3 East 84th Street: Review and Ratings

This small sidestreet building is one of the Art Deco landmarks of the city as its design by Howells & Hood would be influential in the subsequent design by architect Raymond Hood of Rockefeller Center and the Daily News building at 220 East 42nd Street.   Here, Hood and his partner, John Mead Howells, employed large decorative press-metal spandrels beneath the windows on a limestone façade to create a rich verticality that was both modern and decorative. The 9-story building, which has 10 apartments, was commissioned by Joseph Medill Patterson, the owner of the Daily News newspaper, two years after the architects had won the prestigious and celebrated design competition for a new Chicago Tribune building that was built by one of Patterson's cousins, Colonel Robert R. McCormick.    In the excellent guidebook, "Touring the Upper East Side, Walks in Five Historic Districts," (New York Landmarks Conservancy, 1995), Andrew S. Dolkart wrote that "The Art Deco building was, according to a writer in The New Yorker, a translation of 'many of the best features of new Paris apartments into an American vision.' It was planned with a pied-a-terre on the top floors for Patterson's own use and a single apartment on each floor below.    The asymmetrical design had a strong vertical emphasis that is in marked contrast to the horizontal expression found on the Italian Renaissance-inspired apartment houses that predominate in the district. The limestone façade features such classic Art Deco motifs as a band of zig-zag ornament, panels and railings with triangles and diamonds, and stylized foliage (notably on the front doors). The metal window spandrels, soon to become common on Art Deco buildings, are thought to have been introduced on this building. The building, whose top apartment has a terrace, was converted to a cooperative in 1947.