Breaking Ground - Dorothy Ross Friedman Residence (New York City, New York)

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332-foot, 30-story postmodern residential building completed in 1995. Designed by John Harding as a 98-unit condominium named The Aurora, the developer abandoned construction of the building in 1989 even though it was 90% complete. The building sat unfinished until 1995, when the Actors' Fund started converting it into a shared-living supportive housing residence. It now contains 178 apartment units for elderly, low-income working professionals and people living with HIV/AIDS. At the Friedman, two to three tenants share a single apartment with private bedrooms and a common living room and kitchen.

The building is clad in red brick, with the tower set back on the south side from a 3-story base. The base has four bays on the south facade on 57th Street; both of the middle bays are wider, with the 2nd bay from the east being the widest and having the main entrance at the ground floor, with recessed glass doors and window under a metal-and-glass canopy. The narrow east end bay is open to the glass-and-metal wall behind it, and the two western bays have a metal-and-glass storefront. The 2nd floor has tripartite windows in the middle bays and narrow double-windows at the end bays, with the west bay wrapping around the corner. There are metal vents above each window bay. The 3rd floor is the same, except without the vents and with a pair of narrow double-windows in place of the tripartite window in the 2nd-from-east bay. Beige brick string courses line each floor at the bottoms and tops of the windows, and a similar band course and stone coping caps the base - except at the 2nd bay from the east, where there is a row of beige brick squares instead.

The base along the avenue has eight bays. The narrow north end bay is recessed at the lower two floors, with a glass door at the ground floor to a health clinic located inside the building, and double-windows at the floors above. To the south there four storefront bays with metal-and-glass infill, and then three similar but smaller bays at the south end. At the 2nd & 3rd floors, the four wide bays have joined pairs of double-windows (except for the middle two at the 3rd floor, which have separate, narrow double-windows), with metal vents topping them at the 2nd floor, and transoms at the 3rd. There are double-windows at the smaller south bays, except for the northern of the three south bays on the 3rd floor, which has a narrow triple-window. The beige banding continues from the south facade.

The upper floors have double-windows in the end bays, wrapping around the corners. Between them are a bay of joined double-window pairs and two bays of separate, paired double-windows, all rather narrow. There are transoms at the middle bays of the 4th floor. Each floor has an exposed, beige concrete floor plate. Beginning at the 5th floor there are projecting, square, concrete balconies with metal railings in two columns up the west facade. The balconies shift slightly outward at the 27th & 28th floors. At the 28th-30th floors the middle bays change to larger double-windows in the center flanked by single-windows. The end bays set back above the 28th floor, and again above the 29th. A brick-and-stone parapet encircles the roof line, with a tall and narrow mechanical penthouse rising from the east-center of the roof.

The upper floors on the south and north facades have five bays of double-windows, with the center bay set farther apart from the others. At the 28th floor the center bay splits into two bays of smaller double-windows. The outer bays are eliminated by the setbacks at the top, creating terraces, and the middle bay has wide tripartite windows on the top two floors. The exposed floor plates continue around all four sides of the tower. The east facade has three bays at the north and south ends. The outer two on each side are double-windows, wrapping around the corner at the end bay, and the inner bays have single-windows. The beige floor plates are wider (taller) below and for a short distance to the north of the single-windows. Besides the health clinic, the ground floor is occupied by a Starbucks coffee.

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