The New York Yacht Club

The Yacht Club does not have the bilaterally symmetrical arrangement of the fatade that characterizes many Baroque buildings. Instead, the limestone and marble fatade features three identical bays located to the left of the entrance, which occupies a bay of its own. The entrance bay is distinguished in several ways from the other three. The entry is at street-level, and the doorway is cut out of the limestone in fairly simple fashion. In this it echoes the windows, one for each bay, that make up the rest of the basement story. The windows at this level are much broader than the door, but the entry bay is actually wider than the others. The basement level features a graduated plinth-and-base-like arrangement about half-way up and is topped by a broader base on which the next story seems to rest. In the entry bay, however, broad, plain limestone pilasters rise from the base provided by the basement level and the entire bay projects farther out into the street. Above the plain door a heavy medallion, surrounded by heavy decorative carving, fronts the projection that juts out at the bottom of the entry window. This arrangement reflects that of the other bays, with

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an-order capitals. A continuous lintel, with a projecting, dentilled ledge, surmounts the story. It is identical for the 4 bays, except that it projects at the entry bay. The third story features simple square columns in recessed porticoes interspersed with fat, squared, plain pilasters. The upper stories are much the same as the elements for the entry bay described above. The dormer windows are surmounted by heavy, clearly distinguished pediments. The Yacht Club's fatade has a lightness that is somewhat marred by the fantasy of the ship's windows. Essentially, the first two stories can be read as a single entity that, with the depth implied by the arched window recesses and the overhang, reads more like a portico than a solid mass. This form is reduced and repeated in the third story's recessed porticoes. Above this, the form is repeated across the entire fourth story by the free, if abbreviated, verticals of the tapered elements that front the open space in front of the recessed fourth story wall. Thus, by the time the eye reaches the fourth story, what seemed somewhat open on the bottom levels is now very open. Above this, the upward-pointing dormer pediments continue the vertical movement of the eye. Unfortunatel
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1751
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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