41 West 96th Street

 apartment building  Add category

162-foot, 16-story Neo-Renaissance cooperative-apartment building completed in 1926. Designed by Emery Roth, it is clad in buff-colored brick above a limestone ground floor with a low, grey granite water table. The centered entrance has slightly-recessed wood-and-glass double-doors below a rounded, green canvas canopy extending out over the sidewalk, topped by carved drapery and a wrought-iron railing below the 2nd-floor window. On either side are two single-windows in black metal framing, a secondary entrance with a wooden door in a stone molding, another single-window, and paired windows in the end bays (the westernmost window is replaced by a gated service entrance. There is a small rosette above both secondary entrances and the bays on either side.

The upper floors have nine single-windows in the middle, and double-window end bays. There is a projecting terra-cotta surround at the center bay on the 2nd floor, with a patterned inner molding and a winged cherub head on top, surmounted by a peaked pediment broken by a block with a small rosette. A stone band course underlines the 5th floor, interrupted by projecting terra-cotta surrounds at the center bay and 2nd single-window bays from each end; they all have iron railings between the ends of the surrounds that extend down below the band course, and scrolled keystones topped by winged cherub heads that break cornices. The other windows all have simple stone sills, and some protruding air-conditioning units dot the facade.

The 14th-15th floors have projecting surrounds at these three bays, with scrolls framing the 14th-floor surrounds; these also have scrolled keystones. The 15th-floor surrounds are flanked by paneled pilasters, topped by peaked pediments broken by winged cherubs. The 15th-floor roof line has wrought-iron parapets between the pediments, and the end bays are topped by large cartouches. The 16th floor is set back, and there is a water tower at the rear of the roof.

There is a bay of single-windows at the front edge of the west elevation, and a light well farther back lined with single- and triple-windows. The east elevation has a single-window bay centered on the front section, and a similar light well in the middle.

The building was converted to a co-op in 1982, with 60 apartments.

hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015012245042?urlappend=%3Bseq...