350-366 and 361-371 East 198th Street

Location: 350-366 East 198 Street and 361-371 East 198 Street. Block: 3284, Lots 4, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 and 21. Block: 3283, Lots: 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86 and 87.

Status: Never landmarked or heard. Some buildings have had substantial changes.

Description from the Bronx Survey: Occupying a hilly site in Bedford Park, the rowhouses that line both sides of East 198th Street between Marion and Decatur Avenues present a pleasing unified streetscape of considerable charm.

These residences were designed in 1908 by Charles S. Clark, a prolific Bronx architect who had his office at 445 East Tremont Avenue. Clark worked in several parts of the borough, but his best known designs are for several large Art Deco apartment houses, completed between 1927 and 1930, that are located just off the Grand Concourse. He also was involved with the design of the Koehler and Campbell Piano Company, a handsome brick factory on East 165rd Street that was built between 1889 and 1908.

Constructed in complementary shades of buff, taupe, red, and grey brick, the dwellings on East 198th Street are modest, relatively intact examples of early twentieth-century rowhouse architecture in the Bronx. The most notable features of the houses on the south side of the street are the full-height angular bay facades and the covered entry porches, projecting elements that create a pleasant rhythm along the street.

Each porch boasts turned balusters and Ionic columns carrying an entablature of small brackets and dentils 145 that echoes the main cornice above the third floor.

Facade ornamentation is limited to splayed stone lintels with projecting keystones on the first and second stories and to stone quoins along the edges of each house. The row on the north side of the street exhibits similar details, but an interesting variation occurs where the architect has crowned the structures with high mansard roofs that are pierced by alternating single, peak-roofed or double, hip-roofed dormers.

The houses on East 198th Street, while lacking the elaborate detail of rowhouses in Manhattan or Brooklyn, nonetheless exhibit an urbanity that makes them an asset to the surrounding neighborhood.