Kenmore Hall

USA / New Jersey / West New York / East 23rd Street, 145
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217-foot, 22-story Art-Deco residential building completed in 1929 as a single-room occupancy hotel. Designed by Maurice Deutsch, it opened with 600 rooms. By the late 1970s, the hotel was rather dilapidated. In 1985 the hotel was purchased by a Vietnamese hotel operator, and a period of decline between 1985 and 1994 in which crime and related illegal activities spiked at the hotel led to the June 1994 seizure of the building by the United States Marshal Service. Five years after the seizure in 1999, after undergoing a complete gut-renovation, the building was re-opened as a 326-unit supportive housing development by the New York City based non-profit organization Housing and Services, Inc.

The facade is clad in brown brick with a 2-story limestone base. The main entrance is centered, with aluminum-framed glass double-doors below a metal-and-glass canopy. To either side are two storefronts with plate-glass windows. The upper floors have a center bay with a single-window (double-window at the 2nd floor) and two outer bays with a small bathroom window flanked by a single-window on either side. The double-window at the middle of the 2nd floor has an angular stone surround with incised geometric patterns. The upper floors have brick window lintels, and continuous stone sills across the middle and outer bays; the other two bays have sills only the width of the single-windows (the smaller windows have brick sills). A stone band course runs below the 4th floor. At the outer bays, the spandrels between floors have patterns of raised bricks.

The middle bays set back above the 17th floor, and the end bays above the 18th, with shallow terraced setbacks at the top floors. There is a stone diamond ornament and peaked coping at the first setback of the middle bay. Each setback at the middle at end bays has geometric limestone capitals topping the piers.

The east elevation is clad in lighter brick and has a light well in the middle, where the only windows are. Steel cross-braces span the light well every two floors. Besides the lobby, the ground floor is occupied by Manhattan Carpet & Floor.
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Coordinates:   40°44'22"N   73°59'2"W
This article was last modified 12 months ago