5-15 West 87th Street (New York City, New York)

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A row of six 5-story Renaissance-revival residential buildings originally completed in 1894. Designed by Henry F. Cook, they are clad in pale-orange brick and limestone, arranged in an A-B-B-B-B-A pattern. The western five houses were joined together into a single apartment building in 1967 to designs by Wechsler & Schimenti, while the easternmost house at No. 5 stayed separate. The stoops were removed and a common basement entrance created for the combined apartment building, now known as 7 West 87th.

No. 5 has a high wrought-iron fence enclosing the small front yard and long, low stoop that leads to the entrance on the left. There are balusters on the sidewalls of the stoop, and ornamented, paneled newel posts with an elaborate iron gate between them. The entrance has a light-brown wooden door. To the right is a single-window, and at the east end is a smaller secondary entrance with a black wooden door. Both of the lower floors are clad in limestone. The 2nd floor has a large tripartite window with upper transom panes and a dentiled cornice. The next two floors are brick, with two bays of single-windows. At the 3rd floor they are square-headed with stone lintels, and at the 4th floor they are round-arched with stone sills and eyebrow lintels with acanthus-leaf keystones. The short attic floor on top is stone, with three circular windows with elaborate surrounds. The facade is crowned by a black metal roof cornice with brackets, panels, and dentils.

The middle four houses all had stone ground floor and basements, with orange brick above. The alterations have created a basement areaway spanning almost the full frontage, enclosed by a low stone wall and iron railing. There is an opening toward the west with a small set of steps down to the multiple basement entrances. At the 1st floor each section has two windows; those in the middle are paired closer together and toward the center of the grouping, while the outer ones have a double-window paired with a single-window and are more evenly spaced. The double-windows and the outer single-window at the middle sections all have shallow projecting, bowl-shaped rounded sills carved with Renaissance ornament. There are air-conditioning vents below the other windows, and all have iron grilles. There are slightly projecting, bowed bays of two windows at the 2nd-3rd floors of all four middle facades, capped by curved black metal bands with dentils and patterned friezes. The windows have stone sills and those on the 3rd floor have small cornices above stone panels with varied foliate ornament. Some more vents are cut into the facade, and vertical rain gutters run down between each section. The top two floors are set back, with the 4th-floor windows topped by stone round-arches with eyebrow lintels and keystones, and smaller windows in the short attic floor. The same style of roof cornice extends across the center section, recessed between the end sections.

The west has repeats the "A" design, bracketing the center section. Unlike No. 5, the former No. 15 is included in the apartment renovation, and has similar alterations to the base. The upper floors match those of No. 5, except for the air-conditioning vents cut into the facade, and the replacement of the center circular window on the 5th floor with a square-headed window. There are a total of 43 apartment units in the combined building.