100 West 93rd Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 100 West 93rd Street by Carter Horsley

This apartment tower at 100 West 93rd Street was erected in 1973 as part of the large West Side Urban Renewal District.

The building is also known as Leader House, 660-676 Columbus Avenue and 101-115 West 92nd Street.

It has 280 condominium apartments, a garage, a 24-hour doorman, a concierge and superintendent.

The building also has a fitness center, a bicycle room, a garage and a children s playroom.

Apartments have washers and dryers and stainless steel Kitchen Aid appliances.

The building is close to Central Park and to a Whole Foods grocery store.

Planning for the West Side Urban Renewal District began in the 1950s but the final plan, which included the building of 7,800 new apartments, the rehabilitation of 350 brownstones and the conservation of some 3,600 existing apartments, was not adopted by the Board of Estimate until June 27, 1962.

In their great book, "New York 1960, Architecture and Urbanism Between the Second World War and the Bicentennial," (1995), authors Robert A. M. Stern, Thomas Mellins and David Fishman provided the following commentary about the renewal district:

"Despite the high social ideals represented by the project, and the unprecedented concept of an architectural integration of new and old, by and large the new construction was ordinary and distinctly at odds with the traditional character of the neighborhood. Most of the new apartment buildings were undifferentiated freestanding superslabs rising from ill-defined plazas that were mandated not only by zoning but also by even more stringent controls developed as part of the urban renewal plan, which hoped to transform Columbus Avenue into a kind of Modernist Champs Elysees for the middle class. Taken as a group, the new structures lacked a sense of coherent urbanism; individually, they were banal."

The authors noted that the 1971 Columbus Manor building designed by Liebman & Liebman on the east side of Columbus Avenue between Ninety-second and Ninety-third streets, "epitomized the avenue's dull buff-brick towers," Leader House (1972), "located directly across the avenue, was no more successful."

The tower, which has sidewalk landscaping, has two piers of walled balconies facing the avenue beginning at the fourth story. The effect is symmetrical and neat and without frills, but handsome.

While there are no architectural masterpieces in the renewal district, it has aged rather well as the surrounding neighborhoods have become more gentrified. As most of the towers are set back in plazas, the overall effect is quite airy.