Modernist Townhouses in Manhattan

242 East 52nd Street: Originally a guest house for Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III, this Miesian townhouse of 1950 eventually served as a crash pad for its architect, Philip Johnson.

 In 1970 architect Paul Rudolph revamped a foregoing carriage house at 101 East 63rd Street into this solemnly refined townhouse for Roy Frowick--the man better known by his middle name, Halston.

Detail of Halston House.

 114 East 70th Street, designed by William Lescaze in 1940.

 A just-completed townhouse at 252 West 75th Street, designed by Michael Zenreich Architects. Bravo!

 176 East 72nd Street, designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien in 1996.

 Barbarella's pied-à-terre? At 251 East 71st Street around 1975, Plexiglas elliptical-bubble fenestration and stucco supplanted a conventional townhouse façade.

As with a lot of plastic surgery, the outcome is weirdly compelling.

A half dozen of the 11 PoMo-style Solow Townhouses designed by Eli Attia. They were completed in 1989 and are between Second and Third Avenues.

At 130 East 64th Street is the townhouse of Edward Durell Stone, who designed it in 1956.

The townhouse was built four years after Stone designed the American Embassy in Delhi, the first work on which applied, as above, brick grillwork, igniting a mania for the material among other mid-cen architects.

 Here is another townhouse by William Lescaze, this one at 211 East 48th Street and, upon completion in 1934, one of the first exemplars in New York City of the International Style.

 In 1970, bumbling bomb-making subversives unintentionally and completely kablooey'd their lair at 18 West 11th Street. This is its replacement, designed by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates in 1979.

To look at more modern architecture in New York, visit: Mid-Century Manhattan Churches & Off-the-Beaten-Path Modernism in N.Y.C.