Park Regis, 50 East 89th Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 50 East 89th Street by Carter Horsley

The Park Regis at 50 East 89^th Street is a 33-story cooperative mid-block tower between Madison and Park avenues that is one of the most attractive and interesting modern towers on the Upper East Side. 

Designed by Emery Roth & Sons and completed in 1974 for developer Peter Sharp, who owned the Carlyle Hotel further south on Madison Avenue, this bold tower may well be the best new mid-block, side-street building in the city in decades. 

The very attractive tower is distinguished by its dark brown brick masonry with exposed concrete balconies, but what is special are its maisonette units and its large park/plaza on 88th Street. 

The building originally had 230 apartments, but that number has dwindled to about 210. 

The tower's entrance has a driveway and a very modern and large lobby. 

Bottom Line

This dramatic and handsome mid-block and through-block tower with many amenities and excellent views is within walking distance of many of the city’s finest private schools and cultural institutions as well as Central Park and numerous pleasant restaurants.

Description

The 89^th Street side has several maisonette stoops with copious landscaping and the building’s dramatic driveway, and the 88^th Street side has a very large landscaped plaza and park. 

The tower has many balconies, which are on alternate floors.

Amenities

Amenities include a doorman, a concierge, a staffed service elevator, a staffed package room, a garage, a gym, a bicycle room, and cold storage. 

The building permits some dogs.

Apartments

The Park Regis "park" is actually quite deceptive, as its four maisonette units, which have their entrances on 89th Street, all have very large terraces abutting and overlooking the park, further opening up the mid-block space. The maisonettes are all different and quite large. Maisonettes were once quite popular but over the years many became occupied by doctors' offices and at the time of the construction of the Park Regis, one broker estimated there were probably fewer than 50 maisonettes in luxury apartment buildings in Manhattan. 

Richard Roth Jr., the architect of the Park Regis, said that maisonettes provide a different kind of street atmosphere from the relatively barren bases of typical high-rise towers. 

The maisonettes are duplexes and their first floors consist of a foyer, powder room, kitchen and dining room and they have their own entrance directly from the street with their own and slightly different front gardens and stoops, both of which were designed to afford the residents some privacy. The maisonettes have their own addresses. 

The diversity of the street frontage is an important selling point, Sharp maintained in an interview during construction. A major factor in his decision to build the maisonettes, he added, was the location across the street of the charming Roman Catholic Church of St. Thomas More, which provides attractive views at street level. 

Townhouse 54 has a small entry foyer up a few steps from the street that opens into the 19-foot-long living/family room that adjoins the 12-foot-wide dining area and 12-foot-long kitchen on the first floor and the second floor has a two large bedrooms and an 18-foot-long terrace. 

Apartment 24 F is a five-bedroom unit that has a 29-foot-living room adjacent to an open, windowed 12-foot-long dining room next to a 12-foot-long, pass-through kitchen.  It also has a 13-foot-long library, a 12-foot-long study, a 17-foot-long family room/den and its master bedroom is 26-feet-long with an 11-foot-long, enclosed sleeping alcove. 

Apartment 14F is a two-bedroom unit that has an angled foyer that leads to a 17-foot-long living room with an open 14-foot-wide dining room next to a 12-foot-wide angled and enclosed kitchen with a pass-through. 

Apartment 29A is a two-bedroom unit that has a 12-foot-long entry foyer that leads to a 23-foot-long living room with a 10-foot-wide terrace and a 13-foot-long open, windowed dining room next to an enclosed 12-foot-wide kitchen. 

Apartment 10E has a 12-foot-long entrance gallery that leads to a 23-foot-long living room with a terrace that opens onto a windowed 14-foot-wide dining room next to an enclosed, windowed, 12-foot-long kitchen.  The apartment has two 18-foot-long bedrooms. 

Location

The context here is unusual. 

On the north side of the street at Madison Avenue is the much taller reddish-brown brick tower known as 45 East 89th Street (that actually has its entrance on the avenue). Although very handsome, that building, which was erected five years earlier, was very controversial because of its height and lack of contextual design. 

To the east of the Park Regis is 1088 Park Avenue, a pre-war apartment building that is notable for its very large rear garden in the middle of the block. Sharp and his architects situated their tower and park so as not to overwhelm the garden of 1088 Park Avenue and their good-neighborliness actually improved the views of the residents at 1088. 

In 1987, this building's surroundings improved considerably with the construction of 60 East 88th Street, a very attractive mid-rise luxury apartment building, designed by Beyer Blinder Belle, that is setback from the street with its own driveway.