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About 790 Riverside Drive
Riverside Drive is one of the world's greatest residential streets and one of the most charming sections is just above the spectacular Audubon Terrace enclave of cultural institutions at 155th Street and Broadway where there is also the Trinity Cemetery and the Church of the Intercession.
This very distinguished, five-sided, building has a most unusual floor plan with five deep light wells. It was designed by Rouse and Goldstone and erected in 1910 by the Riveria Realty Company in an Italian Renaissance-palazzo style. The 13-story building has a three-story, rusticated limestone base, limestone quoins, and arched windows at its top floor beneath a quite distinctive cornice of multiple arches. There are several very handsome decorative balconies and the building has spacious lobbies.
In his excellent book, "New York's Fabulous Luxury Apartments With Original Floor Plans from the Dakota, River House, Olympic Tower and Other Great Buildings, (Dover Publications Inc., 1975), Andrew Alpern notes that this building "might be regarded as one of the first apartment houses to cater to middle-class tenants with upper-class pretensions."
"The apartments, which range in size from 5 to 10 rooms, have such luxury features as libraries, separate butlers' pantries, and parquet flooring. However, the room sizes are merely adequate and the closet space is minimal. To obtain maximum usage of the available site, the architect was forced to string the apartments out along a many-cornered public corridor. The private halls I each suite are also excessively long and contorted," according to Mr. Alpern. Of course, such eccentricities are more cherished by a generation that has suffered through decades of cookie-cutter apartments.
This area's long decline began to be reversed towards the end of the 20th Century as many rental buildings were converted to tenant-ownership. This building was converted to a cooperative in 1985 and had has 202 apartments.
There is a nearby subway station and there is good bus service. Riverside Park offers stunning views of the George Washington Bridge and the Palisades.
Carter B. Horsley
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