A pleasure of Manhattan is that the short blockfronts of the avenues can be taken in at a glance, as ensembles not just individual buildings. Of course, these blockfronts often are hopeless hodge-podges, and in many instances where the blockfronts do present a pleasing ensemble, it is by accident. That’s okay – accidents of harmony are often better than planned harmony, the former never seeming contrived.

In between planned harmony and accidental harmony is what I call organic harmony, in which architects’ “interventions” take account of what is already there, and respect the whole. Another form of organic harmony is not so willful, but arises from the architect’s acceptance of conventions. The forms of traditional architecture are in large part about ensuring visual coherence among groups of buildings built at different times and for different purposes.

I’m fond of Madison Avenue’s east blockfront between 37th and 38th Streets. At the northeast corner of Madison Avenue and 37th Street is the Polish Consulate. Built in 1905 for the copper baron Joseph De Lamar, and designed by C.P.H. Gilbert, this was one of the most sumptuous mansions in Manhattan. Its front is on 37th Street, but let’s just look at the Madison side. Here is a controlled riot of exquisitely carved brackets, balustrades, cartouches, pediments, and rustication, rendered in a costly gray-white granite. Note two things especially: the slate mansard roof, and the roofline urns. (Remember my dictum: A city cannot have too many urns.)

Next north is Morgans Hotel, which shows the influence of Louis Sullivan’s Bayard Building on Bleecker Street in the way its thin, reedy, terra-cotta piers lead the eye upward to double and triple arches. Above these the building steps back to a tiled pyramidal roof, answering to De Lamar’s mansard, and to roofline eagles, answering to De Lamar’s urns.

Morgans (designed by Andrew J. Thomas and built in 1928) has a limestone base above which rises textured brickwork, with a handmade quality. It’s a tannish-brown brick that negotiates perfectly between De Lamar’s granite and the dark, reddish-brown brick and brownstone of the last building in the row, the Madison Towers Hotel of 1923 by Murgatroyd & Ogden.

Here the brick has the same stubbly texture as Morgans. The trim is brownstone – unusual for this date. The style is Tuscan Renaissance, and the best feature is the pavilionated top stories, which would form an interesting building in and of themselves. This top bit steps back four times to a water tower. At the second setback is a lovely loggia like arcade. Each tower rises to an imaginable and imaginative skyline.

Finally, at 38th, the hotel’s corner bears a terra-cotta shield, on the diagonal. At 37th, the consulate has at its corner a Polish eagle, in metal, on the diagonal. How great, too, that eagles should top Morgans, as though to beckon the Poles, who arrived in the 1970s. It’s a perfect organic blockfront.

fmorrone@nysun.com