Rossleigh Court, 1 West 85th Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 1 West 85th Street by Carter Horsley

The twin of the Orwell House at 257 Central Park West, the Rossleigh Court building at 1 West 85^th Street is a very handsome red-brick building with limestone trim that retains its peaked copper roofline that is missing from Orwell House. 

The “twin” building occupy the blockfront between 85^th and 86^th streets.  Rossleigh Court was erected in 1906, one year after Orwell House, which was originally the Hotel Peter Stuyvesant.  

Both buildings were designed by Mulliken & Moeller for Gotham Building & Construction Co.  

Rossleigh Court is a rental with 68 apartments. 

Orwell House was converted to co-operative apartments in 1980.

Bottom Line

A handsome pre-war rental building overlooking Central Park near excellent public transportation. 

Description

These very handsome twin buildings have “a disarming and cheery purplish brick set off to advantage by elaborate limestone trim,” according to “The A. I. A. Guide to New York City” by Norval White and Elliot Willensky. 

This building retains its rather unusual peaked copper roofline while Orwell House, to the north, has a plain, flat roofline. 

Both buildings have a two-story rusticated limestone base and their 3^rd and 10^th floors have limestone bands and bandcourses above the fourth and ninth floors. The buildings also have handsome limestone quoins at their corners. 

Rossleigh Court has a two-story-high entrance surround and canopy with a one-step-up entrance flanked by two small sconces. It also has several impressive window surrounds on the fourth floor.

Amenities

The building has a canopied entrance, a live-in superintendent and a doorman.

Apartments

According to the September 14, 2003 “Streetscapes” column by Christopher Gray in The New York Times, “the apartments were characteristic of the decade’s self-described luxury buildings: the most desirable apartment…was organized around a 14-by-19-foot parlor…with a library on one side, a dining room with an apparently non-working fireplace on the other, and a long hall leading to three bedrooms sharing a single bath.” 

“Included were wall safes, a central vacuum-cleaning system, rich onyx paneling in the lobbies and an automatic mail delivery system that used a small elevator to each apartment,” Mr. Gray wrote. 

An early advertisement for the building noted that the kitchens had five-foot-high marble wainscoting. 

Apartment 3D is a two-bedroom unit that has a long reception hall that leads to a 15-foot-wide parlor with a fireplace next to a 16-foot-wide dining room adjoining the 13-foot-kitchen. 

Apartment 8C is a four-bedroom unit that has a square reception hall that opens onto a 14-foot-wide library and a 19-foot-parlor next to a large dining area with an open kitchen. 

Apartment 10B is a two-bedroom unit with a large reception hall that opens onto a 17-foot-long parlor with a fireplace and a 15-foot-dining room.  The apartment has a 14-foot-long kitchen and a 10-foot-long maid’s room. 

Apartment 6F is a one-bedroom unit that has a large reception hall that opens onto a 17-foot-wide parlor with a fireplace next to a 13-foot-wide dining area next to an enclosed kitchen.

History

In his “Streetscapes” column, Mr. Gray noted that architects Harry Mulliken and Edgar Moeller graduated in 1895 from the Columbia University School of Architecture and in 1901 Mulligan filed plans for a one-story wooden tool shed on West 114^th street for James and David Todd who would commission him and Moeller the next year to design the very handsome Bretton Hall Hotel on the east side of Broadway between 85^th and 86th Streets. 

“Architecturally the designs were no more sophisticated than the usual speculative project, but Mulliken & Moeller so often repeated the same basic solution that their work has acquired a familiarity that gives it a statue beyond its actual accomplishment,” Mr. Gray remarked. 

In 1903, the Todds commissioned the architects for what Mr. Grey described as “the astonished plum-colored Lucerne, at the northwest corner of 79^th Street and Amsterdam Avenue,” where they created “a rich furnace of late sunset shades.”  (The Todds would later erect the extravagant and gorgeous Cunard Building at 25 Broadway and the exuberant Graybar Building on Lexington Avenue near Grand Center Terminal. 

In 1905, Mr. Gray continued, the Todds designed the Severn and Van Dyck apartment building son the east side of Amsterdam Avenue from 72^nd to 73^rd Streets. 

The Rossleigh Court and Orwell House, Mr. Gray, noted were commissioned from Mulliken & Moeller by different developers.