Polhemus Residences, 100 Amity Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 100 Amity Street by Carter Horsley

This very elegant, 8-story building at 100 Amity Street at Henry Street in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn was erected in 1897 and converted to a 17 condominum apartments due for completion in 2018 by the Fortis Property Group of which Akiva Kobre is a partner.

Stephen F. Byrnes of BKSK Architects designed the conversion.

It is adjacent to an 8 attractive, modern, mid-block townhouses designed by W. Douglas Romines for Fortis that will share this building’s amenities.

This landmark building was originally the Polhemus Memorial clinic that was bounded by Mrs. Caroline Herriman Polhemus to the memory of her late husband, Henry Ditmas Polhemus, a rent of the Long Island College Hospital from 1872 to his death in 1895.  The clinic was founded to provide free medical services to the poor people of Brooklyn’s waterfront are.  It was designed by Marshall Emery, who won a design competition that had six entrants.

According to its landmark designation report, the architect used “a freely applied French Renaissance style, designed to take advantage of its corner location” and was “executed with a bold combination of red brick with limestone” with separate entrances on each façade, one for the clinic and one for the students and staff.  The dispensary occupied the lower two stories with administrative offices and a library on a third.  The next three stories contained large lecture rooms and classrooms, the seventh had laboratories and the eighth housed the anatomy department.  The report noted that the clinic has one of the first x-ray machines in existence.

Bottom Line

This very handsome and elegant building was once part of the Long Island Hospital complex and has been converted to 17 condominium apartments across from a small park, close to the waterfront, Brooklyn Bridge Park and Atlantic Avenue.

Description

The building has a very handsome, three-step-up entrance with a canopy flanked by banded columns.  The two-story base is rusticated and has sidewalk landscaping.

The two lower stories are faced with ashlar limestone, while the five above are brick with limestone detail.

Narrow cornices divide the building horizontally above the second and sixth stories. 

The landmark designation report notes that “A broad copper cornice with deep dentils projects above the seventh story, while a simple brick attic story with its own restrained cornice rises above this and caps the building.”

“The Henry Street façade,” the report continued, “is three bays wide and symmetrically arranged.  The central bay projects slightly and is articulated by broad stone pilasters rising between the third and seventh stories.  These levels are given additional emphasis by limestone quoins at each corner of the building. Between the pilasters on the fourth through sixth stories the central bay is given distinction by cast-iron window enframements, spandrels, colonnettes and engaged columns.  An entrance (marked ‘College Entrance’) with double wooden doors is set deep within stone reveals in the southernmost bay of the façade.  An original bronze railing shields the areaway to each side of the door.  The Amity Street façade is similar to that on Henry Street, but is wider and asymmetrically arranged.  A central, projecting section of this façade is flanked by a narrow bay to the west and a wider section to the east.  A mid-twentieth century pedestrian bridge linking the Polhemus Clinic with the main hospital building is joined to the clinic at the third story.  At the center of the ground story is the main entrance, marked by an engraved ‘The Polhemus Dispensary.’  Modern doors are set deep within a large archway which is flanked by sets of fluted Ionic columns encased in stone blocks.  To the west, a narrow doorway leads to a stair to the upper levels and a broad, double door was designed to provide an emergency entrance.”

The bridge was removed during the residential conversion.

Amenities

All the townhouses on the Amity Street side have access to all of the amenities at the Polhemus Residences including a concierge, a landscaped roof deck, and a two-level amenity suite with a paneled billiards library with a fireplace, a yoga atelier, a media room, a package room, a laundry, a garage, and private storage.

Apartments

Residence 5 is a four-bedroom unit with 2,889 square feet and 11-foot ceilings.  It has a 19-foot-long entry foyer that leads to a 24-foot-long living room with an open, 14-foot-wide kitchen.