University Mews, 39 East 12th Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 39 East 12th Street by Carter Horsley

This impressive building actually is comprised of two separate structures unified at the base by a two-story high colonnade with arched grillwork.

In their superb book, "The A. I. A. Guide to New York City, Third Edition," (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), Elliot Willensky and Norval White note that "regrettably the newly added ironwork is not hefty enough and therefore unsympathetic to the buildings' robust nature." These buildings and several adjacent ones were designed by Cleverdon & Putzel and built in 1896 and the grouping, which also includes Nos. 36, 37, 42, 53 on the same block, is one of the most impressive in the city.

The 7-story building has very high ceilings and a canopied entrance with a very impressive lobby with a concierge. The building has no sidewalk landscaping and no garage and permits protruding air-conditioners. It was converted to a cooperative apartment building.

It is close to New York University, Cooper Union and the New School for Social Research, many restaurants, the Strand Bookstore, and both Washington Square and Union Square parks. Madison Avenue buses are nearby on University Place and several subway lines are nearby as are crosstown buses.

This area of the Village is a very interesting mix of superb early commercial buildings, some fine pre-war apartment buildings, some large post-war apartment buildings, a bowling alley, and the exquisite Grace Episcopal Church nearby.

Whereas the best blocks of the Village were for decades considered to be on the west side of Fifth Avenue, the renaissance of Union Square and the Flatiron District have led to the rediscovery of this neighborhood that was once rather quiet, but now is very lively.

Carter B. Horsley