Most Italian Renaissance-palazzo-style apartment buildings in the city have a few decorative balconies but few make balconies a major design element. This 12-story building, which was erected in 1911 and converted to a cooperative in 1971, has quite bold columns of balconies at either end of its frontage along 79th Street and its top floor has another one in the center of the facade that symmetrically relates to the building's entrance.

The building has a two-story limestone base and limestone window reveals on the third floor. The canopied, step-up entrance has wooden doors and is flanked by tall wrought iron window grills surrounded by foliated limestone pilasters. It has no garage and no health club.

The building has 65 apartments and is one of many pre-war buildings with sidewalk landscaping and seating that make this one of the city's nicest residential blocks. The east end of this quiet street faces Manhattan Square, the large park in which the American Museum of Natural History stands.

Its central Upper West Side location is very close to famous stores along Broadway and a delightful stretch of sidewalk caf?s a few blocks north on Amsterdam Avenue.

There is very good public transportation and this area is convenient to the various amenities of the Lincoln Center District about a dozen blocks to the south.

Carter B. Horsley