There’s something to be said for a little restraint, as demonstrated by this tasteful 5-story townhouse in the Lenox Hill neighborhood of New York’s Upper East Side.
Location of the Percy Rivington Pyne Residence
The home is officially credited to Charles McKim of McKim, Mead & White, but was primarily the work of his assistant, William M. Kendall, who began assuming design duties as McKim’s health deteriorated.1
Although the plan was first conceived in 1906,2 McKim died in 1909, three years before the project was completed in 1912.
Neo-Federal in style, the Pyne residence balances a simple composition with refined touches, including a richly ornamented cornice, finely detailed consoles, an entrance portico with an elaborate frieze, and a series of blind arch windows on the second floor, one of them filled with marble and topped by a sculpted garland in its lunette.
Yeah, I’m pulling out all the pretentious architectural terms.
My favorite part of the home’s design is the set of three dormers across the front roof — one of these things is not like the others.
It’s New York, so a Sesame Street reference felt appropriate.
The stately Pyne Residence looks more like something you’d find in Washington, D.C., and easily blends into the background if you’re rushing down Park Avenue (and who isn’t?). Only on close inspection does the home’s subtle elegance reveal itself.
When McKim, Mead & White’s successors planned the Oliver D. Filley Residence next door in 1926, they wisely continued the same scale and design.
Elevations, Sections, and Floorplans3
References
- White, Samuel G. The Houses of McKim, Mead & White. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc. (1998), p. 234. ↩︎
- ibid. ↩︎
- A Monograph of the Work of McKim Mead & White, 1879-1915. New York: The Architectural Book Publishing Company, 1915. ↩︎