The Hamilton

 apartment building  Add category

5-story Romanesque/Renaissance-revival cooperative-apartment building completed in 1890. Designed by Archibald & Jane Smith, it is clad in light-grey-painted brownstone, rough-faced and rusticated on the ground floor and basement, where it is painted a darker grey. At the center, a small, brown-painted stone stoop has low sidewalls with whimsical carved lions at the bases, topped by simple iron handrails. The stoop leads up to a doorway with a black wood-and-glass door, sidelight, and transom, flanked by carved pilasters featuring a pair of busts - one male and one female - along with grapevines and birds. The carved panel above the doorway depicts a classical, swagged-draped bowl of fruit flanked by what appears to be a disembodied jumble of thighs, calves and wings. There is a wide single-window on either side of the entry, each topped by a panel carved with a cherub among ferns and fruits. There is a simple, undecorated panel below each window, and then basement areaways. The ground floor is capped by a dentiled cornice.

The upper floors have four bays of single-windows with full enframements that have brackets and eared lintels with cornics. The middle bays on the 2nd floor are topped by rounded pediments, and on the 4th floor by triangular pediments, featuring carved faces and foliate ornament. A black metal fire escape runs down the middle two bays of the facade, which is crowned by a striking black metal roof cornice with fluted brackets, panels, and a peaked pediment.