Wednesday, April 22, 2015

ARCHITECTURE: RESTORED MANSARD TOWNHOUSES


The last 3 remaining mansard roof townhouses on West 123rd Street by Lenox Avenue were in pretty rough shape as can be seen by the top photo taken 4 years ago.  We walked by this block just west of Lenox Avenue in the past month and noticed that the historic homes have all been renovated albeit in different ways.  At center, the impressive cornice has been replaced while the neighbor to the left has repointed the bricks and duplicated the original hex slate tiles on the roof.  The address on the right is probably the most intact out the three but appears to have only slightly improved over the years.  A large glassy condo building sits right across the street from this trio but at one point in time, the block used to be a mirror image in architecture: LINK

2 comments:

  1. Come back in a week or so when the scaffolding is down to see more improvement!

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  2. In fact these are the second oldest group of townhouses in Harlem and north of 96 St. They were built in 1870 in what is known as Second Empire style.

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