302 West 90th Street
302 West 90th Street
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Date:Â 1890-91
NB Number:Â NB 1627-1890
Type: Â Rowhouse
Architect: Â True, Clarence
Developer/Owner/Builder:Â Theodore A Squier
Row Configuration: ABCCBA
NYC Landmarks Designation:Â Historic District
Landmark Designation Report:Â Â Â Riverside Drive- West End Historic District
National Register Designation:Â N/A
Primary Style: Â Elizabethan Renaissance Revival
Primary Facade: Â Â Brownstone
Stories:Â 4
Window Type/Material:Â One-over-one double-hung/Wood
Basement Type:Â Raised
Structure:  These six brownstone fronted rowhouses are fifteen to twenty feet wide and four stories above raised basements. The row has three basic house types with slight variations, arranged in an ABCCBA pattern. The houses are unified by a common roofline with a variety of dormers, stepped parapets between the buildings, the use of rock-faced brownstone ashlar with smooth brownstone trim, and wrought iron grilles with a sunflower motif at the basement windows. Some of the houses have been altered but it is likely that all originally had hexagonal slate tile roofs, stoops leading to parlor story entrances, wood and glass doors with transoms, and windows with one-over-one double-hung wood-framed sash. The type “A” houses (Nos. 302 and 312) – near mirror images – are distinguished by projecting full-height rock-faced ashlar bays capped by pointed tower roofs, each with one dormer, and single dormers above the flush bays. The dormers have arched gables. No. 302 has an angled three sided bay capped by a hexagonal roof and No. 312 has a squared projecting bay capped by a pyramidal roof.
Historic District: Riverside Drive- West End HD
Alterations: : The house has been painted white. The stoop has been removed and a basement entranceway created. The original parlor-story entrance has been replaced by a door and a balcony supported on Lally columns. The areaway wall has been replaced and has a wrought iron fence. The windows all have one-over-one wood replacement sash and the dormers have exterior storm sash. Through-the-wall air conditioner sleeves have been cut at each story below the center window of the projecting bay and at the second and third stories of the flush bay. The window grilles at the parlor story are not original.
History: Built in 1890-91 for Theodore A. Squier, a developer of such rows in the district, these houses were designed by Clarence True, a New York architect noted for his rowhouse designs of which many are represented on the Upper West Side.
Selected References: New York City Department of Taxes Photograph Collection, Municipal Archives and Record Collection, E 1295; I 12450.23; C 719. New York Public Library, Photographic Views of New York City 1870’s-1970’s from the Collections of the New York Public Library (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1981), microfiche nos. 0620 B1; 0620 B2. Clarence True, Designs of 141 Dwelling Houses Built on the West Side (New York, c. 1893), n.p.