The Prasada Cooperative

 interesting place, apartment building, 1907_construction, Beaux-Arts (architecture)

146-foot, 12-story Beaux-Arts cooperative-apartment building completed in 1907. Designed by Charles W. Romeyn and Henry R. Wynne, it has an interior courtyard with stained-glass skylights that illuminate the lobby. The facades are clad in light-colored brick above a 3-story base of white limestone (and raised basement behind a dry moat). The east facade facing Central Park West is seven bays across, with the three middle bays comprising a grand entry portico with four large, 2-story, banded Doric columns. The columns rise from substantial plinths that framed low sets of steps leading up to the recessed entry. The rear of the portico has a central main doorway with glass-and-metal double-doors; to either side is a slightly-angled wall with a secondary door below an elaborately framed oculus window. A rounded, green canvas canopy extends out from the center bay onto the sidewalk. At the top of the 2nd floor the columns support a broad entablature with a variety of ornament, including a central panel with "PRASADA" inscribed on it. A dentiled cornice runs across the top of the 2nd floor, projecting out around the entablature, adorned with small lions' heads at the piers. BEtween the columns the 2nd floor has paired windows in the three middle bays, above a trio of elaborate cartouches flanked by cornucopias, foliate fronds, and ribbons. All of the piers at the base are banded, including those behind the columns, rising from broad bases at the basement level, which has large square-headed windows at the outer bays. The outer bays of the 1st floor have large, round-arched windows with black metal framing and oversized keystones. The 2nd floor has tripartite windows with bracketed sills, and the piers have capitals with egg-and-dart moldings supporting extensions of the broad entablature from the center bays; it is decorated with the same types of ornament as in the center, including scrolls, roundels, and metopes, just below the cornice that caps the base.

The 3rd floor is transitional, also clad in white stone, but with the window organization reflecting that on the upper floors. The end bays have tripartite windows, and the five middle bays have paired windows with splayed lintels and keystones. Large, elaborate console brackets carry projecting stone balconies at the end bays and middle three bays, with a wave-motif band along the front of these, and running across the whole facade. The end bays also have cartouches below the balconies.

The brick upper floors are banded at the piers of the end bays, where there are projecting, cast-iron bay windows, angled at the sides. The spandrels between these bays are of the same black iron. The middle bays have prominent stone sills with rough-faced fronts, simple end brackets and ornate center console brackets. They also have splayed stone lintels with keystones. The 9th-floor windows lack the projecting sills and instead have a thin string course below them. A cornice caps the entire 9th floor, projecting out over the end bays and three middle bays, supported by large and elaborate brackets. The 10th floor has similar brackets on the piers supporting a smaller cornice.

The top two floors have narrower banding on the end bays, with regular tripartite windows in place of the cast-iron bay windows. The center bay at the 12th floor has a shallow dentiled cornice carried on two brackets, with small cartouches above the paired windows. In 1919 the original mansard roof was removed and replaced by a masonry parapet.

The north facade on 65th Street has eight bays, but follows the main design standards of the east facade. Without the grand entry portico, all eight bays across the base are basically the same, except for the three eastern bays having taller round-arched windows at the 1st floor, and a service entrance in the 3rd bay from the west. This bay has a metal door at the ground level, next to a higher-set door atop a sideways stone staircase. The top of this arch has a cartouche and ribbons. The full decorative elements on the broad entablature atop the 2nd floor appear at the two eastern bays, but the others are simplified to just the dentil course and metopes at the piers. The two outer bays on both sides of the upper floors have single-windows, the two center bays have paired windows, and the two remaining bays have arched paired windows at the 3rd floor, with projecting bay windows from the 4th-9th floors.

The west elevation is clad in red brick, except for a short return of limestone and banded brick at the front edge. Behind this are three bays of single-windows, and the recessed south section has three more widely-spaced bays of single-windows and a group of three single-windows at the south end. The top floors have some decorative elements such as keyed stonework around the windows, and stone banding at the 10th floor.

The building was converted to a co-op in 1973, with 40 apartments.