Richmond Apartments

 apartment building  Add category

160-foot, 16-story Neo-Gothic residential building completed in 1926. Designed by Jacob M. Felson, it is clad in reddish-brown brick with terra-cotta ornament and a stone water table. The central entrance, up a step from the sidewalk, has wrought-iron-framed glass double-doors framed by rope moldings and set in an orange terra-cotta surround that itself is flanked by beige pilasters carved with intricate Renaissance ornament including lamps and urns. At the top of each pilaster is a small shield flanked by two small figures, surmounted by a thin cornice with urns at the ends and a larger urn in the center. Above the doors and below the center urn, the orange surround is decorated by a pointed-arch flanked by two smaller round-arches, on a field of blue. There are shells within the smaller arches, and a shield and crown flanked by dragons in the larger arch, above which are two fronds of acanthus leaves.

The rest of the facade has four center bays of single-windows (the middle two replaced by the entry at the ground floor), followed by a bay of small bathroom windows on either side, and end bays with paired windows. At the lower two floors the single-windows have thin, molded stone surrounds with bracketed sills, as do the end bays. There are quoins at the edges of these two floors, widely spaced and of beige terra-cotta, with an eagle at the top of each column of quoins. At the end bays, the paired windows are separated by mullions of blue terra-cotta. All of the other windows have simple stone sills, except for the middle four at the 3rd & 13th floors, and the end bays at the 15th floor.

The center bays at the 3rd & 13th floors have fantastical, projecting surrounds of beige and pale salmon-colored terra-cotta. That at the 3rd floor features pilasters ornamented similar to those at the entrance, rope moldings at the edges of the windows, small shields within elaborate ointed-arches on top (each crowned by a knight's helmet), and small figures flanking shields and surmounted by urns, also recalling the entry. Between the 4th & 5th floors there are four small medallions with long-haired faces wearing tri-corner hats. The 13th-floor center-bay surrounds feature herringbone pilasters, rope moldings around the square-headed windows, and grand arches across the top, highlighted by eagles and shields. There are also terra-cotta moldings framing the center windows at the 14th-15th floors, with escutcheons in the spandrels in between. The end bays at the 15th floor are round-arched, divided by stone colonnettes, and with projecting, ornamented terra-cotta sills below. A terra-cotta eagle is located above each end bay. There is an unadorned roof line at the 15th floor, with a penthouse level set back from it.

The building contains 59 apartment units.