Beaux Arts Apartments South | apartment building, historical building

 apartment building, historical building

177-foot, 17-story Art-Moderne residential building completed in 1929. Designed by Kenneth M. Murchison and Raymond Hood of the firm of Hood, Godley & Fouilhoux as accommodations for the neighboring Beaux-Arts Institute of Design. There is a mirror-image building across 44th Street, with the two combined containing 636 apartment units. The horizontal treatment of the façades with white, red and black brick and the use of industrial materials reflected the Art-Moderne style then prevalent in Europe. Originally built as apartment hotels, the building's units had two Murphy beds in 13-by-22-foot rooms, custom-designer refrigerators, serving pantries and small bathroom fixtures. A few double-height "artist" studios were included on the top two floors, but the rest of the apartments are quite small. It is interesting that such a relatively stark design would emanate from an institute devoted to the elaborate decorative glories of the Beaux-Arts traditions.

In the massing of each of the twin midblock buildings, end pavilions flank the major central portion of the facade which is set back eight feet from the property line; a 2-story base is dominated by a projecting entrance pavilion, while the upper four floors form a series of slight setbacks. The facades are articulated by continuous light brick spandrels and dark brick panels (placed between the windows) composed of alternating courses of red and black brick, with limestone at the base.

The base is banded by narrow courses of slightly darker stone. At the west end the ground floor is slightly below grade. The main entrance is in the bay west of the center of the facade, it has a projecting stone enframement flanked by angled side bays containing paired windows. The rectangular, double-height entryway has stepped jambs and is highlighted by a carved frieze of chevrons and geometric forms. The glass doors are set in the original brushed aluminum surround, and a large window surmounts them. The pavilion is topped by a metal railing with a simple chevron pattern. These railings are repeated elsewhere, spanning bays at the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 10th, 11th, & 12th floors, and set-back terraces in the upper four floors.

The top floors are massed in a series of terraces. The two center bays, the end bays, and each bay second from the center, all with larger windows, set back in a different pattern than the rest of the bays, which step back at regular intervals at each floor. The end bays and center bays (which rise to the 15th floor before setting back) are squared in profile, while the others are angled. The duplex windows are an enlarged version of the steel casement windows used elsewhere. The roof is topped by a brick mechanical penthouse.

The eastern elevation, visible from the adjacent courtyard, continues the horizontal composition of the facade. Light brick spandrels are interrupted at the center bay, creating a dark vertical stripe at the center of the wall that indicates the stairwell on the interior. Only the upper floors floors of the western elevation are visible above the adjacent 6-story Beaux-Arts Institute of Design building.

The east end of the ground floor is occupied by Le Salon NYC, and MONA Kitchen and Market.

www.neighborhoodpreservationcenter.org/db/bb_files/1989...
usmodernist.org/AMAR/AMAR-1930-03.pdf
dlc.library.columbia.edu/catalog/cul:02v6wwq0v6