Myron Arms Apartments

 condominium, high-rise, apartment building, 1923_construction, Renaissance Revival (architecture)

180-foot, 15-story Italian Renaissance-revival condo-op residential building completed in 1923. Designed by Emery Roth, it has a near-twin building to the north that just built a year later. Both are clad in buff-colored brick above 2-story limestone bases with granite water tables. Both buildings have nearly identical massing and materials, with slight variations in the arrangement of the windows and facade details, most notably the switching of the order of the types of window bays.

The Myron Arms' main entrance is at the center of the south facade on 82nd Street. It has deeply-recessed bronze-and-glass double-doors set in a surround of floral ornament, with a panel of two garlands and the address of 221 across the top. A black metal canopy, suspended from the mouths of a pair of lions' heads, with rosettes around the perimeter and cresting on top, covers the entry. The entrance bay, as well as the paired window bay on either side, are flanked by slightly-projecting, 2-story pilasters with stylized capitals at the 2nd floor. To the west, the ground floor has no more openings until the end, where there is a section of steel-and-plate-glass storefront. To the east is a single-window, two tripartite windows, a smaller, narrow single-window, and a wide single-window next to a metal service door at the east end. All of the ground-floor windows have iron grilles. The upper floors on the south facade are organized into three center bays of paired windows, flanked by a single-window, two bays of tripartite windows, and two more single-windows, with the end bays being wider. The paired windows and tripartite windows have brick mullions separating them. The three center bays have brick lintels and spandrels with small heraldic shields in the centers. At the 11th floor the four tripartite bays are more recessed and separated by rounded columns, and fronted by projecting stone balconies. A band course sets off the 12th floor, where the middle three bays are fronted by a larger stone balcony on scrolled brackets. These three bays have double-height round-arches with terra-cotta pilasters at the edges and a column in the center, and the 13th-floor windows are round-arched. The tripartite bays also have round-arched 13th-floor windows, with 2-story columns dividing them, and spandrels adorned with terra-cotta shields. The end bays at the 12th floor have patterned terra-cotta surrounds. A narrow string course sets off the 14th floor, where there is terra-cotta paneling on the piers between bays. A terra-cotta cornice marks the main roof line at the 14th floor, with a penthouse level set back from each facade. The building wraps around the light court on the north side, and the west wing is crowned by a 2-story mechanical penthouse that looms above the main roof line on the western side. It is clad in the same brick and have a triple-opening on all four faces, round-arched at the top level, with short columns in between. The tower is capped by an Italian tile coping.

The west facade facing the avenue is lined by metal-and-glass storefronts on the ground floor. The upper floors are organized as two bays of paired windows in the center, flanked by single-windows, tripartite windows, and end bays with wider single-windows. The ornament matches that seen on the south facade at each respective floor.

The north facade is also brick, with a 1-story storefront bridging the gap between this building and the complementary building to the north. The west wing has a bay of single-windows at the west edge, with two smaller single-windows near the center, and another larger single-window at the east edge. The east wing is set farther back, and has double-windows in the center with single-window end bays. The inner walls of the light well are also lined with double- and single-windows. The east facade closest to 82nd Street has one bay of single-windows. There is a shallow light well near the center, and the north side of the east facade has single-windows in a variety of sizes

The building contains 98 units. The ground floor along Broadway is occupied by Cafe Eighty Two, and Le Posh salon.