Astor Row Houses

Twenty-eight brick row houses line one side of West 130th Street in Harlem, between Fifth and Lenox Avenues. Built between 1880 and 1883 on speculation for William Astor, they were designed in their first phase by architect Charles Buek, and later houses followed his scheme. The first eight, numbers 8-22, stand in separate pairs, while the rest form a continuous row with deep recesses between pairs. Each house is three stories and two bays wide, with light stone trim, shouldered lintels bearing incised designs, brick dentil cornices and quatrefoil friezes. Most keep their full-width wooden porches with thin columns, brackets and spindles. At the time, Harlem was drawing middle and upper middle-class residents from lower Manhattan, and most new buildings were brownstones with classical details. The low brick fronts, Eastlake-inspired porches and neo-Grec ornament made this row unusual. Its cohesiveness and integrity preserve a sense of Harlem as a nineteenth-century suburban development. Some porches, doors and fences have been lost or replaced.