12 West 96th Street (New York City, New York)

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162-foot, 17-story Italian Renaissance cooperative-apartment building completed in 1930. Designed by Leo F. Knust, it is clad in beige brick above a 3-story base with white brick on the 2nd-3rd floor and limestone on the ground floor, with a grey granite water table. The entrance in the center bay has wood-and-glass double-doors in a paneled, black stone surround, covered by a rounded, green canvas canopy extending out over the sidewalk. The doorway is further framed by a paneled stone surround with a dentiled cornice. To either side are two single-window bays, a double-window bay, and three more single-windows; the west end bay has a gated service entrance in place of the window. There are iron grilles on the ground-floor windows, and banded limestone piers around the center bay and three windows at the ends. These extend through the 2nd & 3rd floors as thinner, paired stone piers; there is a double-window in the center bay above the entrance. The center bay and middle window of the three end bays have stone surrounds at the 2nd floor, with dentiled, scrolled, rounded pediments broken by urns. There are also stone roundels in the brick spandrels between the 2nd & 3rd floors in the two bays on each end that flank the bays with the pediments. The base is capped by a stone band course with a dentiled cornice.

The upper floors have the same window pattern, with white metal framing, and are dotted by protruding air-conditioning units. A stone cornice sets off the 14th floor, and another with dentils sets off the 16th. The 16th-floor roof line is marked by a thinner cornice. The 17th-floor penthouse level is set back on all sides.

There is a short section exposed at the front of the east elevation, with a bay of single-windows. The west elevation has a singe-window bay farther back, a small light well at the center that is lined with single-windows and smaller bathroom windows, and two more single-windows at the rear section, flanking a bay of smaller bathroom windows.

The building was converted to a co-op in 1970, with 69 apartments.