Rowhouse Headline Impossible to Improve

From the New York Times, an article entitled "Row Houses Gone Wild" by Christopher Gray: "Seventy-First Street from West End to Broadway rises steeply midblock and then, like a roller coaster — wheeee! — hurtles downhill. The architecture has a certain giddy touch, joyously untempered by the good taste of contextualism so often claimed as an urban ideal.  Here modern sticks its elbow in the ribs of Victorian, red brick wrestles with white, lugubrious brownstone takes a poke at the lighter colors of the Renaissance, and, in one building, the early 20th and 21st centuries tussle.  Across the street runs a string of houses built two at a time, or so it seems. In this case the developer James A. Frame, working with the architects Thom & Wilson, put up a row of 10, made to appear as five independent pairs. Designed in 1892, they came just as the funereal brownstone model was giving way to a lighter palette, and Frame hedged his bets: some pairs are brownstone, and some are light orange brick with cream-colored trim and Renaissance detailing."  Full article here.  (Photo credit Todd Heisler.)