Hotel 57

 hotel, high-rise, 1922_construction, Renaissance Revival (architecture)

www.hotel57.com/

222-foot, 17-story Renaissance-revival hotel completed in 1922. Designed by Arthur Loomis Harmon, it opened as the Allerton House Hotel for Women. The hotel now also incorporates the 6-story building at the corner, which it was originally built around. The facades are clad in dark-red brick with terra-cotta trim; there is a pattern of projecting bricks across the facades.

The main entrance is in the westernmost of three large bays on 57th Street, with glass doors. A large, ribbed metal canopy with a sweeping, undulating front covers the entrance as well as the west end bay, which has another glass door flanked by two square poster boxes with stainless-steel frames. A third poster box is located to the left of the main doors. The other two main bays have glass-and-metal infill. At the 2nd floor the three main bays are round-arched, with tripartite windows that have wrought-iron screens over their upper sections within the tops of the arches. At their bases are slightly-protruding, rounded, grey metal balconies with ribbed metal-and-glass railings. Three flagpoles project from the piers to the right of each arch, and there is a single-window at the two end bays.

The east facade on the avenue also has three large round-arched bays flanked by single-windows at the 2nd floor; the ground floor is lined with metal-and-glass storefronts, with a service entrance at the south end. Instead of balconies, these arched bays have terra-cotta spandrels below them.

The upper floors have paired windows in the three middle bays and single-windows in the end bays. The stone sills are joined across the paired windows in the middle bays at the 3rd floor, with carved lion heads below the middle of the sills. Dark-red metal air-conditioning vents have been cut below some of the windows. In each of the middle bays, the two columns of windows are slightly recessed. Below some of the windows are decorative geometric patterns of stone. The middle bays set back above the 14th floors, and the end bays extend to the 16th floor. The setback at the middle bays is marked by stone balustrades between the piers. The 16th floor is capped by a corbel course and stone coping. The walls that wrap around the 6-story corner building both have a bay of single-windows on the upper floors.

The north facade matches the design of the east facade. The 17th floor, at the north end, is topped by a low-sloped tile roof. Behind it rises a 3-story mechanical penthouse with patterned brickwork. The west elevation has a narrow light well, with three bays of single-windows on either side of it, and two bays of single-windows at the rear, west-facing wall of the light well. The side walls of the light well have three bays of single-windows.

The 6-story corner building is clad in a lighter shade of brick, with a painted stone ground floor that is partially recessed; a column at the corner supports the floors above. The ground floor has a glass storefront and metal service door. The upper floors have three bays on each facade, with round-arched windows at the 2nd floor. The 3rd floor is covered on both facades by metal signage for the hotel. The 6th floor is capped by a projecting, white metal cornice with narrow brackets. The ground floor of the hotel along the avenue is occupied by My Pie Pizzeria Romano, Subway sandwiches, Lex Smoke & Vape, Currency Exchange, and General Nutrition Center.