Tower West Apartments

 condominium  Add category

282-foot, 28-story mid-century modern residential buildings completed in 1971. Designed by Liebman & Liebman Architects, it is clad in light-beige brick and concrete, set behind a landscaped plaza at the south end and rising from a 1-story base at the north end. The retaining wall enclosing the west side of the plaza rises in height as it travels north due to the slope in the site. At the north end, the base contains commercial space, with a light-brown polished granite wall between storefronts show-windows, with a broad concrete band across the top. There is a granite pier at the northwest corner, and a short granite section with a storefront entrance at the west end of the north facade on 97th Street; the storefront is occupied by a Mattress Firm. To the east the base is clad in brown-painted brick with concrete on top. Near the east end is a set of service doors and a freight entrance with a roll-down metal gate. Just past the base is a ramp down to the underground parking garage.

The main residential entrance is to the south, on 96th Street. The ground floor of the tower is recessed behind four thin concrete piers, and the entry is situated at the east end, with metal-framed glass double-doors in a glass surround, covered by a peaked, red canvas canopy extending out to the sidewalk. The narrower center bay at the ground floor has a set of floor-to-ceiling windows offset to the left, and the east end bay has no openings. On the upper floors the narrow south facade has two joined sets of double-windows in the center bay, divided by grey steel mullions and framed by a pair of thin, projecting concrete piers. Another set of piers frame the ends of the facade; the outer bays are clad in brick and have no openings. There are also brick spandrels between floors in the center bay.

The much wider west facade facing the avenue is divided by thin brick piers into 12 bays, with the ground floor recessed behind them and having large windows between the brick cladding. The upper floors have tripartite windows except for the end bays, the 5th bay from the north, and the 4th bay from the south, all of which have projecting concrete balconies with concrete sidewalls and metal railings fronting recessed glass doors and windows.

The north facade matches the south one, and the east facade matches the west, except that the 2nd-from-northernmost bay of balconies is moved one bay to the north. The building is topped by a projecting concrete cap that extends around all four sides. The building contains 217 condominium units.