70 Central Park West Cooperative (New York City, New York)

 apartment building, 1918_construction

167-foot, 15-story Renaissance-revival/Neo-Classical cooperative-apartment building completed in 1918. Designed by Mathesius & Rich, it is clad in buff-colored brick with areas of lighter-colored replacement brick. The ground floor has a light-grey granite water table, and the main entrance is close to center on the north facade on 67th Street. It has glass-and-metal double-doors, and the limestone surround has thin rope moldings at the inner edges with a simple cartouche on top. The windows on either side are set in a paneled limestone frame and have projecting iron screens. The doors are covered by a rounded, black canvas canopy extending out over the sidewalk. To the west there is a small wooden service door. The rest of the ground-floor openings have limestone surrounds. To the west there are five windows, a secondary entrance with a paneled glass-and-wood door, and a wider window in the end bay. To the east there is a wide window, another secondary entrance, and two more wide windows. Both of the secondary entrances have trios of simple shields above them. A stone band course caps the ground floor, above a decorative molding. The ground floor along Central Park West has four bays of windows organized into two pairs.

The most notable aspect of the building are the duplex apartments with double-height studios fronted by 2-story windows on both main facades. There are two such bays on the east facade, with rounded stone sills and brick surrounds. The double-height windows exist on the 2nd-3rd, 4th-5th, 6th-7th, and 10th-11th floors. The 8th floor has tripartite windows with narrow balconies and iron railings, and the 9th has paired square windows in both bays. The 12th floor has bands of three double-windows, and the 13th is set off by a string course below and a dentiled cornice above, with three square windows in both bays. The 14th floor has very wide tripartite windows in both bays, and the top floor has the same opening in the south bay. Tthe top of the building is finished with a simple frieze of panels and delicately worked copper coping.

The upper floors on the north facade have double-height windows at the east end bay and the two western bays. The bay next to the east end bay has either a large square opening with four panes and upper transoms, or three single-windows, alternating by floor. Above the entrance are single-windows flanked by (mostly) double-windows, although there are a variety of forms in the mullions. The next bay to the west has single-windows, and the remaining bay has 4-pane windows on most floors, but some narrow double-windows paired with single-windows on a few floors.

The visible, front part of the west elevation is clad in buff-colored brick and has three main window bays, with a metal fire escape with wide landings running down the facade.

The building was converted to a co-op in 1968, with 67 apartments.

hdl.handle.net/2027/njp.32101075452274?urlappend=%3Bseq...