Apartments for James S. Norton

In 1891, Silsbee designed two attached apartment buildings for James S. Norton.  Norton was a close friend and lawyer and had a longstanding professional relationship with the architect.  They face two streets, one Lill St. and one Lincoln Ave. and back up to one another, forming a V-shape plan.  The buildings are similar in construction and arrangement, differing only in the pattern of the bay and wall area and the presence of an arched porte-cochere on the Lill St.building.   

The careful detailing and fine construction of the simple facades is less apparent on the Lincoln Ave. building as it has been painted. The buildings are faced with buff-colored Roman brick and have simple terra cotta cornices.  Three story copper-clad bays on each building have a horizontal arrangement of copper, giving them a "shingled" appearance.  A unique detail is the use of exposed fasteners arranged at the upper panel of the bay to look like classical swags.  The same exposed fasteners are also placed regularly on each piece of horizontal copper cladding.