West 96th Apartments at 750 Columbus Avenue (New York City, New York)

 apartment building, 1988_construction

188-foot, 12-story postmodern residential building completed in 1988. Designed by Schuman Lichtenstein Claman & Efron, it was formerly known as Key West Apartments, and then Archstone West 96th, until it was sold in 2012. The building is U-shaped, wrapping around a courtyard, and is clad in red brick with grey concrete floorplates and grey metal window framing. The 12-story main tower fronts the avenue and 97th Street, with a wing along 96th Street stepping down to five stories and then four.

The main entrance is centered on the east facade, where the ground floor is double-height. It has a large recessed bay with angled sidewalls of beige polished granite receding back to a 2-story, grey-brown metal-and-glass wall divided into three sections by a pair of granite columns. The middle section has a revolving door flanked by glass single-doors, with plate-glass windows above. The outer sections have windows on both floors. To the north the ground floor has three bays of double-height storefronts with plate-glass windows below metal louvers; the northernmost bay has an entrance to the storefronts with glass double-doors. The other two storefront bays are recessed between between brick piers with angled ends; there is a tall, narrow window in the center of each pier. To the south of the main entrance are three storefront bays, the first two recessed with angled ends, like those to the north. The ground floor is shorter here, one story tall, due to the slope of the site. The brick piers also have narrow windows at their center, but these have peculiar sharply-peaked tops.

The upper floors are undulating, with six recessed bays between five bays of projecting bay windows with angled ends, and north and south end sections that have triple-windows at their centers and double-windows at the ends that wrap around the corner to angled facets with single-panes. The five center projecting bays have double-windows on the front facets and single-windows on the angled end facets. The recessed bays have double-windows, and there is a metal air-conditioning vent below each window bay.

On the north facade on 97th Street the double-height base continues for one storefront bay, framed by a narrow window in the angled corner, and another to the west, before dropping down to one floor along the rest of this facade, which has a large commercial space on the ground floor, with narrow windows paired with long window bands above grey stone cladding along the base. There is a grey metal service door near the east storefront, and a wide, recessed bay in the center, with a main entrance to this commercial space through two sets of sliding glass doors below a black metal canopy. At the west end, just past a blue metal service door, is a 1-story extension with an entrance to the underground parking garage.

The upper floors on the north facade have a wide, central recessed section of four double-windows. To the west, a projecting bay with angled sides (like those on the east facade) separates another recessed section with two double-window bays, and another projecting bay with angled sides separates the recessed western end section with two more double-windows. To the east of the central section is another projecting bay and an eastern recessed section of two double-windows. At the east end is a projecting section with a narrow double-window at its western edge, wrapping around for a pane onto an angled facet. At the other end of this section, another narrow double-window wrapping around to the angled northeastern corner of the building.

The ground floor on the south facade on 96th Street has a pier with the peaked window at the east end, framing a storefront bay, followed by a green metal serviced door, a wider storefront, another set of piers with peaked windows framing a narrower storefront window, a storefront section with glass-and-metal double-doors, where the tower above steps down to the low-rise section at the west. From here, the ground floor has two storefront bays and another peaked-window pier, a red and a green metal service door, a storefront bay, a peaked-window pier, two more storefront bays, and a final peaked-window pier.

The upper floors at the tower have a recessed center section with two double-windows, flanked by an eastern section with narrow double-windows at both ends that wrap around onto angled side panes. The western section has two wider double-windows, spaced farther apart, that also wrap around onto angled ends. The 5-story section of the low-rise wing has a recessed bay of double-windows, a projecting double-window with angled ends, a recessed section with two double-windows, another projecting bay, and then a non-projecting double-window. The 4-story section continues with a double-window, a projecting double-window bay with angled ends, and then two final double-windows flanking a triple-window.

The west facade of the north wing on 97th Street has two narrow double-windows in the middle, and a recessed bay at the south end with another narrow double-window. The west facade of the south tower wing on 96th Street has a double-window bay at the center that is angled, with the wall to the south set farther back than the north half. The south- and west-facing inner facades facing the courtyard both have one projecting bay with angled sides, surrounded by several bays of double- and triple-windows.

The smaller penthouse level on top of the east part of the tower is set back from each side, and surrounded by terrace space. The building contains 207 apartment units. The ground floor commercial space on 97th Street is occupied by Ryan Health clinic, while the 96th Street commercial space is occupied by Bright Horizons daycare. One of the storefronts on the avenue is occupied by Birch Coffee, and another by Vision Lab Optometry.