Holy Name House (New York City, New York)

 church, community center / hall

4-story Romanesque-revival style Roman Catholic recreation/community center completed in 1923. Designed by Raphael Hume for the parish of the Holy Name of Jesus church, it is clad in variegated red and grey brick with limestone trim, above a navy blue-painted stone water table that grows taller toward the west due to the slope of the site.

The entrance is centered, with five granite steps leading up to black metal double-doors recessed in a around-arch. They are framed by paired, engaged columns angling back towards the doors, with stylized capitals supporting the architrave that is lined with various patterned moldings. Above the doors and within the arch is a stone panel carved with an eagle surrounded by scenes of boys at play and a panel reading HOLY NAME HOUSE with lettering in a script called uncial, developed in the first millennium and often seen in religious manuscripts — the letter M looks like a slingshot and the E like a bow and arrow. To either side of the entrance are two narrow windows covered by elaborate iron grilles.

The 2nd floor is set off by a band course with dentils along the bottom, with red and yellow tiles in the middle portion forming geometric patterns. The three middle bays have narrow, paired round-arched windows, and the end bays have single windows of the same design, with brick voussoirs; the paired windows are separated by stone colonnettes. The middle bays at the 3rd-4th floors are framed by 2-story stone colonnettes rising from a stone band course with a grid of dentils. Each has a stylized base and capital, and at the 4th floor the middle colonnettes split into bundled groups of three (with the center one larger), while the outer ones pair a wider and narrower colonnette. Within each bay at the 3rd floor is a small, square window, while the 4th floor has larger 2-over-2 windows. A simple stone band within these three bays separates the 3rd & 4th floors. At the end bays there are narrow windows joined by a niche running between the floors; the 4th-floor windows are round-arched at the end bays, topped by arched stone lintels with a sawtooth pattern. Larger arches with matching sawtooth patterns spring from the colonnettes at the middle bays above the 4th floor, with the recessed inner part of the arches having a grid of dentils; the center arch is topped by a cross. There is also a small, square stone panel above the 4th-floor windows in the end bays. The facade is crowned by a stone roof cornice with thin brackets above a frieze of patterned brickwork.