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About The Century, 25 Central Park West
The sister of the Majestic apartment building several blocks to the north on Central Park West, the Century is one of the masterpieces of developer Irwin S. Chanin, who also built the great 56-story Chanin Building on East 42nd Street and many famous theaters around Times Square such as the Roxy, the Biltmore and the Majestic.
Like the Majestic, it was designed by Chanin's in-house architecture department headed by Jacques Delamarre and assisted by sculptor/designer René Chambellan in a modified Art Deco style.
While the twin-towered massing is similar to that of the Majestic, it differs in its vertical emphasis of six sets of bay windows and, most importantly, in its rounded geometric elements on the west side of the tops of the towers.
At the turn of the 20th Century, the area had many automobile showrooms and in 1908 the blockfront site was acquired by a civic repertory company that erected a theater designed by Carrère & Hastings that opened the next year. For a while, the elegant building, known as the Century Theater, served as an opera house, but was acquired in 1920 by the Shubert theater organization. In his fine book, "Upper West Side Story, A History And Guide," (Abbeville Press, 1989), Peter Selwen noted that the Century Theater played host to performances by the Metropolitan Opera, Konstantin Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theater, Isadora Duncan, Eleanor Duse, Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes, and Max Reinhardt and that its basement for a while had a nightclub hosted by Texas Guinan and that its roof garden also became a nightclub, the Coconut Grove, designed by Joseph Urban.
Chanin, who had retained an interest in several Times Square theaters, exchanged them with the Shuberts for the site and in August, 1929, announced plans for a 65-story tower that was to have been known as the Palais de France with three floors of retail space and 27 floors of hotel use and 30 floors of offices for the French consulate and tourist offices and French companies.
In his excellent book, "Luxury Apartment Buildings of Manhattan: An Illustrated Survey," Dover Publications, 1992, Andrew Alpern observed the building's variation on Art Deco style "were more than an arbitrary decoration; they helped cushion the shock of the Great Depression." "The original drawings called for 416 apartments of 52 distinct varieties, ranging from a single room with a small serving pantry to an 11-room duplex maisonette with a private entrance from the street," Alpern noted, adding that some of the one-bedroom units were duplexes.
The building has a U-shaped lobby around a landscaped rear court and the lobby has entrances on Central Park West and the sidestreets. An attempt to convert the rental building to a cooperative failed in 1983, but it was finally converted to a condominium in 1987.
As John Tauranac notes in his brilliant book, "Essential New York, A Guide to the History and Architecture of Manhattan's Important Buildings, Parks and Bridges," (Holt Rinehart Winston, 1979), the Century and the Majestic "are cool, cut down to their essentials, with bold massing and clear statements of strength."
The Century opened in 1932, two years after the Majestic, and it was the last of the four great multi-towered apartments to be erected on Central Park West.
Over the years, its residents have included agent William Morris, Lee Shubert, the theater magnate, writer Marc Connelly, and entertainers Ethel Merman, Robert Goulet, Ray Bolger, Fay Wray and Nanette Fabray.
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