The blog of Mister Mo

Located on W 44th St. between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, The Algonquin Hotel is a very fine piece of architecture from the beginning of the twentieth century.

The twelve-storey building is five bays wide, with a lightly rusticated two-storey limestone base. Above it are 8 stories of brick with terra cotta trim below a projecting cornice. Two stories at the top work together to function as an attic. The ten top stories have three sash windows in the center flanked by a pair of projecting bays on each side, except for the twelfth storey where the bays are replaced with simple sash windows.

But it’s the building’s social history that distinguished it from its contemporaries. Since its opening in 1902, the Algonquin has been associated with New York’s literary and theatrical worlds. The hotel was host to such notables as Sinclair Lewis, Douglas Fairbanks, Orson Welles, and dozens of other artists. After WW I, as home to the Round Table (a daily luncheon gathering of some of the city’s brightest wits) its fame became national.

In 2008, $4,5 million interior renovation of the hotel was completed, including all of the guest rooms, the lobby, Blue Bar, and Round Table Room.

1903 Algonquin prices
– sitting room, library, dining room, 3 bedrooms, 3 baths, private hall: $10/day
– bedroom and bath: $2/day

The oldest of Brooklyn’s public buildings, the Brooklyn Borough Hall was designed by architect Gamaliel King and built between 1846 and 1851. Until Brooklyn’s consolidation into greater New York (in 1898), it served as the city hall and housed governmental and judicial offices.

Architecturally, it is one of the most splendid of the many Greek Revival buildings that sprang up in Brooklyn during its boom years. Rectangular in plan, it has two stories cadenced above and below by a high basement and a low attic. At the northern end, an imposing Greek portico, consisting of six fluted Ionic columns rising above a flight of steps, commands a view out over Cadman Plaza.

The rear and side façades echo this front porticoin low relief. The slightly projecting central bay of the sides is accentuated by pilasters between the windows, which extend the full height of the façade above the basement level. This arrangement is repeated on the two end wings of the rear façade.

The present cupola, constructed of cast-iron, was designed in 1898 by Stoughton & Stoughton. It replaces the original wooden structure which was destroyed by fire in 1895.

Mt. Hope Court is located on Grand Concourse, at the crossings with E. Tremont Ave. It was erected in 1914 on a sharply acute-angled site. The Bronx’s own Flatiron Building was for many years the borough’s tallest building, at ten stories. Predictions that residential elevators would make the Bronx a borough full of ten-story structures didn’t realize until the advent of redbrick projects, beginning with Parkchester.