254 East 68th Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 254 East 68th Street by Carter Horsley

This 31-story building was erected in 1973 by Rudin Management Company and contains 172 rental apartments.

The white-brick building has a through-block driveway with its entrance in the middle of the driveway. It is also known as 231-5 East 67th Street and 1293-1297 Second Avenue.

The building is surrounded on three sides by broad, landscaped plazas. On 67th Street, the plaza has a three-step- and a four-step-up entrance as well as a slightly inclined ramp. The plaza areas have a patterned sidewalk.

The building s east and west façades have two pairs of gray-brick piers and all of the first floor windows fronting on the plazas have protruding gray-brick surrounds with inclined tops. The building is capped by a gray-brick roofline.

The building is just to the north of Sheldon Solow's black glass apartment building monolith with curved corners at 245 West 66th Street, which has a row of pink granite rowhouses with slightly bowed façades. The tower is set back in a plaza.

Together the plazas of the two towers provide some welcome "light-and-air" to this section of Second Avenue, which otherwise is somewhat bland and the two towers are among the most distinctive on the Upper East Side.

This building has a garage and a concierge and discrete air-conditioners.

Other rental buildings owned by the Rudins include 945 Fifth Avenue, 1085 Park Avenue, 40 Park Avenue, 211 East 70th Street, 215 East 68th Street, 25 West 81st Street, 345 East 72nd Street, 136 East 55th Street, 300 East 57th Street, 241 Central Park West, and 20, 27 40, 115, 144 West 86th Street and 544 East 86th Street.