Our 1909 Building Explained in Architectural Terms

This building is three stories high and five bays wide. Above the stone basement, the building is essentially masonry laid in several different bonds. After a row of stretchers in straight bond, the first story is laid in Flemish diagonal bond (1). In the second and third stories, the areas around the windows are laid in Flemish double stretcher (2). The piers, the frieze, and the parapet are laid in running bond (3).

In the first story, four marble stairs flanked by blocks, each surmounted by a scroll and ball, lead to a double door with a rectangular transom (4). This is contained within a shallow portico consisting of two unfluted columns with truncated caps and thin abaci supporting an entablature with a braced cornice(5). To either side of this are two double hung, eight-over-eight windows with splayed, flat-arched stone lintels having large brackets as keystone(6). A stone belt course serves as the sill (7).

Above the first story windows is a wide, projecting stone belt course(8). The three inner bay windows of the second story (French with sixteen lights, fanlight transoms set in keystoned stilted around arch-lintels of straight bond) rest on this belt course(9). Between these windows runs another stone belt course which is flush with the façade (10). This forms the sill for the two outer bay windows of the second story(11). These windows are double hung, six-over-six with splayed, flat-arched stone lintels which have keystones.(12) 

Between second and third story outer bay windows are two rectangular niches emphasized by headers laid in straight bond(13). Outer bay windows are flanked by flat brick piers which rise from stone bases atop the projecting belt course above the first story windows, and terminate in stone composite capitals which appear at the lower edge of a blank stone frieze located just above the third story windows(14).

Third story windows are all double hung, six-over-six with moulded stone framing, flat-arched and keystoned at the top, resting upon a braced sill(15). In the outer bay windows, a swag relief appears beneath the sill(16).

Appearing above the aforementioned blank stone frieze is a row of dentils, immediately above which appears the moulded, braced roof cornice(17). The cornice supports a brick parapet topped with stone(18).