Mont Cenis, 54 Morningside Drive: Review and Ratings

Review of 54 Morningside Drive by Carter Horsley

This elegant 6-story building at 54 Morningside Drive was erected in 1905 and is the sister building for 50 Morningside Drive.  No. 54 is known as Mont Ceris and No. 50 is known as La Touraine.

These two and a third, Cathedral Court at 44 Morningside Drive, were designed by Schwartz & Gross, one of the most prolific architectural firms specializing in pre-war apartment buildings on the Upper West Side.

Bottom Line

With its fine massing and detailing and recessed fire escapes, this modest and elegant building helps make Morningside Drive overlooking Morningside Park of the city’s most lovely overlooks.

Description

The red-brick building has a six-step-up entrance stoop and extensive sidewalk landscaping.

There are two banks of recessed fire-escapes that have similar enclosures and attractive wrought-iron railings as the building’s windows.

The windows on the fifth floor are slightly arched and the top floor has decorative stone work between the windows.

The building has a handsome cornice supported by brackets.

Amenities

The building has a laundry and is wheelchair accessible.

Apartments

Apartment 31 is a three-bedroom unit that has an entry foyer that leads in one direction down a very long hall to an 18-foot-long parlor adjacent to the 12-foot-wide library and in another director opens onto a 16-foot-wide dining room next to a pantry and a 15-foot-wide windowed kitchen and 11-foot-long maid’s room.

Apartment 33 is a three-bedroom unit that has a very long entrance hall that leads to a 19-foot-long living room that opens into a 15-foot-wide dining area and is adjacent to a 12-foot-wide angled and windowed pass-through kitchen.

Apartment 34 is a three-bedroom unit with a 30-foot-long living/dining room with an 11-foot-wide enclosed kitchen.

Apartment 54 is a three-bedroom unit with a 35-foot-long entrance hall that leads to a 18-foot-long living/dining room with an open, windowed and angled kitchen. 

History

In a November 22, 2004 article in The New York Sun, Francis Morrone write that “few New York streets match the drama of Morningside Drive, which runs along the west side of Morningside Park,” adding that “the park, unlike any other in the city, slopes steeply downward to the east, providing Morningside Drive with a mountaintop like view out over the Harlem plain.”

North of the enormous Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Mr. Morrone wrote, “stands a palisade of exuberantly ornamented apartment houses designed by Schwartz & Gross, a firm notable for its speculative apartment buildings.”

“Such buildings,” Mr.  Morrone continued, “often were the handiwork of Jewish and Italian-American architects who had not had the resources to attend the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and never fit into the social network of architects who enjoyed prize commissions for civic buildings or tycoons' mansions. Instead, such architects slathered the façades of their buildings with unschooled imitations of Beaux-Arts ornamentation that, though condemned by period critics, formed the sprightly fabric of Manhattan neighborhoods, and seek their recognition as a superior form of ‘background’ architecture that lends to neighborhoods like Morningside Heights the urban magic that masterpieces like Columbia University alone would not provide. The apartments from 114th to 116th streets - Cathedral Court, La Touraine, and Mont Ceris - date from 1904-5.”

The Fifth Edition of “The A.I.A. Guide to New York City,” noted that the three Schwartz & Gross buildings on Morningside Drive “look comfortable from the outside, and just imagine the views,” adding that “The suave handling of the recessed fire escapes makes them a rich  part of the façade.”

In his fine book, “Morningside Heights, a History of its Architecture and Development,” Andrew S. Dolkart notes that “a number of Morningside Drive buildings, notably a group designed by Schwartz & Gross on or just off of Morningside Drive, as “not disfigured by projecting fire escapes,” but instead had fire escapes that are recessed with the face and detailed resembling Parisian balconies (in fact an advertisement referred to the architecture as ‘Parisian.’”