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About The Paterno, 440 Riverside Drive
One of New York's great apartment buildings, the Paterno has a great curved façade along 116th Street where it meets Claremont Avenue and that curve is repeated, albeit in a different direction, across 116th Street in another building, the Colosseum at 435 Riverside Drive. Both curved buildings were designed by Schwartz & Gross.
Curved facades are unusual in New York. Riverside Drive has several buildings that curve to match the bends of the board, but none are as pronounced as these two, which also happen to face one another and provide an opportunity to reconsider the wisdom of the city's traditional rectilinear grid. The curves here, which actually turn away from one another, provide an interesting perspective for the main entrance gateway of Columbia University one block away at Broadway and 116th Street. They also significantly widen the intersection.
In his book, "The City Observed, New York, A Guide to the Architecture of Manhattan," (Vintage Books, a division of Random House, 1979), Paul Goldberger, then architecture critic of The New York Times and now architecture critic of The New Yorker magazine, noted the "echoes" of these curves and remarked that these "two buildings play off against each other like the curving lines of a Miró." Remarking that both buildings are "antecedents" of the curved building at 200 Central Park South several decades later, Goldberger said that this intersection "deserves the enlargement of this grand gesture," adding that "It wouldn't work at a conventional corner, but it is splendid here."
When the school and office tower at 3 Park Avenue at 34th Street turned on its axis and created triangular plazas, some critics felt that such a dramatic break with the city's traditional grid pattern of construction was not positive. The jury is still out. If the entire city were a helter-skelter of curved and angular streets and plazas, it might get pretty confusing for many New Yorkers, but many cities in fact have such environments. One needs only think of the crescent in Bath, England, to wax eloquent on the poetry of urban curves. It is probably not a good idea to tear down most of Manhattan and start over with more curves and angles. After all, we do have Lower Manhattan and its odd streets and great buildings. Still, surprise is what is perhaps most enjoyable in the city and they and grand gestures, especially when combined, are always welcome as are this duo.
In addition to its great façade arc along Claremont Avenue and 116th Street, this building's entrance on Riverside Drive has a very large enclosed "driveway" that leads to a stained glass vestibule and a very handsome marble lobby. The "driveway" is actually a porte-corchere as it was designed to accommodate horse carriages, not automobiles.
The 12-story building was erected in 1909 and converted to a cooperative in 1979. It has 102 apartments. Many of the finest buildings in this attractive neighborhood were erected by the Paterno and Campagna construction companies.
This building is the south anchor of a long, continuous, unbroken stretch of Riverside Drive that culminates in the landmark Riverside Church complex several blocks to the north. This neighborhood has many important institutions in addition to Columbia University such as seminaries and the Episcopal Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine.
A subway station is at Broadway and 116th Street and buses run cross-town on 110th Street and north and south on Riverside Drive and Broadway.
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