☞ ARCHITECTURE: A Contextual Townhouse

The townhouse at 117 West 131st Street is probably one of the better examples of what a modern contextual building might look like for a brownstone neighborhood. This 2-family house located between Lenox and ACP/7th Avenue is definitely contemporary in nature but the generous proportions of the windows and the presence of a stoop gives it a classic nuance that helps the building fit in with the immediate block.

Everything appears to even visually line up horizontally with the other brownstones on the block but for some reason the building was not built taller which is what most current developers tend to aim for. Another plus is that those facade piercing Fedder air conditioners are not present. Short of a total revival of the original building, this is probably one of the better examples of mixing a modern structure into a block with a lot of history.