Tag Archives: New York City

336 Central Park West

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336 Central Park West is a modest Art Deco apartment building that you might pass without thought – unless you looked up. The undulating, gently flared cornices on the building and its tower enclosures are embossed in an Egyptian reed pattern that is both simple and stunning.

You might also notice the thoughtful polychrome brickwork, with its projecting piers and segmented spandrels, which emphasize the building’s height.

Alas, over the years the cooperative has spoiled the design and created a stew of replacement windows – casements, double-hung, sliders in a variety of single and multi-pane configurations. Through-wall air conditioning vents are also done in different styles. Even the ground floor doors are mismatched.

336 Central Park West Vital Statistics
  • Location: 336 Central Park West at W 94th Street
  • Year completed: 1930
  • Architect: Schwartz & Gross
  • Floors: 16
  • Style: Art Deco
  • New York City Landmark: 1990
336 Central Park West Recommended Reading

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Memorial Sloan-Kettering Mortimer B. Zuckerman Research Center

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Memorial Sloan-Kettering Mortimer B. Zuckerman Research Center is a major expansion of previous lab facilities. The distinctive red-sliced slab tower accommodates a neighboring church, which provided the needed land and air rights.

The red terra cotta wall slices through the slab tower, separating laboratories in the western section from supporting offices in the eastern section. Each major facade has its own passive sun shade solution. Fritted glass panels shade the labs; aluminum-pipe louvers shade the offices.

The project had to be completed without disturbing ongoing research at the existing laboratories.

The base of the tower includes a rectory for St. Catherine of Siena Church.

See the architect’s project portfolio and design narrative for a detailed analysis.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Mortimer B. Zuckerman Research Center Vital Statistics
  • Location: 415 E 68th Street between York and First Avenues (block-through to 410 E 69th Street)
  • Year completed: 2006
  • Architect: Skidmore Owings & Merrill
  • Floors: 23
  • Style: Postmodern
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Mortimer B. Zuckerman Research Center Recommended Reading

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Master Apartments

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Master Apartments is the tallest building on Riverside Drive, and reputedly the first building in New York City to have corner windows. But the most interesting side of this Art Deco architecture is that it was built as a personal museum for a prolific Russian artist and philosopher, one Nicholas Roerich. The name “Riverside Museum” still rises above the Riverside Drive entrance.

As reported in The New York Times, Roerich set up a school – Master Institute of United Arts – at a mansion owned by a wealthy follower, Louis Horch. The mansion also housed the Nicholas Roerich Museum – displaying the artist’s prolific output.

In 1928-29 Horch replaced the mansion with this 27-story tower. The first three floors contained museum, theaters, libraries and more devoted to Roerich; the rest of the building was apartments. Following the stock market crash, Horch was in and out of control; Roerich’s popularity waned and in 1938 the museum became simply the “Riverside Museum.”

The building became a cooperative in 1988 – and became a NYC Landmark the following year. The museum moved to a brownstone on W 107th Street.

Master Apartments Vital Statistics
  • Location: 310 Riverside Drive at W 103rd Street
  • Year completed: 1929
  • Architect: Harvey Wiley Corbett
  • Floors: 27
  • Style: Art Deco
  • New York City Landmark: 1989
Master Apartments Recommended Reading

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Cliff Dwelling

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Cliff Dwelling is an oddly shaped, exotically decorated apartment building overlooking New York’s Riverside Park at W 96th Street.

The shape – dictated by the parcel of land left over after other developers picked their plots – is a thin north-pointing wedge. The decoration, white terra cotta in desert-Western motifs, is from the imagination of Herman Lee Meader (who used similar designs on the Friends House on E 25th Street). Don’t be shocked by the swastikas – they were used by the Navajo (and many other cultures) centuries before Nazism.

While the yellow brick facade is memorable, the apartments inside were not (at least in their tiny original five-to-a-floor form). After the building went co-op in 1979, residents began buying up and combining adjoining apartments. According to City Realty, the building now has just 43 units.

Cliff Dwelling Vital Statistics
  • Location: 243 Riverside Drive at W 96th Street
  • Year completed: 1917
  • Architect: Herman Lee Meader
  • Floors: 13
  • Style: neo-Classicism
Cliff Dwelling Recommended Reading

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241 Central Park West

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241 Central Park West is easily confused with 55 Central Park West – they were both designed by Schwartz & Gross; what’s more, the developer of record is 55 Central Park West Corp. (according to the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission).

The brick and cast stone facade takes up the entire blockfront between W 84th and W 85th Street. Protruding decorative elements – flowering stalks of some kind – decorate the building’s base and crown; otherwise the structure is quite plain.

The building is not without fans – you can even order a pewter model! (see below)

241 Central Park West Vital Statistics
  • Location: 241 Central Park West at W 84th Street
  • Year completed: 1931
  • Architect: Schwartz & Gross
  • Floors: 19
  • Style: Art Deco
  • New York City Landmark: 1990
241 Central Park West Recommended Reading

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Peter Stuyvesant

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Peter Stuyvesant is a Beaux Arts apartment house, with a facade gently curved to follow scenic Riverside Drive. The colorful, textured two-story crown is missing its original massive cornice (see archive photo), but it’s still a beauty. Overall, many horizontal divisions minimize the building’s height.

The building has also been stripped of its balconies – traces are still visible on the facades.

The building’s entry is modest: One story – no portico, canopy or marquee – but the door itself is exquisitely detailed iron grillwork set in a deeply cut cast stone frame.

New York City “Boy Mayor” John Purroy Mitchel (he was 34 when elected) lived here – and accidentally shot ex-Senator William H. Reynolds in front of the building as the pair returned from target practice. Mitchel carried a revolver for protection – he had escaped an assassination attempt only two months earlier.

According to City Realty’s review, the Peter Stuyvesant went co-op in 1988.

Peter Stuyvesant Vital Statistics
  • Location: 258 Riverside Drive at W 98th Street
  • Year completed: 1909
  • Architect: William L. Rouse
  • Floors: 12
  • Style: Beaux Arts
Peter Stuyvesant Recommended Reading

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St. Urban

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St. Urban is a grandiose Beaux Arts apartment building, replete with turret, cupola and a massive mansard roof punctured by elaborate dormer windows.

It’s still an impressive sight for condo-era New York, though it has lost some of its grandeur: Gone are the two belts of balconies at the fourth and tenth floors; the slate roof was replaced with copper; rather pedestrian windows and skylights were installed above the dormers.

Why such an elaborate facade for mere apartments? Architectural historian Andrew Alpert notes that in 1905, “apartment” was still considered a French concept – so French architecture was appropriate. And Beaux Arts was the French style du jour.

The St. Urban was designed to appeal to the very wealthy: Four 12-room luxury apartments per floor, each including maids’ quarters, wall safes, libraries and other “necessities.”

The building went co-op in 1966.

St. Urban Vital Statistics
  • Location: 285 Central Park West at W 89th Street
  • Year completed: 1905
  • Architect: Robert T. Lyons
  • Floors: 13
  • Style: Beaux Arts
  • New York City Landmark: 1990
St. Urban Recommended Reading

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Dallieu

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Dallieu – what’s left of it – is a wonderful example of texture in architecture, designed by New York masters George and Edward Blum. The New York Times’ Christopher Gray called it, “one of the great apartment buildings of the West Side.”

Sadly, the building lost its balconies, parapet and original windows and entrance doors, which added to Dallieu’s character. And in places the owners replaced the original roman brick with common brick – mismatched in both color and shape. Still, the remaining terra cotta bands and roman brick are beautiful, often described as “woven” or “textile” in appearance.

Dallieu Vital Statistics
  • Location: 838 West End Avenue at W 101st Street
  • Year completed: 1913
  • Architect: George & Edward Blum
  • Floors: 13
  • Style: Art Nouveau
Dallieu Recommended Reading

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Potter Building

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Orlando Potter set out to make a fireproof building. It became “one of New York’s most significant surviving tall office buildings of the period prior to the full development of the skyscraper,” according to the Landmarks Preservation Commission. “Its brickwork is among the handsomest in New York City.”

The 1886 Potter Building replaced the ill-fated headquarters of the New York World, which had the distinction of burning up in the shortest time on record. Potter, the building’s owner, set out to make the replacement fireproof.

Iron framing and terra cotta fireproofing were key elements in the plan designed by architect Norris G. Starkweather. The structure represents an early phase of metal framing: Iron columns and joists supported the floors and interior of the building; the exterior walls supported themselves. (To bear the weight, those brick walls are 40 inches thick at the base and 20 inches thick at the top.) Terra cotta tiles surround the iron columns and joists, to protect them from the heat of a fire.

Abundant brownstone-colored terra cotta also decorated the red brick exterior. Starkweather combined four different architectural styles in the 11-story building (which was more than double the height of the previous structure). He emphasized vertical lines – counter to then-current practice. One critic condemned the resulting architecture as “coarse, pretentious, overloaded and intensely vulgar” and in its verticality, “spindling.” Starkweather died before the building was finished.

Potter liked the terra cotta so much, he founded New York Architectural Terra Cotta Co. and became one of the country’s largest producers.

Fast forward to 1973: After eight sales and 87 years, the Potter Building wound up in the hands of Pace College. The school planned to demolish this (and neighboring buildings) to build a large office tower. That project fizzled, and Pace sold the Potter Building in 1979 to 38 Park Row Associates – which converted the building to co-op loft apartments.

Remarkably, the new owners preserved and restored the exterior at great expense – 17 years before the building was designated a NYC landmark.

Potter Building Vital Statistics
  • Location: 145 Nassau Street at Beekman Street (block-through to 38 Park Row)
  • Year completed: 1886
  • Architect: Norris Starkweather
  • Floors: 11
  • Style: mix of Queen Anne, neo-Grec, Renaissance Revival, and Colonial Revival
  • New York City Landmark: 1996
Potter Building Recommended Reading

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370 Central Park West

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370 Central Park West, a 1918 example of half-timbered Tudor architecture that’s unusual for New York, was designed and built by Fred F. French Company. The firm in 1927-1932 developed Tudor City – though some sources dispute that those buildings are in Tudor style.

The building has considerable frontage of W 97th Street, broken up by wide and deep light courts. The effect is of five separate row houses – a micro community instead of a single apartment building. The light courts were originally walled in at street level, to create private gardens. The walls have since been replaced by iron fences. The building was converted to a cooperative in 1982.

370 Central Park West is just outside NYC’s Upper West Side / Central Park West Historic District, but just inside the National Register of Historic Places’ Central Park Historic District.

The Fred F. French Company also designed Gardens Apartment (now Tennis View Apartments) in Forest Hills – a smaller version of 370 Central Park West “more adapted to country use” according to Architecture (October, 1918).

370 Central Park West Vital Statistics
  • Location: 370 Central Park West at W 97th Street
  • Year completed: 1918
  • Architect: Fred F. French Company
  • Floors: 6
  • Style: Tudor
  • National Register of Historic Places: 1982
370 Central Park West Recommended Reading

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