Centro Maria Women's Residence (New York City, New York)

 interesting place, communal house, housing services

4-story Gothic-Revival residential/service building completed in 1911 as the St. Ambrose Catholic Church. Designed by John V. Van Pelt, the former church building is now occupied by Centro Maria Residence, which provides care and a temporary, transitional home for women from different countries that come to work or to study in New York. It also provides information, referrals and assistance in job placement for the young women who stay there and celebrates Mass in its chapel. The institution was founded in 1920 and run by the Sisters of Mary Immaculate. The old church was disbanded in 1938.

The facade is clad in dark-red brick with beige limestone trim. The double-height ground floor is highlighted by a central pointed-arch,with a tripartite arrangement of doors - a modern metal-and-glass double-door and sidelights fills the wider middle space, with original wood-and-iron doors at the sides. A rounded, green canvas canopy extends from the main door out over the sidewalk. Above, the stone arch is filled by a row of four trefoils, a round stained-glass window, and is edged in small roundels, with a point at the apex that is topped by a niche at the 2nd floor with a small statue of St. Ambrose; the niche is crowned by a crocketed finial. To either side and lower - interrupting a band that underlines the 2nd floor - are a pair of similar niches with statues. Both ends of the ground floor are slightly recessed and have a smaller pointed-arch with secondary entrances. They have metal doors below a pair of trefoils and a quatrefoil arranged within the arch, topped by Gothic crosses. In between the center arch and the end arches, each side has two bays of single-windows with stone pointed-arches (with trefoils) on top, and another bay with double-windows topped by matching arches. There are basement entries set in stone surrounds below the double-window bays. Above each of these six bays is a round oculus window, aligned with the slightly-larger stained-glass window in the main arch.

The 2nd & 3rd floors have six bays of double-windows in the middle, grouped into pairs. They have iron mullions and brick surrounds with decorative stone corners. The recessed end bays have paired single-windows with the same surrounds. A stone band decorated with brick crosses sets off the 4th floor, which has three groups of four smaller windows in the middle section and smaller paired windows in the end bays, also with brick surrounds. The thin brick piers that frame the ends of the center section at the 2nd-4th floors has an overlying design of darker brick in criss-cross pattern. The facade is topped by a stone cornice and brick parapet (at the ends), with a stone parapet extending higher at the center section. The center of this middle section slopes to a gentle point, filled by 13 arched niches formed by small colonnettes and topped by a large stone cross. The outer two parts of the middle section's parapet are flat, with panels of quatrefoils. Four large stone posts with shields and peaked tops frame these three parapet sections.

The side elevations of the building are plain, parged brick.

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