Butterfield House is a cooperative apartment building on West 12th Street in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, designed by the architects and urban planners William J. Conklin and James Rossant then of Mayer, Whittlesey & Glass. It is situated between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue within the Greenwich Village Historic District. The building was described in The New York Times as "a modernist landmark" that "received numerous accolades when it was built in 1962". Mimi Sheraton referred to it as "one of the Village’s most coveted residences." Architectural critic Paul Goldberger included Butterfield House on his list of the “10 Top Postwar Apartment Buildings” in New York City. The building shares the block of West 12th Street with historic townhouses and when the street received its landmark designation in 1969 it was described as "one of the most distinguished examples of street architecture of the mid-Nineteenth Century."
Architecture
Butterfield House is an example of the International Style and Mid-Century Modern architectural styles and was designed by the architects William J. Conklin and James Rossant. Both men were acolytes of Walter Gropius who they studied under at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus School, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture. Rossant's obituary in the New York Times states, "Butterfield House was hailed as a model of how to integrate modern architecture into a historic townhouse district." The Municipal Art Society awarded Mayer, Whittlesey & Glass a Certificate of Merit in 1963 for its work on the Butterfield House. The building has been referred to as " of Manhattan's finest postwar apartment buildings.". In 2016, the building was included on a list of thirteen "Architectural Masterpieces" that you can live in. The building is notable for its deep bay windows, historic brown-brick facade, and floor-plan design where many of the units are floor-through apartments that offer views of the street on one side and the landscaped inner gardens and fountains on the other. The majority of the apartments have balconies or terraces facing the inner garden. Originally consisting of 102 apartments, including multiple penthouses, apartments have been combined over the years and Butterfield House now has fewer than 100 units. The architectural height of the building is. The Post-War Modern building's rear entrance address is on West 13th Street.
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