The Grand Central Oyster Bar Brownstone

"You might not know the name Rafael Guastavino, but you'll likely recognize his signature move: a tiled arch swooping overhead that adds grandeur to the Grand Central Oyster Bar and the colonnade of the Manhattan Municipal Building. But in 1885, before those splashy commissions (and before Guastavino patented his technique), he designed two rows of homes on a block of West 78th Street. Most have survived, helping make the stretch between Amsterdam and Columbus one of the neighborhood's loveliest."

"With Moorish arches over the windows on two floors and a flashy coat of arms carved into the stone, the home was snapped up by a businessman and his wife, who, according to the historian Tom Miller, decorated with "Louis XV, Louis XIV and Louis XI period antiques and reproductions, all in ivory and gold." By the 1960s, generations of boarders had carved up the original interiors, and a young couple saw an opportunity."

"The Dunhills hired Polshek to divide the five-story building into an owner's triplex with a pair of two-bedroom apartments on the fourth and fifth levels and a small studio on the ground floor. For the triplex, he turned a new staircase into a feature - with a curved wall - and tried to turn the low, dark English basement into a social living area by lowering the floor to raise the ceiling height."

Rafael Guastavino became known for tiled arches that appear in landmarks such as the Grand Central Oyster Bar and the Manhattan Municipal Building. In 1885 he designed two rows of homes on West 78th Street; most of those houses remain and contribute to the block's charm. No. 126 features Moorish window arches and a carved coat of arms and was once lavishly furnished with period antiques in ivory and gold. By the 1960s the interiors had been subdivided for boarders. Hugo and Priscilla Joy Dunhill hired James Stewart Polshek to reconfigure the five-story house into an owner's triplex, two apartments and a ground-floor studio, introducing a curved staircase and a lowered English basement turned into a sunken family room with an elevated passageway.

Read at Curbed