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About Milan House, 115 East 67th Street
This wonderful and very charming mid-block building, which has entrances on both 67th and 68th Streets, is one of the finest in the city.
Built in 1931 and designed by Andrew J. Thomas, this 11-story compound has a magnificent center garden that is partially visible from the canopied entrances. While there are other residential buildings with larger gardens, such as the Dakota, the Apthorp and the Belnord on the West Side, they are much larger structures.
The garden is by no means the only attraction here as the facades abound in fanciful decorative sculptures of rabbits, squirrels, owls, eagles, dogs and the like.
In their great book, "The A. I. A. Guide to New York City, Fourth Edition, The Classic Guide to New York's Architecture," (Three Rivers Press, 2000), Norval White and Elliot Wilensky provide the following commentary about this superb building:
"Two 11-story gems, complete with carved monsters, grotesques, and florid capital atop colonnettes, and wonderful multipaned casements. Thomas was an important designer of enlightened apartment developments. The midblock Italian garden court between the wings, barely visible through the entry doors, is a dream."
The building's façade is red-brick to complete that of the 7th Regiment Armory that it faces across 67th Street. The 67th Street wing has 57 apartments. The building has a one-step-up, canopied entrance with sidewalk landscaping and a doorman and permits pets and protruding air-conditioners. It has no balconies, no health club and no sun deck.
The building has a prime Upper East Side location that is convenient to the area's many fashionable boutiques and restaurants, art galleries and museums, and social clubs. It is close to Hunter College and there is cross-town bus service on this street and 65th Street and a subway station is nearby at 67th Street and Lexington Avenue.
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