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About 320 Riverside Drive
This blockfront building has two symmetrical wings straddling a "light" court. The attractive and well-proportioned, cream-colored, 15-story building is quite restrained, but that is rather good neighborly as it abuts the Riverside Drive-West 105th Street Historic District.
In her book, "Landmarks of New York II," (Harry F. Abrams Inc., 1993), Barbaralee Diamonstein wrote that "Until the end of the nineteenth century, the Upper West Side of Manhattan was known as Bloomingdale, after Bloemendael, the flower growing area of Holland."
"Although it was the site of two large building complexes - the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum and the Leake and Watts Orphanage - it was not until the 1890's that development began on a large scale. The townhouses built between 1899 and 1902 on West 105th Street and 106th Streets are the result of a period of great optimism, originally fueled by the hope that the proposed World's Columbia Exhibition of 1893 would be held in Riverside Park," she continued. The exhibition was held in Chicago, but the townhouses, "built in the French Beaux Arts style...were intended to lure wealthy residents from the Upper East side....The neighborhood is notable for the visual harmony of the streetscapes - the result of deliberate planning in the form of restrictive covenants dictating the height of buildings and the character of their facades. The use of such horizontal elements as cornices, balconies, and mansard roofs carries the eyes from one building to the next; the gently curved masonry bays on the facades add a rhythmic effect."
This building's 124 units were converted to cooperatives in 1979. The building was erected in 1929.
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