Stella Tower

 condominium, high-rise, interesting place, Art Deco (architecture), 1930_construction

262-foot, 17-story Art-Deco residential building completed in 1930 as a telecom hotel. Designed by Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker for the New York Telephone Company, it served as a telecom hotel, housing telecommunications equipment, most recently for Verizon, before being converted to residential condominiums in 2014. The building was renamed in honor of architect Ralph Walker's wife Stella. Cetra/Ruddy was the architect for the conversion. The condominiums begin on the 10th floor, with office space for Verizon maintained on the lower floors.

The building is clad primarily in limestone and white brick, although it does have a granite water table and bronze ornament. The south facade on 50th Street has six center bays of single-windows, end bays with paired windows (and the grand main entrance at the west end), and an additional 1-story bay at the east end, where a decorative metal service door shields an alleyway. The water table increases slightly in height from east to west due to the slope of the site. The main entrance has three sets of bronze-and-glass doors (including a revovling central door) beneath a band reading "STELLA TOWER". Above the doors is a large opening with bronze and dark-glass infill in a zig-zag geometric pattern, capped at the top by angular, curtain-like stone forms. The ground floor is clad in limestone, with white brick beginning at the middle of the piers at the top of the 2nd floor, and expanding to the full facade at the 3rd floor. The ground-floor windows in the center bays have metal vents above them, and there are spandrels of alternating, elongated, opposing wedge-shapes of bronze and dark metal between the 2nd & 3rd floors within each bay. The east end bay has the same style of windows, only paired, and the spandrels here have simple, projecting and banded, angled spines, also seen above the 2nd-floor windows in the east end bay. The middle-bay spandrels between the 2nd & 3rd floors have carved stone foliate ornament in the form on hanging leaves. At the west end bay, a pair of projecting flagpoles flanks the top of the entrance, with similar carved foliate ornament above each flagpole, and spandrels above the entrance with slightly larger and more elaborate carved foliate stone.

All of the openings at the 3rd floor have metal louvers in place of windows, as do some of the other openings on the floors above. There are plain brick spandrels in the center section, with subtle vertical grooves on the piers, and angled, projecting beams running up the spandrels in the end bays, with an angled, projecting pier between the paired windows.

The center section has a setback marked by angled, projecting stone beams at the spandrels and geometric stone caps on the piers rising slightly higher, above the 6th floor; the same type of setback occurs at the end bays above the 7th floor. Additional setbacks occur at the center section above the 8th and 10th floors, except these have simpler limestone capitals. At the end bays there are setbacks above the 9th and 12th floors, with more elaborate stone spandrels above the 12th floor. The two end bays of the center section setback above the 13th floor, with the middle four setting aback above the 14th, with stone ornament at both the piers and spandrels. Above these last setbacks the symmetry ends; the west end rises up in a corner tower, with small, narrow windows at the 13th & 14th floors, and a double-height narrow windows at the 15th-16th. To the right some of the bays join into 3- or 4-pane horizontal windows, while others remain single-windows, topped by a penthouse level recessed in some areas to create terraces. At the west corner is the restored winged crown; the original was removed by Verizon in the 1950s. It is made of cast-stone, with four fluted and scalloped sides swooping up into similar rounded corners that end in gentle curves peeking up at each corner. Further back at the east side, a 2-story mechanical housing rises up from the roof, wrapped in a geometric bronze screen.

The east elevation is clad in brick, with only a couple windows at the lower floors. Beginning at the 10th floor there is a bay of paired windows near the front, followed y two bays of single-windows, and the recessed north half of the wall has a bay of single-windows and two bays of paired windows.

The north facade on 51st Street is similar to the center section of the south facade, with eight bays of single-windows. At the ground floor there is a loading dock at the extra 1-story end bay at the east. The 3rd bay from the west has a secondary entrance with a metal door, flanked by narrow windows in the next bays. Many of these openings also have metal louvers is place of windows. The east three bays set back above the 5th floor; the 4th bay from the east and the west end bays above the 6th floor, and the three remaining bays above the 7th floor. There is a full-width setback above the 8th floor and the 13th, with partial setbacks above the 12th floor at the west end bay and the four eastern bays. This creates a projecting section at the top floors, with angled corners.

The west elevation is clad in brick, extending farther to the west at the south section on 50th Street. This section has only a sole window at the 15th floor. The north face of the extending far west section has setbacks at the same levels as the south facade, only shallower. The north part of the west elevation has two bays of paired windows, and then a bay of single-windows at the 11th-13th floors only. There are terraces around the penthouse level at the north end as well.

The building contains 51 condominium units.