St. Columba School (New York City, New York)

 church, school

5-story Neo-Gothic school building completed in 1909, replacing an earlier building from 1856. It is attached to and run by the St. Columbia Catholic Church. Designed by Thomas Henry Poole, the facade is clad in beige brick with terra-cotta trim. There are two wide bays at the middle, followed to either side by a narrow bay, another wide bay, and narrow end bays. At the ground floor, the outer wide bays both have entrances with brown metal double-doors, approached by a set of white stone steps with sidewalls that curve inward as they ascend. In between them is a white metal fence that fronts the basement level, which has some large windows.

The narrow bays on either side of the entrances have small windows with 3-over-2 panes in thin, white wooden framing. The 2nd floor has shorter, pointed-arch windows. The two middle bays at the 1st floor have wide windows of six round-arched panes with half-quatrefoils on top; the framing is also white-painted wood. At each bay the lower two floors are separated by terra-cotta panels of Gothic ormanent with square panels of flowers in the middles. The 2nd floor has more 6-pane windows in the four wide bays, but these are topped by arches with tracery and terra-cotta voussoirs, topped by bulbs of fruit ornament. A terra-cotta band with floral patterns runs across the facade, with square flower panels at the base of each arch.

The 3rd-4th floors are set off by a pair of thin terra-cotta bands. These are intersected by vertical, slender terra-cotta colonnettes at each pier, originating at flowery bases below the lower band. The colonnettes extend up to terra-cotta pointed-arches above the 4th-floor windows. The wide bays have triple-windows further subdivided into smaller panes; the 3rd floor has additional upper panes with a cross-hatch framing pattern, and the 4th-floor windows are topped by tracery below the arches. Terra-cotta spandrels between these floors have square flower panels, each set in a larger square of geometric patterning that resembles petals.

The top floor is clad in terra-cotta, with the colonnettes from below expanding into engaged, semi-octagonal pillars. These extend into a terra-cotta roof parapet with crenelations, and - at the two outer wide bays - trios of panels with shields.

In 2006, the Archdiocese of New York closed the school.