438 West 44th Street (New York City, New York)

 apartment building  Add category

5-story residential building originally completed as a 3-story (plus raised basement) townhouse in the 1870s. Sometime after 1900 the stoop was removed and a basement entrance installed. More recently, a new parlor-floor entrance has been created, while retaining the ground-level entry by installing a wrought-iron sideways staircase and landing, as the building was split into two units. The facade is clad in red-painted brick above a brownstone ground floor (the former basement level).

The ground-floor entrance on the right has a paneled black wooden door in a white-painted stone surround below the iron landing. To the left are two windows with iron grilles, and above and between them is a stone lion's head. The new parlor-floor entrance (now the 2nd floor) has a blue wooden door in a smaller white stone surround topped by a small canopy with a steep-sloped, curving metal roof. The two single-windows to the left have flat, white stone lintels, as do the three bays of windows on the 3rd-4th floors, with thin brick sills.

Around 2000, a new floor was added to the top, with a rooftop deck and wooden pergola above that. The top floor is faced in grey stucco, with a triple-window on the left and a single-window on the right, with sloped skylights above. At the east side, there is a narrow window at the front, a brick chimney, and then a tripartite window.