2 West 67th Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 2 West 67th Street by Carter Horsley

This brown-brick, 14-story, studio apartment building fronts on Central Park West across from Tavern on the Green. It has a side-street entrance at 2 West 67^th Street.

It was built in 1919 and has 69 co-operative apartments.

The architects, Rich & Mathesius, were influenced by the "arts and crafts" style when designing one of the most sought-after residences on Central Park West. Also known as 70 Central Park West, the building is conveniently located near Lincoln Center, several subway lines, and many private schools and cultural institutions.

Amenities include a furnished roof deck, storage, live-in resident manager, and 24-hour doorman. Pets are welcome.

The side-street has several other studio-only buildings, including the mid-block Des Artistes across the street.

Bottom Line

There are only two highly desirable studio buildings facing Central Park: this one and the far grander Gainsborough on Central Park South.

Description

This building is rather deceptive as its frontage on the park indicates that it only has 7 floors, most with double-height windows, but its side-street façade has double-height windows only at its corners. The building's cornice, interestingly, is two stories from its top. The building's simple, canopied entrance with a limestone surround is on the side-street with several other pre-war studio buildings, including the Des Artistes across the street, as well as several ABC-TV facilities.

The building is across from the entrance to the Tavern-on-the-Green Restaurant in Central Park, which illuminates its trees at night. It has inconsistent fenestration on Central Park West.

There is excellent public transportation nearby along with the area, primely located by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, is rich with dining and retail venues.

Amenities

The building has a full-time doorman, a concierge, a live-in superintendent, storage, and a laundry.  It has some fireplaces and allows pets.

The building has protruding air-conditioners, no roof deck, no health club, no sidewalk landscaping, no garage and no balconies.

Apartments

Apartment 6/7C is a duplex unit with a long entry foyer that leads to the double-height, 25-foot-long living room with a fireplace that opens onto the 16-foot-wide dining room next to the 16-foot-wide kitchen and an 11-foot-wide den on the lower floor. The bedrooms are on the upper floor.

Apartment 14/15D is a duplex one-bedroom unit with an entry foyer with staircase on the lower level that leads to the double-height, 23-foot-wide living room with a fireplace and long kitchen. The bedroom is on the upper floor.

Apartment 12/13DE is a two-bedroom duplex with a small entry foyer with a staircase that leads to a windowless 11-foot-wide office, a gallery hall, a 17-foot-wide study, a 14-foot-long enclosed kitchen and a double-height 23-foot-wide living room with a fireplace. The bedrooms are upstairs.

Apartment 4/5C is a two-bedroom duplex with an entry foyer that leads past a 16-foot-wide kitchen, with a butler’s pantry, to a double-height 22-foot-wide living room with a fireplace and staircase and a 14-foot-wide dining room. Upstairs there is a curved balcony, a small office and the bedrooms.

Apartment 8H is a two-bedroom unit with a 12-foot-long entry foyer that leads to a 26-foot-long living room with a fireplace, a 15-foot-wide open dining room and a 12-foot-wide, windowed and enclosed kitchen.

History

In his December 15, 1996 “Streetscapes” article on the building in The New York Times, Christopher Gray provided the following commentary about this building:

“Built from 1916 to 1919, 2 West 67th Street marked a turning point, as West 67th Street changed from a street of art into one of comfortable wealth. Now the co-op, one of the oldest in New York, is trying to reverse changes to the building made over decades.

“In 1901 a group of artists seeking better quarters began work on 27 West 67th Street, a 14-story apartment house with studio spaces they shared as a co-op. Surprised by their success, in the next 14 years the group, whose members often changed, built five similar buildings on the street -- money, not art, became their goal.

“In 1916 the artists' seventh project, at 2 West 67th Street, turned a corner, both onto Central Park West and beyond the realm of art. The painter and illustrator Penrhyn Stanlaws had organized the Hotel des Artistes across the street the year before, and for 2 West 67th Street he had the architects Rich & Mathesius design a building with a pronounced arts-and-crafts influence.

“They eliminated the usual projecting cornice and finished the top of the building with a simple frieze of panels and delicately worked copper coping. They used roughly textured brick on the façade and rendered it with details that emphasize a hand-made character.

“Delays with structural steel - possibly related to the need for steel in World War I - put off completion until 1919. Plans in the building varied from floor to floor, but there were about two dozen duplex apartments with double-height studios - 19 feet high - and an undetermined number of regular apartments. Written accounts suggest that half the apartments were for sale at prices ranging from $5,000 to $30,000; the co-op rented out the other half at rates that paid the entire cost of operation - the co-op tenants were to pay no maintenance.

“The original double-height studios on West 67th were designed for working artists who needed the spaces for large sculptures or canvases. But the 1920 and 1925 censuses record only two artists at 2 West 67th Street. Rather, the tenants were business owners and stockbrokers, people like the Cuban-born Leandro Rionda, head of the Francisco Sugar Company. Instead of artists there were the ''artistic,'' like the husband-and-wife authors Charles and Kathleen Norris - his 1930 novel about birth control, ''Seed,'' sold 70,000 copies. Another was James Metcalfe, drama editor of the old Life magazine and later The Wall Street Journal.

“The most famous was Burton Holmes, who began a travelogue business in 1894 that, according to Variety, the entertainment journal, had grossed $5 million by 1947. Holmes developed five new illustrated travel lectures a year, many from his expansive studio at 2 West 67th. Holmes's architect was Iwahiko Tsumanuma, who worked in Japan and in the United States, here under the name of Thomas S. Rockrise. The Holmes studio, which survives with few changes, was modeled after the seventh-century Horyuji Temple on Honshu island in Japan, and held Holmes's collection of Asian antiquities.

“After 2 West 67th Street, only regular apartment houses went up on the block, marking the expanding attraction of supposedly artistic neighborhoods. Like SoHo decades later, West 67th Street had been discovered.

“Penrhyn Stanlaws had grand plans for future construction - even before 2 West 67th Street was finished he announced a gigantic project for Manhasset Bay on Long Island, a multi-building co-op complex of 8- to 16-story buildings, with towers 375 feet high, served by communal schools, restaurants, a theater and yacht ferries to and from Manhattan - none of which were ever realized.

“It appears that regular builders edged the original artist-developers out of the construction business. Originally the professionals had ignored co-op and tall apartment house construction, but by the 1910's they began to enter the field in large numbers.

“An early photograph shows a canvas canopy on a pipe frame at the entrance of 2 West 67th Street. In 1927 the co-op had the architect…[Sidney] Daub design a projecting iron marquee, which gave the building entrance a hotel-like ambiance.

“It appears that, unlike many co-ops of its era, 2 West 67th Street did not fail during the Depression, making it one of the senior co-ops in New York. Over time tenants have floored-in many of the double-height studios, to provide more floor space or to split the duplexes into two apartments.

“These are visible from the street as large horizontal panels running across the studio windows. From the street it appears that about half the original double-height studios have been divided.

“The balustrades at the large windows have been removed, and the cumulative effect of the stripping and window changes has been to give building a ragged, even strange appearance.

“At some point the marquee was given a cheap metallic covering, and in 1993 the co-op had it removed entirely and replaced with a typical pipe canopy. The lobby was also restored. The building, which is part of the Central Park West Historic District, began a $350,000 project last summer to completely repair and repoint the court and street façades, including areas damaged by the 1927 marquee installation….”