Friends Seminary - Upper School (New York City, New York)

 school, interesting place, Art Deco (architecture)

5-story Art-Deco/Neo-Classical school originally completed in 1880 as the German Masonic Temple. Designed by Arthur M. Thom, a member of the firm Thom & Wilson, it originally had a Queen Anne-style facade of brick and stone. In the basement were a restaurant and dining hall, the ground floor held a lecture room, 28 by 62 feet, and the 2nd and 3rd floors contained lodge rooms. The 4th floor held a smaller lodge room and the janitor's apartment.

The building was significantly altered in 1936 in a massive remodeling project designed by architects Louis Almendinger and M. Allen Schlendorf. The entrance was lowered to street level and a 2-part facade was applied over the original. The lower two floors were given a classical Greek temple front. Four double-height Doric columns uphold a substantial entablature. In the middle, the entrance has bronze double-doors in a surround topped by a scrolled pediment with an urn. There is a narrow window on either side at the ground floor (with criss-cross iron grilles), and a fence in front of the property, with a gate at the east side, where stairs descend to the basement. The 2nd floor has a double-window in the center bay and single-windows in the end bays.

The disparate upper floors are faced in gray cast stone, with a sleek Art Deco design. There are three bays of single-windows grouped closer together than the windows on the lower floors. 2-story fluted piers separate them at the 4th-5th floors, and at the bases of the 3rd-floor windows are geometric spandrels and a band with a Greek fret pattern running below. A flagpole projects from the top of the 3rd floor. The top of the facade has three garlands and a simple roof line with a shell at each end.

In 1997 the temple was bought by Friends Seminary to relocate some of its upper-school classes. A renovation into classrooms by Anderson Architects was completed in 1998.

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