Henderson House, 535 East 86th Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 535 East 86th Street by Carter Horsley

The very distinctive, 21-story apartment building at 535 East 86^th Street is directly across from townhouses on Henderson Place and is known as Henderson House.

It has an indented entrance on 86^th Street and a landscaped arcade along the west side of Henderson Place, which was declared part of an historic district by the city in 1969, at the same meeting at which the Dakota apartment house was declared an individual landmark.

Henderson House was built in 1961 by I. Orlian & Sons and designed by Robert L. Bien.

It has 133 co-operative apartments.

Bottom Line

A large mid-block building with many great views of the East River and Carl Schurz Park, lush sidewalk landscaping, a very handsomely landscaped courtyard, and an unusual façade with large external columns and long glass balconies.

Description

This large, light-beige brick building has large glass balconies on its east façade facing Henderson Place, Carl Schurz Park and the East River and on the 2^nd through the 15^th floors of the eastern section of its frontage on 86^th Street.

The western third or so of its 86^th Street frontage is dramatically different with large external columns that permit the building to have pure interior corners.  The columns are made of concrete and sheathed in gray limestone.

The building has discrete air-conditioners and its sidewalk landscaping is illuminated at night.

In 2011, the building commissioned Town & Gardens to landscape its courtyard and the resulting design is one of the most handsome in the city. Town & Garden’s other projects in the city include Rockefeller University, 40 Central Park South, 1025 Fifth Avenue

Amenities

The building has a concierge, a health club, a garage, a children’s playroom, a bicycle room, storage, a live-in superintendent and is pet-friendly.

Apartments

The building has four maisonette duplex apartments with ceiling heights in the living rooms of more than 15 feet and the units border on and have entrances on Henderson Place.

Ground floor apartments fronting on the courtyard have private patios.

Apartment16/17E is a duplex two-bedroom unit with a 18-foot-wide entrance gallery with staircase that leads to a 17-foot-long dining room that opens onto a 25-foot-long living room and a 17-foot-long eat-in enclosed kitchen on the lower level and two bedrooms on the upper level.

Apartment 9A is a three-bedroom unit with a12-foot-long entrance gallery that leads in one direction to a 27-foot-long living room with a 14-foot-wide balcony and in another to a 20-foot-long dining room next to a 21-foot-wide kitchen and 8-foot-wide breakfast room with enclosed 15-foot-long enclosed balcony.

Apartment 16F is a two-bedroom unit with a 20-foot-entrance gallery that leads to a 25-foot-long living room and a 16-foot-long dining room next to a 24-foot-long kitchen and breakfast room.

Apartment 8H is a two-bedroom unit with a 15-foot-wide entrance gallery that leads to a 21-foot-wide living room, neat to an 18-foot-wide enclosed dining room that connects to a 13-foot-wide windowed breakfast room and an 18-foot-long windowed kitchen.

Apartment 2E is a two-bedroom unit that has a 15-foot-long entrance foyer that leads past a 9-foot-long dining area net to an 11-foot-long pass-through kitchen to a 24-foot-long living room.

Apartment 9J is a two-bedroom unit with a 13-foot-long entry foyer that leads to as 21-foot-long living room that opens onto a 11-foot-long windowed office and a 16-foot-long windowed dining room next to an 18-foot-long windowed kitchen.

History

This building and the adjoining building to the west at 525 West 86^th Street, were formerly part of the site of the Misericordia Hospital.

The western blockfront on East End Avenue between 87^th and 88^th Street was formerly occupied by Doctors Hospital that was demolished for a new condominium apartment house at 170 East End Avenue.

A May 29, 1960 article about 535 East 86^th Street in The New York Times that that the architect “chose not to put columns on the entire façade because he wished to use them as a decorative accent  to the structure, rather than as a dominant theme. 

The following year, the architect designed another apartment building with external columns at 857 Fifth Avenue but there vertically angled the columns in a zig-zag fashion and the columns only appear on the building’s side-street frontage.

A resident of 535 East 86^th Street, Kenneth Weinstein, informed CityRealty.com that Mr. Bien “took design elements [of exterior columns] from One Chase Manhattan Plaza that was completed in 1962 to designs by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

According to a July 3, 2005 article by Christopher Gray in The New York Times, John C. Henderson, the developer of low-rise enclave at Henderson Place intended its 32 “modest row houses” to be “for persons of moderate means.” Eight of the houses on the west side of Henderson Place were demolished in 1940 and the enclave now consists of only 24 small townhouses. The houses typically were only three stories high on plots that were 18 by 46 feet.  It was designed by Lamb & Rich, an architectural firm that was best known for Sagamore Hill, Theodore Roosevelt’s country house in Oyster Bay Cove on Long Island.

“An anonymous critic in The Real Estate Record & Guide in 1883 was not too impressed with Henderson Place and felt the dead-end alley would leave residents with the disagreeable feeling of living in hat the French call a bag’s end,” Mr. Gray wrote, adding that although the designs were “bright, varied and animated” the houses felt “cramped” and had “terrible air circulation.”