Central Park West Hostel

 hotel, hostel

5-story Renaissance-revival hotel completed in 1895 as a tenement. It is clad in tan brick above a limestone ground floor with light banding. The main entrance is centered on the south facade on 87th Street, atop a wide, low stoop with brick risers and stone steps and sidewalls. The entry has a many-paned metal-and-glass door with sidelights and transom, framed by a spiral molding. At the top of the stoop's sidewalls are bases for paired Ionic columns that flank the entrance and support an entablature with small heraldic shields, garlands, and ribbons, topped by a cornice with an egg-and-dart molding. To the right the ground floor has a two small window openings set up high (with the western one being partially filled in, leaving only a very small square window), a narrow, recessed, black-painted niche with a metal railing at its base, another high-set opening filled by a metal vent (with an arched former basement opening at the sidewalk level, now covered by metal plating), and a small metal-and-glass storefront bay at the east end. A black-painted stone water table grows slightly taller toward the west due to the slope of the site. To the left of the main entrance the basement level rises partially above the sidewalk level. Closest to the entrance, the ground floor has a single-window, with a basement window below it, and a sideways staircase descending to a basement entry below the stoop. The next bay has an exterior box elevator (of white metal and glass) that accesses a white metal door up on the ground floor for handicap access. The west end has three bays of single-windows at the ground floor, with the first two having basement windows below, and the end bay having a recessed glass door to a basement storefront, down a couple steps from the sidewalk. The areaway in front of the basement windows is enclosed by iron fencing. The ground floor is capped by a stone band course and cornice.

The upper floors have rounded corners on both ends, with single-window end bays angled around these round corners. In between are four bays of paired windows and a center bay of single-windows. The 2nd & 5th floors are banded with the 2nd-floor bands having Greek fret patterns that continue into the splayed forms over each window. Projecting string courses set off the 3rd & 5th floors. There are stone window surrounds at the 3rd & 4th floors, with bead moldings and rope moldings, and topped by thin cornices. Two black iron fire escapes run down the facade, which is crowned by a black metal roof cornice with brackets, dentils, and a frieze with garlands and paired shields.

The east facade on the avenue has storefronts on the ground floor, and the upper floors match the design elements of the south facade, with the rounded corner continuing from that facade, and then two bays of single-windows, and a north bay of paired windows completing the exposure. The only difference in ornament is the spandrel panels between the 3rd & 4th floors, which are decorated with garlands and ribbons. Another black iron fire escape runs down part of this facade.

The ground floor is occupied by 87th Deli Inc. There is also a basement storefront at the west end of the south facade, occupied by Chinese Laundry Inc.