Amster Yard

History and architecture

Amster Yard is a picturesque, L-shaped courtyard and is one of the most charming enclosures in the City. Like the exterior of the street facades the brick walls facing the garden have all been altered. The architectural style of the courtyard area is in the vernacular design and construction generally used by local masons and carpenters at the time for that type of structure. The painted brick walls are extremely simple in design, but are relieved by wall brackets with sculpture, hanging lamps, iron grille work, trees, shrubbery, climbing ivy and black painted window trim, all producing an enchanting atmosphere.

Since the buildings are of varying heights, ranging from one to four stories, the windows are of several different types and sizes and were selected to fit each required need. They are all harmoniously blended and related in scale, size, proportion, material and color. This complex is made up of shops, business offices and apart-ments, grouped around an attractive landscaped garden, set down among slate covered walks. The architecture of the very elegant street facade is Federal Eclectic.

The two buildings which compose it are one four stories and the other three stories high. They are faced with red brick above the stone first floor. A shop with a rear entrance into the garden area occupies the ground floor. The most conspicuous features of the street front are the arch leading into the yard and the treatment of the easterly building projected forward as a hay.

Amster Yard is named for James Amster, a designer who originated the idea in 1945, of taking this odd shaped lot, with mid-Nineteenth Century buildings and converting it into a pleasant oasis in the heart of Manhattan. Tax records show that John Molloy, who owned the lots in 1870, erected a one-story carpenter shop in the rear of the property that year. This is now A two-story building on the north side of the lot. In the Eighteenth Century, the Mister Yard area is said to have been the terminal stop of the Boston stage coach, on the old Eastern Post Road.