Block 2075, made up of 17 apartment buildings, is representative of the “Apartment Court” building typology found throughout West Harlem. Derived from Ernest Flagg’s “New Law Tenement” design, these apartment buildings were designed to meet the 1901 Tenement House Act requirement that every room contain at least one window. Building codes only permitted self-service elevators in low rise buildings, so apartment courts typically ranged from five to seven stories. These buildings proliferated in the city’s expanding middle class districts, with 63 apartment courts built on Broadway and Riverside, from West 135th to West 165th Streets, between 1905 and 1908. The prolific firm of Neville & Bagge designed at least three of the buildings on Block 2075: Washington Court at 3502-3512 Broadway; Lucerne Court at 505 West 143rd Street; and Hamilton Court at 501 West 143rd Street and 144 Hamilton Place. All of these feature brick and limestone façades designed in the neo-Renaissance and Italianate styles and included self-service elevators and servants’ quarters. Before these buildings’ construction, this block was the home of the Colored Orphan Asylum, constructed in 1867. Founded in 1836 by Quakers, it was originally located at 5th Avenue and 42nd Street until it was burnt to the ground during the Draft Riots of 1863. Although the 233 children at the orphanage escaped unharmed, the building’s destruction prompted the institution to move to the then isolated environs of rural West Harlem. The three-story brick building with a central tower was laid out in a cross plan and positioned mid-block. As professional opinion shifted against large institutions, the asylum constructed a new campus of smaller “cottages” in Riverdale in 1907, selling off its West Harlem site just as the construction of the IRT subway spurred a building boom in the neighborhood.