The Brentmore Cooperative

 apartment building, 1910_construction, housing cooperative, Beaux-Arts (architecture)

146-foot, 12-story Beaux-Arts/Neo-Renaissance cooperative-apartment building completed in 1910 for the Akron Building Co. Designed by Schwartz & Gross, it is clad in tan brick and white terra-cotta above a 3-story rusticated limestone base. The main facade on Central Park West is divided by a deep light well in the middle above the ground floor. The main entrance is centered at this light well, with glass double-doors and a window on either side, with a rounded, grey canvas canopy extending out over the sidewalk. On either side there are three bays of windows - paired on the ground floor, and tripartite (with black iron mullions) on the floors above. A band course runs above the ground floor, and the base is topped by a pair of shallow, projecting stone balconies with decorative stone brackets, and wrought-iron railings between squat stone posts.

The 4th-floor windows have terra-cotta surrounds with panels at the tops featuring three circles, below terra-cotta cornices that serve as sills for the windows above. The window bays at the 5th-9th floors are framed by narrower, vertical, beveled terra-cotta bands at the sides, with terra-cotta spandrels between floors that imply keystones. At the 9th floor there are cartouches crowning the windows, with hanging pendant ornaments extending to each corner and more than halfway down the sides of each bay. The 10th floor is set off by thin string courses at top and bottom, and features large cartouches above lions' heads, with large paired brackets at the top supporting another pair of projecting stone balconies with wrought-iron railings. The top two floors are grouped together like the 4th-9th, with more ornament carved in the spandrels on either side of the keystones. At the 12th floor the windows are topped by scrolled keystones with more hanging pendant ornament extending to the sides. Paired console brackets carry the black metal roof cornice that has dentils and large modillions.

The interior walls of the light well have brick cladding even on the lower floors. The rear wall has two bays of narrow single-windows flanked by two bays of wider single-windows, with full surrounds at the 4th floor, and stone lintels with keystones on the floors above. The top two floors have terra-cotta surrounds grouped into a 2-story unit. The side walls have two bays of single-windows at the front, followed by a bay of tripartite windows, a bay of small bathroom windows, and a final bay of single-windows at the rear. The ornament is similar to the rear wall, except that the tripartite windows are framed by continuous, vertical, beveled terra-cotta bands from the 5th-9th floors, and the side panes of the tripartite windows are slightly angled. The crowning cornice is a simple black metal band inside the light well, without the brackets, modillions, or dentils.

The north facade on 69th Street continues the ornamental design of the east facade. It spans seven bays, with the ground floor alternating narrow paired windows with single-windows. On the floors above, tripartite windows alternate with single-windows. Above the fanciful terra-cotta surrounds of the 4th floor, the 5th-9th floors have splayed lintels with keystones over the single-windows, and the tripartite windows are grouped into vertical columns like those on Central Park West. The rear, west-facing facade is clad in grey brick with no ornament. From north to south there are two bays of single-windows, a tripartite window bay, two bays of single-windows flanking a bay of smaller bathroom windows, a bay of double-windows, a bay of single-windows (paired at the top two floors), and an end bay of double-windows.

The building was converted to a co-op in 1959, with 28 apartments.

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