| |
About Riverside Towers, 263 West End Avenue
One of the most distinguished apartment houses on West End Avenue, this 22-story building was erected in 1929.
All the ingredients that define the classic, pre-war, New York, luxury apartment house are in place here: very handsome limestone base, multiple setbacks and terraces, courses, cornices, distinctive trim and detail, solid construction, large apartments, good layouts, fine views from its upper floors, and an impressive lobby and entrance.
The 125-unit building was converted to a cooperative in 1947.
Taller than most of its contemporary buildings along West End Avenue (and Park Avenue), this building is an impressive composition that is both contextual and interesting and visually rewarding. Its base, for example, is strongly articulated by its alternating limestone and masonry as a colonnade caped by a full-story limestone band that makes this quite massive structure appear light on its dancing feet.
Just down the block from the southern entrance to Riverside Park and only a block away from an express subway station, this building has a superb Upper West Side location. It is a few blocks north of the Lincoln Center District and just to the east of the north end of the huge new luxury apartment complex rising at Riverside South facing the Hudson River.
|
