The Bolivar (New York City, New York)

 apartment building, 1926_construction, Colonial Revival (architecture)

166-foot, 15-story Neo-Georgian cooperative-apartment building completed in 1926 as an apartment hotel. Designed by Nathan Korn, the two main facades are clad in reddish-brown brick, white terra-cotta and cast stone, and marble, and has a grey granite water table.

There are seven main bays of offset double-windows (one wider pane and one narrower) on the east facade facing Central Park, with the southernmost bay separated from the others by an extra bay with small single-windows. The edges of the facade have stone quoins up through the 13th floor. There are two entrances on this elevation, with the main entrance in the 2nd bay from the south. It has glass-and-metal double-doors in a green marble molding, followed by a white stone surround; the doors are covered by a rounded, green canvas canopy extending out over the sidewalk. The five window bays have thinner white stone surrounds with scrolled keystones. On the ground floor the double-windows are symmetrical with black iron mullions and grilles. The second entry, in the north bay, has glass-and-metal double-doors in another green marble molding and a thinner stone surround.

Below the 2nd floor is a stone band course with a wave motif. 2-story stone surrounds frame the main window bays at the 2nd-3rd floors, with keystones at the 3rd floor. In between are brick-edged spandrels with terra-cotta panels of swags and rosettes. The 4th-floor windows have stone surrounds with bracketed sills, and a dentiled stone band course with swags along the underside sets off the upper floors. There are stone lintels at the 5th floor, and brick lintels on the floors above. A simpler stone band course sets off the top two floors, which have 2-story stone surrounds and stone spandrels. A bracketed stone roof cornice crowns the facade. Air-conditioning vents have been cut below most of the windows, while those on the 2nd & 3rd floors have exterior units.

The south facade on 83rd Street spans eight bays, with ornament matching that seen on the east facade. At the west end the ground floor has a service entrance with black metal doors below a shorter double-window. The rear, west-facing elevation is clad in beige brick, with one bay of red brick at the front edge. It has six bays of single-windows at the south section, and the recessed north section has another single-window and three bays of double-windows. A 3-level, brick-clad mechanical penthouse rises from the center of the roof.

The building was converted to a cooperative in 1984, with 164 apartments. After Charlie Parker's death at the Stanhope in 1955, the management asked jazz patroness Baroness Pannonica "Nica" de Koenigswarter to leave, and she moved to the Bolivar Hotel at 230 Central Park West, a place commemorated in Thelonious Monk's 1956 tune "Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-are".