81 Irving Place #9H

When Louis Cowan cleared the houses at 81, 83, and 85 Irving Place to build an apartment house in 1930, he hired George F. Pelham and called the result the Gramercy Square Apartments. Pelham gave it a Northern Italian Renaissance base of variegated brick and elaborate terra cotta, with twisted columns, shields, balconies, and gargoyles set along the roofline, one block north of the private park.

Residence 9H is a renovated studio that makes the most of the building’s original steel casement windows, which frame treetop views toward Gramercy. An oversized foyer opens to a main room divided into living and sleeping areas; the kitchen and the bath are both windowed, and the bath keeps its original detail. A walk-in closet handles the storage.

The building has counted Gypsy Rose Lee, Thornton Wilder, and the painter Wyndham Lewis among its residents, and it sits a few doors from Pete’s Tavern, the oldest continuously operating bar in the city. With a 24-hour doorman and a policy that welcomes pieds-à-terre, it is a prewar studio with a long memory.

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