NYU Brittany Residence Hall

 hotel, university, dormitory, Neo-Gothic (architecture), 1929_construction

196-foot, 15-story Neo-Gothic dormitory for NYU students, completed in 1929 as an apartment-hotel known as The Brittany for Henry Mandel. Designed by Farrar & Watmough, the building was completely renovated in 2001 and 2013, and serves first-year NYU students. It is roughly L-shaped, with a white-painted stone ground floor and red brick above, with white stone and terra-cotta detailing. It housed a speakeasy in the penthouse. Although renovated over time, false walls can still be seen behind empty bookshelves.

The south facade on 10th Street is 13 bays wide, while the Broadway frontage has four bays. At the ground floor, the openings are segmental-arched on Broadway. On 10th Street, there is a recessed segmental-arched entrance near the west end, three segmental-arched windows at the east end, several square-headed openings, and a central Gothic-arched window that was originally the main entrance. The ground floor is capped by a stone band course with diamond-shaped rosette forms.

The brick upper floors have 2- and 3-paned casement windows, plus one bay of single windows at the second-from-the-east bay on 10th Street. This bay, as well as the second-from-the-west bay (above the entrance), and the two middle bays on Broadway, are clad in carved stone at the 2nd & 3rd floors, with Gothic detailing and a Gothic-arch at the 3rd-floor window, with four spires rising onto the brick facing of the 4th floor. The brick spandrels between the 3rd & 4th floors have criss-cross patterns of darker brick. Stone quoins marks the edges of the 2nd-4th floors, as well as framing alternating bays of windows. At the southeast corner of the building, a rope molding continues up past the quoins, all the way to the top.

The mid-section is plainer, with the only ornament consisting of three alternating bays at the center of the south elevation being framed by 45-degree projecting vertical bands, and having carved terra-cotta spandrels between the floors. The far west bay steps back above the 11th floor. The top two floors repeat the stone quoins and Gothic details seen at the 2nd-3rd floors. The upper walls facing the interior of the block are clad in plain brown brick, with several bays of single windows.

The Brittany Residence Hall houses 579 first-year students.

usmodernist.org/PA/PP-1931-01.pdf
gvshp.org/blog/2013/04/22/nyu-renovation-tosses-archite...