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About 22 Perry Street
One of the more unusual structures in Greenwich Village, this 6-story apartment building pays great homage to one of the community's most revered landmarks, the Jefferson Market Courthouse Library building just a few blocks away on The Avenue of The Americas and 10th Street.
Its conical top mimics on a smaller scale the great Victorian clocktower of the library building and adds a delightful bit of whimsy to the neighborhood.
The building, moreover, is not merely a playful oddity, but actually is rather an interesting architectural attempt to do something interesting on a prominent, triangular site within an official landmarks historic district and its burden of regulations and reviews.
The building, for example, does not merely have a curved end but indents its facades to provide angular balconies that meeting the end curve, a very nice touch, further embellished by the placing of sidewalk landscaping within the indented spaces.
The lobby has glass doors and nice green marble flooring and a large glass wall handsomely etched with the building's address inside the modern lobby.
The top floor, in addition, has some very nice, low arched "lip" windows that are in context with the rounded end and the conical roof.
The distinctive building is a bit ungainly because the conical roof element is a big large, but the relatively small size of the building makes it overall impact less jarring and its location is one of the more "modern" in the village since St. Vincent's Hospital tore down a wonderful Georgian-style building across the avenue and the famous Loew's Sheridan movie theater, the only movie "palace" in the Village, just one block north on the avenue and also erected another white building with nautical motifs one block further north.
Despite such a context, this building's enjoys the far more attractive context of Perry Street, which is one of the more charming streets in the Village, full of many handsome brownstones and townhouses. Furthermore, this section of the West Village is full of numerous handsome restaurants, boutiques and antiques stores.
Its location is about equidistant from two nearby 7th Avenue subway stations and crosstown buses.
The neighborhood here is lively with a fair bit of traffic.
The building was erected in 1985 and has 21 condominium apartments.
Carter B. Horsley
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