Community Access Crisis Respite Center (New York City, New York)

 medical clinic, communal medical center, commercial building

4-story Anglo-Italianate residential building completed in 1853 as a townhouse. The 2-bay facade is clad in red brick above a limestone ground floor. All the openings are round-arched, except for the 4th-floor windows which are segmental-arched. The entrance on the left has a blue wood-and-glass door and sidelight below an arched fanlight, approached by a wide, 4-step stoop. There is a white iron grille on the window to the right. The windows on the upper floors grow shorter at each floor, with light-grey brick surrounds. A light-grey metal fire escape runs down the facade, which is crowned by a grey metal roof cornice with narrow brackets.

The first owner of 315 Second Avenue was Joseph McArdle. In 1865 Dr. William Edgar Stillwell purchased the house, and died in 1867, although his family remained in the Second Avenue house until the spring of 1872 when the son Dr. E. D. Stillwell sold it and all the furnishings to S.E. Goodwin. It was leased in 1885-1886 to lawyer and politician Hamilton Fish II, whose grandfather, Nicholas Fish, was a notable figure during and after the Revolution.

The house was sold in 1887 to C. A. Peabody, who resold it around 1890 to Dr. Charles E. Nammack, who had been appointed a Police Surgeon for the City of New York. He examined police officers in the office first established by William Stillwell. In 1903 Dr. Morris Gross leased the first and second floors, practicing medicine from the ground floor office and living in rented rooms upstairs. In 1952 the building was officially converted to apartments, two per floor. That configuration lasted until 1976 when it became home to the Project Contact Residence, a drug treatment and rehabilitation center. A renovation in 2007 resulted in a dining room, kitchen, reception room, and office on the ground floor, an office and lounge on the 2nd, and four 1-person bedrooms each on the 3rd and 4rth. Today it is home to Community Access, Inc.'s Crisis Respite Center, providing an alternative to hospitalization for people experiencing mental health crises.