This modest brown- and red-brick building has one of the most graceful and unusual cornices in the city.

Cornices are protruding rooftop elements that cap a building’s façade composition.

They are horizontal exclamation marks that separate a building from the sky from a pedestrian’s viewpoint. They are the pronounced precipices that are very important accents, especially in an urban setting where most buildings are built to uniform street walls and are often seen from severe angles rather than directly.

Although many fine cornices in the city are very detailed, often in Italian Renaissance-style, they generally are straight-edged, even though have curved façades beneath them and some have scalloped forms.

Here, the architects, Schwartz & Gross, have created a gently undulating roofline of great grace.

"This 16-story apartment house is crowned with terra-cotta reminiscences of Egyptian-styled papyrus stalks (don’t confuse this with the 19th Century Egyptian Revival Style, of which very few examples remain in the city)," wrote Elliot Willensky and Norval White in their fine book, "The A.I.A. Guide to New York City, Third Edition," (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988).

The combination of the façade’s rich, dark color and the rather delicate detailing of the cornice is surprising and spectacular. The most famous Egyptian-style building in the city was the Tombs, a jail and court building, now demolished, in Lower Manhattan. Of existing buildings, the Pythian condominium building...