1 Lexington Avenue (New York City, New York)

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145-foot, 12-story (plus basement) Italian-Renaissance cooperative-apartment building completed in 1911. Designed by Herbert N. Lucas, it is clad in buff-colored ironspot brick above a 2-story limestone base, including basement, which is mostly above street level and behind iron fences. The basement level fencing is interrupted on Lexington Avenue by a wide, low set of steps and a portico with four Ionic columns that carry a dentiled entablature at the 2nd floor that forms a balustraded balcony. Between the columns, the entrance white wood-paneled sidelights and a wide, arched transom framing an opening into a portico of additional steps up and back to the main doors and marble lobby beyond. At the base, the basement and 1st-floor windows are square-headed, and the 2nd-floor windows are
round-arched. The west facade on the avenue has six single-windows in the middle (with the middle two replaced by the entry at the ground floor), followed to each side by a trio of windows, and end bays of wider single-windows. The four arched windows above the portico on the 2nd floor are embellished with finely carved garlands of fruit. The base is topped by a band course with dentils framed by two moldings.

The 3rd floor is topped by a simpler stone band course, and the upper floors have splayed brick lintels with scrolled keystones. The middle of the 4th floor has a projecting balcony carried on large stone brackets, with a wrought-iron railing. Two additional balconies front the trios of windows on the 8th floor. The 10th floor has round-arched windows with keystones, with a band course below, and above there is a dentiled band underlining a projecting balcony that spans the full width of the 11th floor. The 12th floor has a small, simple balcony at the north end bay, and the facade is crowned by a green metal roof cornice with alternating modillions and rosettes on the underside, and a row of dentils.

The smaller south facade has four bays of paired windows, two in the middle and one at each end. There are also narrow windows in between the middle and end bays on several of the floors, but most of these on the east side have been filled in. A wide balcony spans the middle bays at the 4th and 8th floors, with the 11th floor continuing the balcony from the west facade, which wraps around the corner. The roof cornice also continues onto this facade. The building contains 27 apartments.

www.beyondthegildedage.com/2012/10/1-lexington-avenue.h...