413-423 W 34th St
1922-23, Parish & Schroeder

In the 1920s, former senior partner of R.H. Macy & Company Charles B. Webster set up a fund to build an apartment hotel for low-income women. The building had 360 bedrooms, with shared facilities such as a library, infirmary laundries, sewing rooms and small reception rooms. The ground floor hosted a social club. The 13-story Georgian Revival structure is organized in a U-plan layout, with a central court fronting 34th Street. The three-story base features detailing in light stone, most notably segmental tympanums with carved decorations above the first-floor windows. The entrance porch has columns supporting an entablature topped by a balustrade. The top two floors also display ornamentation in stone, like carved spandrel panels and cornices. Architects Wainwright Parish and J. Langdon Schroeder were classmates and graduates of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. They were pioneers in steel structures, with projects like the railroad bridge across the Ausable Chasm in the Adirondacks and the Y.M.C.A building on West 57th Street.