Look Up: Sticking It to the Greeks on Lexington Avenue

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Founded in 1892 by Ellen Dunlop Hopkins, the school, funded partially by the Rockefellers and closely associated with Columbia University, afforded women the “practical instruction which will enable them to earn a livelihood by the application of ornamental design to manufacture and the numerous Arts and Crafts.” 

The architect, Harvey Wiley Corbett, was an instructor at the school, and 16 years after Hopkins founded the program, was selected to design the new building for the school. Corbett went on to establish a prolific practice as a modernist, becoming quite well known for his skyscrapers. But in 1907 he was still starting his new firm and was happy for the commission.

Borrowing heavily from Greek forms, but without restricting himself to their rules and patterns, Corbett managed to create a modern structure using historic elements. Above the limestone base there’s a frieze replicating the original on the Parthenon. Rather than make the ornaments appear new, Corbett took casts of the damaged headless horses and riders from deteriorated sculptures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Flanking the second and third floors are multiple two-story green marble columns protruding from the façade. Capped with Ionic capitals, these columns appear quite conventional. But the band of entablature above them bends into and out of the façade, breaking from convention and yielding a more fluid, plastic, modern effect.

Even the roof, which is pitched steeply, breaks from the typical Greek proportions. For a building of its width, a normal roof would have been raised merely a couple of feet, but in this case, the roof is large enough to encase a fourth story. Perhaps in this yearning for additional height, the root of Corbett’s later success with skyscrapers can be found.

However, more so than exceptional deviations of the architecture, the brass lettering on Lexington Avenue tells the tale of the building’s many owners. Beneath the current Touro College text are traces of the past. In 1944 the school became the New York Phoenix School of Design—and you can clearly read this under the layers of old letters. Also visible are different spacings for the word York, which either belong to earlier, later, or possibly even mistaken naming of the school housed in the building; the school did merge with Pratt in the ‘70s. Sadly, after almost continuously housing one school or another, in 2006 it was sold to a private investor and has remained vacant since.

A closer look at the weathered horses and riders.