Tag Archives: upper west side

Album: April, 2013

Collections, Manhattan, New Jersey, , , , , , ,

Highlights from photos shot in April, 2013 – but not yet added to a neighborhood or specific building gallery. Neighborhoods include Lower Manhattan, Greenwich Village, Midtown, Upper West Side – and Hoboken – Jersey City, New Jersey.

In this album:
  • Standard Oil Building (26 Broadway)
  • Isamu Noguchi’s Cube – At 140 Broadway / Liberty Street
  • One World Trade Tower
  • City Hall
  • Washington Square Arch
  • One Fifth Avenue framed by Washington Square Arch
  • Courant Institute (NYU) – 251 Mercer Street
  • 2 Cornelia Street – aka 333 Sixth Avenue
  • Bigelow Building – 412 Sixth Avenue
  • The Villager – 450 Sixth Avenue
  • 434 Sixth Avenue
  • 37 Washington Square West
  • 186 W 4th Street
  • 120 E 12th Street – Facade of St. Ann’s Church in front of NYU dorm
  • 126 E 12th Street
  • Fifth Avenue Building clock
  • 488 Eighth Avenue – former Bickford’s (the last two Bickford’s in NYC closed in 1982)
  • Bank entrance at New Yorker Hotel
  • Lerner Building – 478 Seventh Avenue
  • 480 Seventh Avenue
  • The Westin New York
  • LOFT marquee – Times Square Tower
  • The Lyric Theatre
  • The New York Times Building
  • Knickerbocker Hotel (1906) – aka 6 Times Square
  • HBO Building – 1100 Sixth Avenue
  • Fred F. French Building
  • The Manhasset – 300 W 109th / 301 W 108th Streets at Broadway
  • Ariel East – 2628 Broadway (between W 99th and W 100th Streets)
  • Ariel West – 2633 Broadway (between W 99th and W 100th Streets)
  • Paterno – 440 Riverside Drive – aka 3 Claremont Avenue
  • 410 Riverside Drive
  • Cathedral of St. John The Divine
  • 512 W 112th Street
  • Hendrik Hudson – 380 Riverside Drive
  • St. Anthony Hall – 434 Riverside Drive
  • 452 Riverside Drive
  • Oxford Hall – 454 Riverside Drive
  • The Riverside Church
  • Grant’s Tomb
New Jersey photos also in this album:
  • Erie Lackawana Hudson piers – Hoboken, NJ
  • New York Sunrise – view from Hoboken
  • Willow Avenue / Willow Terrace South – Hoboken
  • Clinton Street / Willow Terrace South – Hoboken
  • All Saints Episcopal Day School – Hoboken
  • Stevens Institute – Hoboken
  • Scotland Yard pub – Hoboken
  • Second Street – Jersey City, NJ
  • Newport – Newport/Jersey City

Ardsley

Manhattan, , , , , , , ,

The Ardsley is one of a handful of Art Deco apartment buildings on Central Park West – and considered by some to be Emery Roth’s finest Art Deco building, even surpassing his Eldorado, one block south. It’s a sharp departure from the styles Roth used in his other famous Central Park West apartment towers: Alden, Beresford, and San Remo.

The Ardsley Vital Statistics
  • Location: 320 Central Park West at W 92nd Street
  • Year completed: 1931
  • Architect: Emery Roth
  • Floors: 22
  • Style: Art Deco
  • New York City Landmark: 1990
The Ardsley Recommended Reading

Google Map

El Dorado

Manhattan, , , , , , , ,

El Dorado (aka The Eldorado*) is among New York’s most fabled apartment buildings – for its celebrity residents as much as for its stunning twin-tower Art Deco architecture.

Despite (or because of?) the building’s impressive design, El Dorado (The Golden One) got off to a rocky start – foreclosure following the stock market crash. Though the apartments were luxe enough to include maid’s quarters, the building was economy-minded enough to use cast stone instead of the real thing in the three-story base. And original notations of gold leaf for the towers’ pinnacles were never executed.

After reorganization, the building successfully attracted luxury-minded tenants; in 1982 El Dorado turned co-op. Unlike other pricey New York cooperatives, El Dorado welcomes celebrities. Famous tenants and former tenants include (in no particular order) Bruce Willis, Tuesday Weld, Barney’s founder Barney Pressman, Faye Dunaway, Garrison Keillor, Michael J. Fox, U2’s Moby, Sinclair Lewis, Marilyn Monroe, Groucho Marx, and Alec Baldwin.

One celebrity the apartments could have done without was the resident of apartment 9B – you can read the gruesome details in The New York Times and New York Daily News stories!

*El Dorado is Spanish for “The Golden One,” so THE El Dorado is redundant; the official name is Americanized as The Eldorado – but the canopy on Central Park West has it El Dorado. The name is inherited from an earlier (1902) eight-story luxury apartment house on the same site, El Dorado.

El Dorado Vital Statistics
  • Location: 300 Central Park West at 90th to 91st Streets
  • Year completed: 1931
  • Architect: Emery Roth with Margon & Holder
  • Floors: 28
  • Style: Art Deco
  • New York City Landmark: 1990
  • National Register of Historic Places: 1982
El Dorado Recommended Reading

Google Map

336 Central Park West

Manhattan, , , , , , ,

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

Google Map

Master Apartments

Manhattan, , , , , , , ,

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

Google Map

Cliff Dwelling

Manhattan, , , , , , ,

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

Google Map

241 Central Park West

Manhattan, , , , , , ,

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

Google Map

Peter Stuyvesant

Manhattan, , , , , , ,

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

Google Map

St. Urban

Manhattan, , , , , , ,

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

Google Map

Dallieu

Manhattan, , , , , , ,

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

Google Map