Looking Up on East 38th Street

The Author took a stroll along East 38th Street in Manhattan, craning her neck upwards to view curiosities on high, of which there are certainly plenty.

The author wonders: why does this former carriage house feature a bust of a bulldog at the top? The horses flanking the entrance make sense, but the bulldog perplexes (but delights!) her. Another curiosity: the house has undergone a very interesting interior conversion, which has been characterized as ‘Miami Vice meets Bond villain‘. A slight departure from the Flemish exterior, to be sure.

 

The Art Deco Towne House apartment building is more spectacular the higher you look, with very cheerfully colored details on the tower.

Superior detail photo borrowed from NewYorkitecture.com:
Here we have the Jolly Madison hotel. Horrible name, but lovely Italianate tower. The Author’s new favorite website, NewYorkitecture, has links to a 1924 New York Times advertisement and an undated but probably 1920s photograph from the New York Library Digital Collection of the building, originally the ‘New York Fraternity Clubs Building’.

The Corinthian apartment building certainly isn’t lacking in bay windows and reminds the author of the ‘corncob’ buildings in Chicago (formally known as Marina City)