4 West 109th Street

USA / New Jersey / Edgewater / West 109th Street, 4
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6-story Neo-Renaissance cooperative-apartment building originally completed in 1890 as two separate buildings to the same design as those to the west and lining Manhattan Avenue on this block. These two were later sold separately from the rest of the group and joined internally, with the former entrances converted to windows and a new entrance created in between them. The facade is clad in dark-red and grey brick with white terra-cotta trim above a rusticated, cream-colored limestone ground floor. A narrow groove on the upper floors divides the original two buildings. The current entrance is below and just to the left of it.

The entrance has a cream-colored metal-and-glass door and sidelight below a peaked, green canvas canopy extending out over the sidewalk. The facade is fronted by black iron fencing to either side. The low stoops that fronted the original entrances have been partially filled by planter boxes, but their sidewalls remain. A wide single-window has been inserted into the former doorways, which are topped by cartouches framed by scrolled brackets supporting projecting sections of the cornice that caps the ground floor. Between the east former entrance bay and the new entrance is a double-window, and between the west former entrance and the new one is a singe-window and double-window. To the outside of the former entrance bays are a double-window and single-window on both sides. All the ground-floor windows have scrolled keystones (excepting those inserted into the former entrances).

The upper floors have four middle bays of single-windows with terra-cotta surrounds on the 2nd-5th floors (with the groove dividing the two original halves down the middle). Farther outside are two bays of narrower single-windows, and then two outer bays of single-windows matching those in the middle, for a total of 12 bays. The surrounds are all beveled, with inner bead moldings bordered by larger egg-and-dart moldings. Those on the 2nd floor have slender scrolled brackets and cornices with tiny dentils. On the 3rd-5th floors they have ribbed sills with corbeled brackets, organic patterned banding, and organic patterned splayed upper blocks with scrolled keystones wrapped with garlands. The narrower windows have simple splayed lintels with flat keystones. The top floor has brick banding and no trim around the windows, and is topped by a roof parapet of brighter brick with a random pattern of grey brick, capped by a metal coping. There is a row of small vents along the parapet. There are two black iron fire escape, located above the former entrance bays.

The building was converted to a co-op in 1981, with 41 apartments.
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Coordinates:   40°48'0"N   73°57'33"W
This article was last modified 5 years ago