Polish Consulate General of New York City (New York City, New York)

 consulate / consular section / consul residence, Art Nouveau / Jugendstil (architecture), NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, interesting place, historic landmark, Beaux-Arts (architecture)

5.5-story Beaux-Arts consulate building completed in 1907 as a mansion for industrialist Joseph R. DeLamar. Designed by C. P. H. Gilbert, it marked a stark departure from Gilbert's traditional style of French Gothic architecture and was instead robustly Beaux-Arts, heavy with rusticated stonework, balconies and a colossal mansard roof.

The main facade and entrance face 37th Street, where it is designed in a tripartite division both horizontally and vertically. The vertical division is the dominant one, reinforced by projecting end pavilions. The horizontal division is created by a wide, smooth-faced, molded band course above the ground floor and by the roof cornice above the 3rd floor. The first three floors display a careful balance of elements while the upper two floors introduce an asymmetrical composition. The sense of asymmetry and height are further emphasized by the continuation of the rustication of the lower floors up into the 4th floor of the western pavilion, giving it a tower-like appearance.

The major windows of the first three floors are paired, with the exception of those on the recessed section of the Madison Avenue facade. All have smooth-faced enframements which provide contrast with the rusticated wall surfaces. At the 2nd floor of the end pavilions, tall paired windows with wide stone mullions and transom bars are set behind balustrades supported on massive console brackets which are decorated with classical swags. Over the windows are dentiled cornices carried on console brackets that are extended up to serve as sills for the 3rd-floor windows, uniting them vertically. The windows of the 3rd floor have handsome ornamented, curved transom bars. Above the 3rd floor is a dentiled and modillioned cornice carried on massive, paired console brackets at the corners.

One of the most impressive elements of the mansion is the recessed entrance facade. The double oak doors are flanked by engaged columns and sidelights ornamented with bronze grillework, all set within the outer enframements. A lintel decorated with cherubs, resting above a foliate cartouche, surmounts the doorway. Between the cherubs is a decorated urn, and a rectangular transom behind them lights the entrance hall. A stone balcony carried on vertical console brackets crowns the doorway, and two flagpoles project from the balcony. Behind this balcony is an imposing elliptical arched window with French doors. Curved brackets and a keystone are swept up from the top of the arch to carry a wrought-iron balcony at the 3rd-floor paired window.

On the 37th Street facade, the 4th & 5th floors of the central section and the eastern pavilion are generally similar, although their design is quite different from that of the higher tower-like western pavilion where the 4th floor is rusticated and pierce by a tripartite window. By contrast, at the 4th floor, the central section and the eastern pavilion are smooth-faced. The central section has a semi-dormer window which rises up above the smooth-faced wall and has an elaborate round-arched pediment. It is flanked by two small, narrow windows with cornice slabs set in the front wall. The eastern pavilion has a double dormer window with a segmental-arch that is crowned by a very deep arched pediment with a central scroll motif. The slate-and-cooper mansard roof rises from mid-height of the 4th floor of these sections, while the mansard roof of the western tower begins at the 5th-floor level. Small round-arched dormers mark the 5th floor of the central section and eastern pavilion. The towering mansard roof of the western pavilion is pierced by a central, square-headed dormer window, on each exposed side, crowned by a pediment similar to the one above the recessed central portion. The lines of the mansard are emphasized by copper crestings decorated with shell motifs.

Joseph Raphael De Lamar was a Dutch-born merchant seaman who made his first fortune in mining and metallurgy during the 1870s-80s silver-lead rushes to Colorado and Idaho, and 1890s gold strikes at Mercur, Utah and Delamar, Nevada. It was to be a family residence, but soon after it was built De Lamar and his wife divorced. The 1910 census taker found De Lamar in residence with his daughter Alice, by then 15, and nine servants, a typical ratio for the time. De Lamar died eight years later in 1918 at the age of 75. He left an estate worth $29 million to his daughter, who continued living in the house for a short time before moving to an apartment at 740 Park Avenue. The mansion was sold to the American Bible Society, and in 1923 the National Democratic Club purchased it for its headquarters. In 1973, the Republic of Poland bought the mansion for $900,000 to house its Consulate General in New York. Since 2008 the consulate has also been regularly illuminated at night.

www.polishconsulateny.org/

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