The Enclave, 224 East 52nd Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 224 East 52nd Street by Carter Horsley

This apartment building at 224 East 52nd Street is one of the most distinctive not only in the Turtle Bay neighborhood but also Midtown East.

It is known as "The Enclave" and is a "sliver" building that, according to the architect, Marvin H. Meltzer of Meltzer/Mandel Architects, "breaks the stereotype."

"It solved," he maintained, "a central concern: how to minimize the intrusiveness of a tall, thin structure amid low-rise buildings. The Enclave is a 16-story apartment building, 40 feet wide and 70 feet deep, on a block of largely three-story town houses (faced with brownstone, stucco and limestone) and four- to five-story apartment buildings. The primary goal was to fit the building into the block by minimizing the perception of its height as seen from street level. A second goal was to design a building that echoed the scale and texture and of the environment. We gave the building the quality of a brick sculpture, thereby distinguishing it as more than just a tall building. The earthtone brick façade of The Enclave is set back at the eighth and tenth floors, and a pink stucco wall appears to float in front of the façade up to the seventh floor. The pink stucco material softens the building s visual mass and covers the façade most visible from the street. This gesture reflects the texture and scale of the townhouse neighborhood. Fenestration and semicircular balconies further lighten the building's mass. Railings on open balconies visually recall the fire escapes of adjacent apartment buildings."

When it opened in 1984, the building was known as "Townhouse 52" and had 25 apartments. It now has only 15. It was erected one year after the city effectively banned future construction of "sliver" buildings.

A May 18, 1984 article by Lee A. Daniels in The New York Times said it was unusual because "for the first seven stories of the essentially brown-brick structure are overlaid with a dusty-pink stucco façade punctuated by rounded balconies and two glass-block canopies."

It stands directly north of the Sutton Park Synagogue and Greenacre Park, a 6,360-square foot park on East 51st Street. The building is a project of Britton Development Ltd., and Barry E. Fallis, the president of Britton, told The Times that sliver buildings in general have been maligned.

"Undoubtedly," the article continued, "one thing that helped Townhouse 52 fit in is the fact that that part of East 52nd Street is not a pristine low-rise block. Its northeast corner is occupied by 875 Third Avenue, a 29-story, glass-sheathed office tower that dwarfs the Britton project as well as other nearby buildings. Still, the mid-blocks in that part of the East Fifties remain predominantly low-rise. The views from Townhouse 52's balconies offer a striking mosaic of these low buildings and midtown office and residential skyscrapers. Because the building is so visible, with its northern and southern façades clearly seen and part of its sides also seen, Mr. Meltzer said they sought to give it 'a sculptural quality that would distinguish it as more than just a block of stone.' That meant cutting out a slice of the sides to make room for the angled kitchen windows, making most of the balconies semicircular, and changing the fenestration facing 51st Street to allow more southern light and, in Mr. Fallis's words, to 'attempt to open the building to Greenacre Park.'"

"This effort," the article added, "to capitalize on natural light led to the use of glass-block walls within the apartments themselves as well as over the two ground-floor entrances. One entrance leads to the apartments, the other to the building's medical offices in the basement and on the first and second floors."