247, 248 & 249 Central Park West

 apartment building, 1889_construction

A trio of 4-story (plus raised basements) Flemish Renaissance-revival/Queen Anne-style residential buildings completed together in 1889 for William Noble, a developer. Designed by Edward L. Angell, they are the remaining three houses from what was originally a row of nine spanning the entire blockfront on Central Park West. They have individualized designs, clad in a mixture of beige and red brick, brownstone, limestone, marble, and ironwork.

No. 247 at the south end is is clad in stone on the lower levels, and beige brick above. It has a sizeable box stoop winding down and to the left from a parlor-floor entrance. The front wall of the stoop has a segmental-arched, grated basement window and a balustrade along the top. At the bottom of the stoop, ornamented square pilasters frame an iron gate, behind which is a basement double-window. The round-arched entrance has wood-and-leaded-glass double-doors and a fanlight with iron tracery. There is a slightly wider arched window on the left, with matching tracery in the fanlight, and a narrow bay in the center with a round-arched single-window. Wide, paneled pilasters frame the bays. Centered above the middle window is a large, rounded base, decorated with carved ornament on the bottom, for a projecting, rounded, stone-framed oriel window at the center of the 2nd floor. A cornice and stone-and-wrought-iron railing tops this bay. On either side the 2nd floor has a smaller round-arched window in a stone surround, with a cornice above and a stone panel below with garlands and ribbons. The 3rd floor has a tripartite arrangement of stone-framed, round-arched openings, the center one being larger and having French doors opening onto the rounded balcony below. A stone cornice sets off the top floor, which has a black slate mansard roof pierced by a pair of dormers with round-arched windows and triangular pediments. A black metal cornice caps the ridgeline of the roof and continues across all three houses.

No. 248 in the middle is clad marble at the base, with a wealth of Renaissance ornament on the four piers, each sloping outward toward the tops, that support the marble balcony at the 2nd floor. The box stoop on the right matches the one at No. 247, and there is a wrought-iron gate to the left, behind which are two basement windows. The entrance has glass-and-wood double-doors above which is a small oval window surrounded by carved ornament. To the left are two tall single-windows, set higher than the doors; they are topped by scrolled pediments with shields. The 2nd-floor balcony has paneled marble end posts and a center panel with a bearded face flanked by vines. In between are two sections of wrought-iron railing. The beige-brick upper floors are separated from the neighboring houses by a pair of projecting brick end piers with stone capitals at the top of the 3rd floor. At the center of the 2nd-3rd floors is a projecting 3-window bay with paneled stone pilasters and rounded ends. The narrower end windows are themselves curved. The pilasters at the 2nd floor are topped by scrolled acanthus-leaf brackets and both levels are capped by cornices, with a triangular pediment at the 2nd floor. A stone-and-wrought-iron railing tops the projecting bay, also rounded at the ends. The top floor has a carved stone band along the base, with a tall, stone-framed gable projecting from the mansard roof. The gable has a stone-framed tripartite window, and there is a tall stone-and-brick chimney rising from the east end of the mansard.

No. 249 at the north end is clad in brownstone on the lower floors and red brick with brownstone trim on the upper floors. The dog-legged box stoop turns to the right, and is wider, with a larger landing than the other two stoops. The round-arched entrance on the left is recessed behind a shallow portico with a triangular pediment on top. It has wood-and-stained-glass double-doors and a fanlight. To the right is a small round-arched window set in a surround topped by a small triangular pediment, and at the north end is a wide round-arched window with a stained glass fanlight, framed by a stone molding. The lower levels have been parged and painted, with most of the original ornament removed. The upper floors have a projecting, 3-window bay on the right, with angled sides. This bay is clad in brownstone and the angled side windows are narrower. Brownstone bands extends from between the floors, to the left across the rest of the facade, separating each floor. The 2nd floor has a double-window with transoms, framed in black iron, and the 3rd floor has a single-window framed by brownstone quoins. The base of the 3rd floor is red brick, with a single-window dormer breaking the mansard roof and having a triangular brownstone pediment. At the 3rd floor, the projecting north bay is brick, with a round-arched single-window on the east-facing facet only. The angled facets have projecting, black iron pseudo-balconies with rounded bases. Above the window is a black iron triangular pediment, behind and above which the corner faceted tower rises to a conical, slate-tiled cap with a finial.

Along the north facade on 85th Street the basement level has several low, round-arched openings. Two trios of openings near the middle have wider arches flanking narrower arches. There is a basement entry in the middle bay of the eastern trio, while the others all have windows with decorative iron grilles. A wrought-iron fence fronts the sideways-descending stairway in front of the eastern trio. There is another wide arched window at the east end, and another at the west end, which is next to a taller gated entry to a small yard behind the house. The gate is in a short 1-story extension of the base of the house. Above the two western openings in the eastern trio is the rounded base, carved with flowers, for a projecting, 3-sided bay at the parlor floor. The stone panels above the rounded lower part of the base are ornamented with fruit garlands, and the windows above are framed in black iron. To the left are two bays, spaced widely apart, with single-windows framed by stone quoins. To the right is a segmental-arched triple-window, and two more quoined single-windows flanking a wider but shorter and high-set opening of four small round-arched windows. At the east end of the brick upper floors there is a brownstone-clad extension of the faceted corner tower, with a single-window on the 2nd & 3rd floors, and a short double-window at the 4th, where it is clad in iron, just below the conical cap. The 3rd-floor window is framed by paneled pilasters and has a rounded, floral-carved base below it. The rest of the 2nd floor has a single-window, a set of paired windows, a double-window, and two very narrow double-windows, all in brownstone surrounds. The rear, west end of the house sets back above the 2nd floor, with the brownstone coping on top curving up and then continuing across the 3rd floor. The 3rd floor has three single-windows in quoined brownstone surrounds, with a tiny bathroom window between the eastern two, and a brick-framed oval window between the western two. The top floor has three brownstone chimneys extending through the mansard roof and above the ridgeline. Between the western two chimneys are two gables above small round-arched windows, with another window in between. The rear, west-facing facade is clad in red brick.

The row was developed by William Noble, who chose No. 247 as his personal residence, and lived here for the next five years. It changed hands numerous times afterward, and was converted to apartments in 1948, with a doctor's office on the 1st floor. Then, in 2001 it was restored to a single-family home by Abigail Disney, the grandniece of Walt Disney. Disney lived here for five years, selling the home in 2006 to then-President and COO of Coach, Keith Monda for $15.5 million.

No. 249 was purchased by wallpaper manufacturer Frederick Beck upon completion. In 1957 the house was converted to apartments and the exterior modernized to comply with mid-century distaste for overblown ornamentation. One of the tenants, John Herget, purchased the house in 1974. Around 2006 the mansion was purchased for $14.4 million and a conversion was begun to bring it back to a single-family home; it sold in 2013. No. 248 also remains a single-family townhome.

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