102-108 West 87th Street

 rowhouse, apartment building

A row of four 5-story (including raised basements) Queen Anne-style residential buildings completed together in 1887. Designed by John G. Prague, they are clad in painted brownstone, arranged in an A-B-B-A pattern. All four have had their stoops replaced by ground-floor entrances.

No. 102 at the east end is painted light-brown, and has a wood-and-glass door recessed in a segmental-arched molding. To the left the lower two floors project out, with a rounded corner, with two single-windows on each floor. Those on the ground floor have iron grilles, and those on the 2nd floor have ornamented panels below and upper transom panes. The ground floor is rough-faced at this bay, and the whole 2nd floor is banded. A narrow double-window with a transom replaces the original parlor-floor entrance at the 2nd floor, with a panel below carved with a shield and vines. An unpainted stone cornice caps the projecting bay, with a small cornice across the rest of the 2nd floor. The top three floors have single-windows in the west bay and paired windows in the wider east bay. At each floor they have projecting stone surrounds. Dentiled cornices cap the bays at the 3rd & 4th floors, and there are panels of swags and foliate ornament below and above the 4th-floor windows. The top floor has slightly smaller windows. The east bay is topped by a triangular gable with a finial on top, and the west bay is topped by a gridded panel, with another one between the bays, each framed by grey stone pilasters. A brick chimney rises at the west edge of the roof line, shared by the neighboring building; it is painted light-brown on its east half and beige on its west half to match that facade.

No. 104 is painted beige, with the only rough-faced stone at the edges of the east side of the ground floor, which has two single-windows with iron grilles. To the right the stoop is replaced by a ground-level entrance with a glass-and-wood door a couple steps down from the sidewalk. The 2nd floor has a wide single-window and transom replacing the original parlor-floor entrance, and there are two narrow single-windows on the left with transoms and carved panels below putti surrounded by foliate ornament. The 2nd-floor windows are edged in thin, ticked moldings, and at the top of the 2nd floor, between the west bay and the middle window, is a small shield framed by foliage. A stone band course sets off the upper floors. There are three bays of single-windows on the 3rd & 4th floors, framed by columns adorned with leafy fronts on the 3rd floor, and by wide, flat pilasters with carved-face capitals on the 4th floor (the end pilasters are fluted at their upper halves). Dentiled cornices top both floors, and there are three different ornament panels below the 3rd-floor windows - the east bay has a snarling lion's head between a foliate design; the middle bay has a fruit garland; and the west bay has a shield flanked by scrolls. The top floor has a steep-sloped mansard of grey slate shingles, with a dormer of paired windows framed by pilasters breaking the center, topped by a triangular pediment with dentils and a carved face medallions above acanthus leaves.

No. 106 matches No. 104, but painted brown, and with a projecting surround at the wood-and-glass door.

No. 108 at the west end matches No. 102, also painted brown, with a projecting smooth-stone entrance surround and a wood-and-glass door recessed within it.