381 East 165th Street

Charles S. Clark
1906
Clay Avenue Historic District

This two-story, red brick building at the corner of East 165th Street and Clay Avenue is the only single-family house in the historic district. Francis Keil commissioned Charles Clark, a Bronx-based architect, to design this grand neo-Renaissance style house to serve as his home. Keil, one of the original homeowners on Clay Avenue, was a Czech-born hardware manufacturer with a factory located nearby. The building’s façade is almost completely covered in ivy, which is only interrupted by an entrance porch of brick piers that supports a sloping roof and frames a pair of wood and glass doors. The house is crowned by a bracketed cornice and a brick parapet with inset panels, the latter of which can also be seen above the ivy-covered façade.

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