New York City 2023: Exploring the Architecture of the Upper West Side

After flying from Toronto to Newark and taking the Air Train into Manhattan’s Penn Station, my husband Rich and I proceeded to walk the 14 blocks north along 8th Avenue from 34th Street to 48th Street where our hotel was.  I like cities that have street names that are numbers since it helps you gauge how much further it is until you reach your destination.  This is especially useful when you are lugging your carry-on bag on your shoulder, and it feels heavier and heavier as you go.  By the time we headed back to Penn Station to return home, we had walked so much in the interim that we decided it was not too extravagant to take the subway for 2 stops instead of doing this schlep again.  During our trek north on 8th Ave, we came across the New Yorker Wyndam Hotel with its cool Art Deco-styled sign, a bronze sculpture of Ralph Kramden, the character played by Jackie Gleason on The Honeymooners which is in front of the Port Authority, and the headquarters of the New York Times newspaper which we read and work on its crossword puzzle every Sunday.  This stretch of 8th Ave. is full of restaurants, shops and office towers and has a busy, happening vibe. Between 41st Street to 48th Street, we walked by some of the Broadway theatres that we would be watching shows at later in the week.  At the Belvedere Hotel which is located on 48th Street between 8th Sand 9th Avenues., we were delighted by the beautiful Art Deco décor of both the building and the interior.

We arrived too early to check into our hotel, so we dropped off our bags and continued to explore the Upper West Side of Manhattan, starting with our immediate neighbourhood of Hell’s Kitchen.  We really like this area which is immediately west of the Broadway theatre district but has more of a residential feel with less of the frenzy and touristy shops and restaurants found on the east side of 8th Avenue.  It has definitely been gentrified compared to its gritty, crime-filled eponymous past.

The Belvedere Hotel is right across the street from the Professional Performing Arts School NYC (PPAS) which immediately made me think of the movie Fame with students dancing on the street. Whenever we travel, we always try to book a hotel that has a mini fridge to store fruit and yogurt so that we could have a quick breakfast before heading out for the day.  Just around the corner from the hotel is a hipster grocery store called Amish Market which sells products from both local artisan farms and international suppliers.  From our hotel window, we could see a multi-leveled carpark which seems to work on a lift with cars stacked one on top of the other.  On the walls of buildings we found more street art that reflected the vibrancy of the city, as opposed to graffiti scrawls found elsewhere.

Just a couple of blocks away from our hotel is Lillie’s Victorian Establishment which has a beautifully decorated storefront with gilded door frames and the most ornate door handle that we had ever seen.  There is a bronze sculpture of a Victorian woman at the front and flowers in the front window (perhaps the eponymous Lillie?) When I first passed by, I thought this was either a vintage clothing or a décor shop, but it is actually an Irish-Victorian bar and restaurant that is as ornately decorated inside as it is outside.  The establishment is named in honour of Lillie Langtry, a British actress and socialite of the late 19th Century who was mistress to Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII).

Continuing our walk north along 8th Avenue, we took a self-guided architectural tour of the spectacular buildings found in the Upper West Side.  We came across a bust and a plaque marking the last home of Hungarian composer Bela Bartok (1881-1945), known for combining folk music with classic and modern music.  At 8th Avenue and 57th Street, we admired the Hearst Tower whose first six floors were built in Art Deco style in 1928 and feature large stone carvings at the base of two central columns including one figure who looks like he is making a “hip hop” pose.  The modern, glass tower emanating from the original base was completed in 2006 and provides an additional 40 floors.  At 59th Street we reached Columbus Circle with the monument honouring Christopher Columbus, and then veered off onto Broadway Ave to continue exploring the Upper West Side.  Rich was fascinated by the stone carvings on the pillars of the Park Laurel Building at 15 West 63rd Street which depict scenes such as a car being repaired and a man and his dog being filmed by another man with a movie camera. The Park Laurel condominium building sits on top of the former McBurney Prep School for Boys (1916-1985), which was attended by famous names such as Robert De Niro, Henry Winkler, news anchor Ted Koppel and reclusive writer J.D. Salinger, who featured the school in his book The Catcher in the Rye. Interestingly, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of producing the TV show Sesame Street at this location, 63rd Street was renamed Sesame Street in 2019.  At 56 West 66th Street, we found the First Battery Armory, a red brick and granite National Guard armory building designed in Beaux-Arts and multiple Revival styles with castellated parapets and in use between 1904-1975.  It was owned for a while by ABC (later Walt Disney Company) and used as production studios until 2012 when the building was converted into office space.

Heading north-west along Broadway Avenue, we continued to some gorgeous buildings that have mostly been turned into luxury condominiums.  One of the most stunning of these is the Ansonia, originally completed in 1904 as a grand Beaux-Arts hotel with a façade of limestone, granite, white brick and terracotta with turrets topped by cupolas at its corners and housing 2500 rooms including multi-room suites.  The Ansonia had quite the colourful past in the late 20th century, housing a gay bathhouse and a swinger’s club, as well as several restaurants and a shopping arcade.   After falling on hard times in the 50’s and 60’s, the building was converted into rent-controlled apartments in the 70’s and 80’s before being renovated again and turned into luxury condominiums that now sell for several million dollars each.  Over the years, the Ansonia has been known for its artistic residents including musicians, actors and writers.  Noted occupants included Richard Dreyfuss, Angelina Jolie, composers Gustav Mahler and Igor Stravinsky as well as opera singers and baseball players.

Like the Ansonia, the Dorilton at 171 W 71st was also built as a Beaux-Arts hotel in 1900-1902 and is also a designated historic landmark.  Shaped like the letter “H”, the 12-storey building has a limestone and brick façade decorated with curved bronzed bay windows, ornate balconies and chimneys, monumental sculptures and urns, terracotta finishes and a lavish stone pedestrian entranceway topped with two cherubs holding a shield.  The alternating colours of brown brick against white limestone add to its striking appearance.  In 1984, the Dorilton was turned into a  co-op, and recently actor Nathan Lane bought a unit there for $4.1million.  Less spectacular but still interesting architecturally is the Alexandria Condominium at 201 West 72nd Street.  The 25-storey 202 unit Post-Modern condo building was built in 1991 with a façade featuring red brick, copper green panels and ornate white grill balcony railings.  Cascading balconies lead up to a distinctive water tank enclosure with Egyptian motif on the rooftop. Verdi Square is a small park at 72nd Street and Broadway Avenue that was named after Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi, with a large monument dedicated to him.  At the south edge of the square is the entrance to the new 72nd Street subway station (designated the “North Station House) whose domed skylight design was inspired by the Crystal Palace in London and has a decorative pattern on the skylight roof made from over 100 mosaic panels.  It was completed in late 2002 and is directly north of the original entrance which sits on a traffic island between 71st and 72nd street.  The original (now South) station house was opened in 1904 as part of the Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT), New York’s first subway line.  Designated a historic landmark, its façade is made with light yellow bricks and the design of the top of its entrance has a Flemish look and feel.

Both station houses have plaques with the number “72” embossed on them and there is an underground passageway running between the North and South entrances. They are each architecturally interesting in their own way, especially when viewed at the same time, directly across from one another.

At the corner of 79th and Broadway, we came across the Apthorp Condominiums, another 12-storey rectangular, limestone hotel constructed in the Italian Renaissance Revival style in 1905-1908 and converted to condos in the 2000s. What caught my eye were the set of four female sculptures in flowing gowns positioned on the large archway leading into an inner courtyard with a garden and fountain.  This seems to be a popular building with an impressive list of noted residents include Lena Horne, Cyndi Lauper, Rosie O’Donnell, Conan O’Brien, Al Pacino and many more.  On the same corner is the First Baptist Church which seems to have features of a typical church (rose window, spire) mixed in with those of a castle or manor as it is flanked on both sides by turrets with red-tiled cone-shaped roofs.  The asymmetric heights of the turrets are said to have religious meaning with the taller one representing Christ and the shorter one representing the church on Earth.  Turning east, we headed towards Central Park West to see all the luxury apartments line that stretch.  Along the way, we spotted the Lucerne Hotel(1904), whose breathtaking red stone and brick façade is a sight to behold, standing out next to the white limestone buildings surrounding it.  Ornately sculpted, purple-tinged terracotta moldings decorate the window ledges, front columns and trim around the building, causing the surfaces to change tones depending on the time of day and the amount of light shining on them.

Arriving at Central Park West and 79th Street, we looked at one of the many entrances into the American Museum of Natural History.  This one had four sculptures standing on the four Doric columns.  They represent Daniel Boone (American frontiersman and pioneer), John James Audubon (naturalist, ornithologist and artist), Lewis and Clark (explorers) who contributed to the understanding of American flora and fauna.  The Neoclassical architecture represented in this part of the large museum complex stands in stark contrast to the recently opened addition designed by Jeanne Gang Group.  We would go check out this new addition as part of our tour of museums in the Upper West Side.

Walking south on Central Park West, we encountered one high-profile luxury co-op building after another with a veritable who’s who list of occupants.  Named after the 12th Century Kenilworth Castle (whose ruins we saw in a previous visit to England), The Kenilworth (1908) has a white limestone and red brick façade much like the Dorilton and was home to Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones who owned a 4-bedroom penthouse there before putting it up for sale in 2021.  The San Remo(1930) is a co-op apartment that is distinctive for its twin  towers that rise up 10 floors from the 17-story base.  Each tower is topped with a circular “temple” and the pair can be seen soaring up into the sky from blocks away.  Past and present residents in this building include Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg, Emi More, Steve Martin, Diane Keaton, Mick Jagger, Bono, Dustin Hoffman, Rita Haywood, John Barrymore and many other well known celebrities. The San Remo famously rejected a purchase bid from Madonna.  The Dakota (1880-1884) is built in a German Renaissance Revival style and has a European feel with its yellow brick façade, vertical strip of rounded windows that is topped with a domed cupola and its ornate wrought-iron balcony railings.  This building is best known as the location where John Lennon was murdered and where Yoko Ono inexplicably continued to live.  Past occupants included Judy Garland, Leonard Bernstein, Rosemary Clooney and many more.  Finally the Majestic (1931) stands out for its beautiful Art Deco design including the detailing on the stone between the columns of windows, and the curvy Deco designs at the top of the towers.  The only occupant names that I recognized were Zero Mostel and Conan O’Brien (who was also listed in the Apthrop – he really gets around!).

Walking west on 74th Street between Columbus Ave. and  Amsterdam Ave., the homes and buildings that we saw were relatively more modest compared to the monster co-op buildings we saw earlier.  However these structures, which were usually 3 stories plus sunken basement were by no means less attractive.  We saw all sorts of beautiful architectural details including some decorative ornamentation around some of windows that almost seemed in the style of Art Nouveau.

Although built in 1941, the building at 10 West 74th Street has an Art Deco Streamline Moderne look with its sleek, linear lines and lack of ornamentation.  It was interesting to see black and yellow Fallout Shelter plaques affixed on some of the buildings on this street.  These signs were left over from the “Duck and Cover” era of the 1950s which designated safe places to hide in case of a nuclear attack.  The thought was that old concrete and brick buildings with basements provided the best protection and should be stocked with provisions to prepare for emergencies.  These signs used to be all over Manhattan and Brooklyn.  Since 2017, many of them have since been removed but obviously a few still exist, maybe for nostalgia purposes.  Also spotted on West 74th Street is the Robert Louis Stevenson School with special programs for children challenged with anxiety, depression and other mood disorders.