and terra-cotta spandrels. The facade is crowned by a projecting white roof cornice with four very large console brackets, modillions, and dentils.

The building was converted to a co-op in 1988, with 60 apartments.