5 West 101st Street

 apartment building  Add category

5-story Romanesque/Renaissance-revival residential building completed in 1924. Designed by Oscar Goldschlag, it is the middle of three matching tenements completed together. The facade is clad in reddish-brown brick with white-painted limestone and terra-cotta trim. The central entrance is atop a stoop of grey granite steps and thick sidewalls. The entrance has a steel-framed glass door and sidelight below an arched transom and covered by a rounded, red canvas canopy extending out over the stoop, and the doorway is framed by two pairs of pilasters with foliate ornament and stylized Ionic capitals, supporting an entablature with an egg-and-dart molding along its base, a frieze of shells, flowers, and ribbons, and a larger molding across the top. The ground floor is banded with stone and has white-painted stone at the base. There is a double-window on either side of the center bay, with stone surrounds, and at the left is a metal staircase down to a basement entry below the former stoop. Large stone quoins line the edges of the ground floor.

The upper floors have terra-cotta quoins at the edges, each consisting of an elaborate cartouche and scrolls, alternating with thin brick banding across the 2nd floor, and with narrower, plain stone quoins at the 3rd-5th floors. The upper floors have four bays of windows, with the outer bays evenly divided into two panes by black iron mullions, while the inner bays have unequal-width panes. The 2nd floor has terra-cotta surrounds with egg-and-dart moldings, and short bands of egg-and-dart trios crossing the sides of the surrounds. They are topped by elaborately-ornamented splayed keystones. A stone band course with a Greek fret motif sets off the 3rd floor, which has hooded terra-cotta lintels on the windows, with small console brackets and cornices. The top two floors have projecting stone sills, and the 4th floor also has hooded lintels, topped by rounded pediments with small cartouches. The top floor has round-arched openings with intricate terra-cotta voussoirs, including elaborate keystones and imposts. A white metal fire escape runs down the middle two bays of the facade, which is crowned by a white metal roof cornice with modillions, dentils, and a frieze with foliate ornament.