Janes & Leo (Elisha Harris Janes and Richard Leopold Leo, active 1894–1916) is the turn-of-the-20th-century New York firm responsible for The Dorilton (1902) at 171 West 71st Street — among the most architecturally exuberant Beaux-Arts apartment buildings in the United States and a New York City landmark. The Dorilton's signature features — mansard roof, monumental allegorical sculpture, ornamental wrought iron, the curved corner massing that wraps Broadway and 71st — represent the high point of late-Beaux-Arts residential ambition in Manhattan, anticipating the broader Beaux-Arts apartment cohort (the Apthorp, the Belnord, the Ansonia) by several years. The infrastructural sophistication of the original 1902 program — separate elevators for tenants and servants, filtered water systems, electric motorcar charging — was equally ahead of its time. The firm's broader Manhattan portfolio is small but consistently distinguished, and the Dorilton's continued recognition as one of the city's most architecturally singular apartment buildings remains the defining marker of the firm's reputation.
Buildings designed by Janes & Leo
