The Westside Y (New York City, New York)

 Romanesque (architecture), clubhouse, apartment hotel / serviced apartment, interesting place

180-foot, 14-story Romanesque Revival club and apartment hotel completed in 1930. Designed by Dwight James Baum as the Frederick Henry Cossitt Dormitory of the Young Men's Christian Association, it is clad in variegated reddish-brown brick above a 2-story limestone base, and has rich polychrome terra-cotta ornament.

On the 63rd Street side, the tapestry brickwork of Baum's Y is like a castellated Italian hill town, with towers, battlements and balconies rising in irregular sympathy, culminating in a huge, central tower with an octagonal roof. The symmetrical base has a white-painted water table with a rounded molding across the top. There are two nearly-matching main entrances, set in recessed, double-height round-arches lined with intricate and colorful terra-cotta. They have short sets of steps narrowing up to the wood-and-glass double-doors, above which are wrought-iron medieval-looking light fixtures on antler-like brackets. Angling back along the edges of the archways are rows or five thin, rounded and colored columns; above their capitals are carved figures and then an array of various moldings across the tops of the arches. Between a round-arched window at the 2nd floor and the doors below, there is a projecting panel carried on four brackets, with organic geometric patterns and an owl perched at both corners. The only difference between the entrances is the east one having an extra set of thin columns at the front edge; these are topped by seated lions where the arch begins.

Between the entrances there are three small, square-headed windows with iron grilles at the ground floor, and two larger round-arched windows at the 2nd floor, with brackets sills and elaborate colorful terra-cotta moldings. To the outer sides of the entrances there are three more of these windows at the 2nd floor, and shorter round-arches at the ground floor that each contain three narrow arched windows separated by slender colonnettes. The end bays have a smaller arched opening at the ground floor, filled by two narrow arched windows, and the 2nd floor has a small square-headed window above a vent and bracketed sill. The base is capped by a simple dentiled cornice.

The 3rd & 4th floors have three bays of paired casement windows to the outside of the entrance bays, with 4-over-2 panes in black metal framing. The end bays, faced in stone at the 3rd-4th floors instead of the brick seen on the rest of the upper floors, also have 4-over-2 windows with notched upper corners, with tall terra-cotta spandrels between them, filled by diamond patterns. The inner edge of the stone cladding is keyed and there is a slightly-projecting end pier. The end bays set back above the 4th floor, capped by terra-cotta cornices. The center bay of the 2nd floor has three small round-arched windows, and the bays above the entrances have paired, square-headed openings with metal louvers. The 3rd floor has a wide row of brick buttresses across the three middle bays, angling out towards the tops. Recessed below and between each buttress is a narrow round-arched window at the 3rd floor. At the 4th floor the projecting middle section carried by the buttresses has trios of pointed-arched openings that front the windows behind them at the bays above the entrances. These projecting sections set back above the 4th floor here, and at the base of the 4th floor in the center bay. The outer three western bays have single-windows at the 5th-7th floors, with the inner of these extending up to another trio of arches at the 8th floor - the outer arches here are blind openings, and there is a window in the middle. Small cornices cap the setback here and below at the 7th floor. In the center section of the south facade, set far back from the lower floors, there are two bays of single-windows, the west out projecting a small way out and ending in an octagonal tower at the 12th floor; both of the 12th-floor windows here are arched. Between these two bays there is a pair of round-arched windows at the 9th floor, fronted by a small balcony, and there is a narrow slit window at center of the 11th floor. The outer three eastern bays also have single-windows at the 5th & 6th floors, but differs from the western side above. There is a setback above the 6th floor, with two projecting, medieval balconies, and another on the angled inner side wall of the 6th-7th floor. At the inner part of the east wing, the 7th floor has an octagonal tower with a round-arched window on its front, and square-headed windows on the angled facets; it is topped by a low-sloped tile roof. The rest of the east wing is set back to the level of the center bays, and has three bays of single-windows at the 8th-12th floors. The east wing ends in a corbel course, with a shorter row of corbels across the top of the center bay. The south facade is crowned by an octagonal tower in the center, at the top two floors. Its south-facing facet has a double-height round-arch with three round-arched windows. The columns framing the windows have stylized capitals and there is elaborate terra-cotta ornament within and around the arch. The two angled facet have oculus windows, and the tower is capped by a corbelled terra-cotta cornice with a low-sloped red tile roof. The west and east wings also have tile roofs.

The entire building is divided into three main wings (south, middle, and north), joined by low-rise floors in between and a connecting wing on the west side. The middle wing and inward-facing walls of the other wings are obviously not as decorated as the main facades that face the streets, and have many single-windows. Only the south wing rises to 14 floors, topped by its octagonal tower; the others are all 12 stories tall.

On the 64th Street side, Baum lit the gymnasiums with a set of giant arcaded leaded glass windows above a tightly designed limestone base with few windows. The end bays have recessed metal service doors at the ground floor, with narrow single-windows at the 2nd floor, above small square vents. In between the 2nd floor has nine bays with small, circular openings with leaded glass in the eastern two and metal louvers in the rest. All of them are encircled by extravagant colored designs including flowers and animals. Below each of these circular openings the ground floor has larger round-arched windows behind green metal grilles. The exception are the 3rd & 4th bays from the east, which are combined into a main entrance with wood-and-glass double-doors set in a large round-arch with a veritable explosion of terra-cotta color in very intricate designs. Among the side panels framing the doors are stylized baseball, football, golf and tennis players included in the abundance of ornament. The centerpiece of the entrance is the round panel beneath the apex of the arch - a stunning medallion of St. George slaying the dragon. The doorway is a little bit above the sidewalk level, with a black metal landing approached by a metal ramp on the lamp and a couple steps on the right. Across the top of the base are carved the words "THE FREDERICK HENRY COSSITT DORMITORY".

The balcony above the 3rd floor combines with the small window openings on the lower to produce a fortified, even military air. The arcade of buttresses is similar to the one on the south facade, with narrow rounded windows of stained-glass in between them. Above the balcony are three bays of double-height triple-windows below round-arches. They are separated by slender colonnettes with stylized capitals, with lions' heads above the outer ones. Round openings are centered within the tops of the arches, and splayed decorative panels line the outer edge of the arches, crowned by another lion head. There are two small, much shorter segmental-arched windows between the three arches. A cornice like the one on the south facade caps this elevation, just above a series of projecting water spouts with carved faces. The upper floors of the north wing are set back above the gymnasium, clad in brown brick with a bay of three single-windows in the center, flanked by two bays of paired windows and single-windows in the end bays.

The West Side YMCA first opened in 1896 on West 57th Street at Eighth Avenue, constructed on a site that Cornelius and William H. Vanderbilt purchased for $165,000 at the time. It became the first general YMCA to offer a dormitory wing, and the branch also boasted separate facilities for boys and men, and included gyms, swimming pools, and bowling alleys. Although a 300 bed residence was added to this Eighth Avenue location in 1912, the branch was relocated to nearby Central Park West in 1930, to its current location. At the time of its construction, the West Side YMCA was structurally the largest YMCA building in the world.

The new Y, planned for 10,000 members, had two swimming pools surrounded with polychrome tile by the Guastavino Fireproof Tile Co., three gyms, six handball courts and facilities for boxing, wrestling, fencing and other sports. Upstairs were classrooms, a tailor shop, barber shop, massage room, lockers, and, beginning on the 5th floor, rooms renting for as low as $5.50 a week.

daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-west-side-ym...
archive.org/details/newyork1930archi0000ster/page/196/m...
usmodernist.org/AF/AF-1930-08-1.pdf
usmodernist.org/AM/AM-1931-04.pdf
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