The Christopher Residence - Common Ground (New York City, New York) | interesting place, apartment building, housing services

 interesting place, apartment building, housing services

112-foot, 10-story French Renaissance style residential building originally completed in 1904 as the New York YMCA headquarters. Designed by Parish & Schroeder and A.R. Whitney, Jr. & Co., the building was renamed in 1941 in honor of Robert Ross McBurney, an Irish immigrant who served as head of the citywide YMCA organization in the late 19th century. It provided affordable accommodations for single working men, low-income individuals and merchant seamen, and was later immortalized in the song “YMCA” by the Village People.

Common Ground, a social service agency, agreed to take over the residence building in 2004. It is now known as The Christopher, and provides 207 units of permanent supportive housing for low-income and formerly homeless adults and people living with AIDS. Visually, the main entrance to the former McBurney Y building on 23rd Street is dominated by a huge sign for the Crunch gym. The gym has been there since 2014; previously, it was the David Barton gym, famed for its celebrities and its nightclub-like ambience. The residential entrance to The Christopher is on the 24th Street side of the building.

The north facade on 24th Street consists of two parts, with the narrower, 3-bay section at the east end just slightly set back from the west section; it extends back and wraps around a courtyard formed between the two sections. The north facade is clad in red brick above a 2-story base (three stories at the eastern section due to shorter floor heights in the base) of rusticated beige brick (and a limestone ground floor at the east section). The west section has a substantial granite water table at the base, rounded at the top, with an entrance portico at both ends. These both have recessed wood-and-glass double-doors and arched transoms, framed by a wave molding topped by a large scrolled keystone with hanging bellflowers descending both sides. These are in turn framed by banded piers (with decorative ribbons and a small flower at each band); between the tops of the piers is a panel reading YMCA, framed by various floral ornament and scrolls, and surmounted by a cornice with copper cresting along the top. Above each entrance is a double-window, and between them are three large bays of double-height round-arches with tripartite windows. These windows have reddish-brown wooden framing and pale-green copper spandrel panels between the floors that are decorated with egg-and-dart moldings around the outer panels and the YMCA seal at the center panels, as well as thin copper colonnettes separating the panes of the tripartite windows and running the full height of the arched bays. Wall sconces are mounted on the piers between these bays and around the entrances. The east section has three bays of paired windows at the ground floor, with gridded iron grilles and stone pilasters between the windows; a basement areaway in front is enclosed by a wrought-iron fence. The ground floor here is capped by a stone cornice, and the 2nd & 3rd levels have a double-window bay flanked by a pair of single-windows with splayed brick lintels. The base is capped by a stone band course.

The 3rd floor of the west section has five bays of double-windows with brick surrounds and limestone keystones, and above are three bays of small paired windows alternating with two bays of single-windows. The upper floors of the east section have a center bay of paired windows and single-window end bays. Both sections have brick quoins at the edges of the upper floors. The 10th floor of the north facade is set off by a cornice and has a cross-hatch pattern in the brickwork. The facade is crowned by a projecting, green copper roof cornice with dentils and brackets alternating with panels of rosettes on the soffit (underside).

The south facade on 23rd Street is also clad in red brick, above a 3-story limestone base. The building is dominated by the 2-story entrance portico at the center, with two sets of double-doors and a large fanlight atop a set of stone steps, flanked by polished granite columns on pedestal bases, supporting an entablature carved with the words "YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION", and surmounted by a modillioned cornice. To either side are three bays of single-windows (short at the ground floor and taller on the 2nd floor), with flat stone piers between them, and paneled stone spandrels between the floors. The outer bay at each end is replaced at the ground floor by a glass door set a few steps down from the sidewalk, and the base is capped by a stone band. The 3rd floor is banded stone and has five bays of double-windows; the center bay has a stone surround rising up from the entablature below, also framing a pair of smaller columns. Surmounting this at the 4th floor is a stone surround for the center-bay window, with scrolled ends, scalloped pilasters, a wrought-iron balcony railing, and a crowning rounded pediment with an escutcheon.

The rest of the bays at the 4th-8th floors (five per floor) have double-windows with brick surrounds and limestone keystones; the 5th floor has taller windows with an extra horizontal upper pane. The 8th-floor windows are segmental-arched, and the edges of the upper floors have brick quoins. The 9th floor is set off by a string course and has paired round-arched windows grouped together under larger round-arches with roundel windows. The bays are separated by smaller brick piers with Corinthian capitals. The 10th floor is set back, faced in plain white stucco with two triple-windows at the west end and another at the east end.