Sherman Square Studios | apartment building

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145-foot, 14-story Neo-Gothic/Art-Deco residential building completed in 1929. Designed by Tillion & Tillion, it is clad in orange-and-brown brick above a 2-story base of pale orange stone. The symmetrical facade has a central entrance with wooden double-doors below a peaked, green canvas canopy extending out over the sidewalk. To either side the ground floor is fronted by shrubbery and a low iron fence, except at the very ends. The ground floor has six window bays to the east of the entry and five to the west, with a service entrance's metal door at the west end. The 2nd floor has a statue of a crouching pipe player above the entrance, flanked by two small windows and two larger, pointed-arch windows. To either side is a bay of three pointed-arch windows, a single-pointed-arch windows, and end bays also with three pointed-arch windows. These all have angled sills. The base is capped by a simple band course.

The brick upper floors have six bays of narrow single-windows in the middle, flanked by wide bays of four joined windows, another bay of even narrower single-windows, and wide end bays of four windows. Each bay is separated by slightly-projecting pilasters, and the windows have simple stone sills. All four wide bays are topped by arched terra-cotta "eyebrows" at the 9th floor, where there is a setback. The double pilasters framing the very narrow bays, and at the ends, are crowned by finials rising above the setback. The center bays continue straight up to another setback above the 12th floor, where a very wide arch is described above the windows and between the piers, which also extend to finials above the setback. The outer bays mirror those on the floors below, except that the very narrow windows are shifted toward the center, and the inner wide bays is reduced to double-windows. The end bays have more eyebrows at the 12th floor, where they also set back. Flanking the center section at the top floor are terra-cotta and brick flying buttresses with finials.

The building was built as studios to serve musicians and artists, combining living and working space. For soundproofing, not only were the dividing walls doubled and insulated, but the studios were separated from the living quarters in abutting apartments by waiting rooms, pantries, bathrooms, and similar spaces.

It contains 148 apartment units.

usmodernist.org/AMAR/AMAR-1929-12-2.pdf