353 Central Park West: Review and Ratings

Review of 353 Central Park West by Carter Horsley

353 Central Park West is one of the newer apartment houses on Central Park West. This 19-story building, at the northwest corner of 95^th Street, was erected as a condominium in 1992 and is one of the few residential buildings in the city whose sculpted top is illuminated at night. It thus joins an illustrious and exclusive group of such buildings on Central Park West as the San Remo, the Beresford and the Eldorado.

This building presents an interesting contrast with a similar tower, which has no illuminated top, the 279 Central Park West at 88th Street. Both were erected under special "contextual" zoning that mandated multiple setbacks above the boulevard's traditional building wall height. Both are above 15 stories and have similar silhouettes. The building at 279 is notable for its curved-glass corner windows, while this one has the more traditional, non-curved, corner windows which are floor-to-ceiling, with white reveals against the red of the building's brick.

Although smaller than 279 Central Park West, the 353 building, just seven blocks north, is far more attractive.

While low key, this is a very fine building and one of the city's best postwar residentials. The building was erected by Kiska Developers and was designed by Yorgancioglu Architects and The Vilkas Group.

It has 17 condominium apartments.

A subway station and excellent cross-town bus service is half a block away to the north, at 96th Street.

Bottom Line

A very handsome condominium tower with full-floor apartments with large corner windows and a stepped-top overlooking Central Park and good public transportation nearby.

Description

The building has a canopied entrance and side-walk landscaping and a two-and-a-half-story stone base, topped with red-brick façades and many corner windows.

In their great book, “New York 2000, Architecture and Urbanism Between the Bicentennial and the Millennium,” Robert A. M. Stern, David Fishman and Jacob Tilove, noted that the “sculpted crown was dominated by two chimneys that formed an interplay with the rooftop mechanical and watertank enclosures."

The two "massive’ chimneys that rose above the penthouse level to form the belvedere", Stephens wrote, continue "the vertical thrust established by the shaft’s composition. [With] the only cavil [being] the crenellations above the top penthouse [that seem to] have been left out between the drawing stage and the building’s execution."  

"Small details matter,” he summised.  

Amenities

The building has a doorman and a concierge, a gym, a roof garden, a bicycle room and private storage

Apartments

Apartments have wood-burning fireplaces.

The full-floor apartment on the 16^th floor is a four-bedroom unit with an 8-foot-wide entry foyer that leads to a 17-foot-wide gallery, leading to a 29-foot-wide corner living room with an adjacent fireplace. The enclosed, 13-foot-wide dining room, is next to a windowed 13-foot-wide kitchen.

History

In her book, "New York, A Guide to Recent Architecture," (Ellipsis London Limited, 1998), Susanna Sirefman commented on the elaborate planning process that this building went through and remarked that "a major topic of discussion was the setbacks occurring on buildings along the street."

"To create this popular cascading effect, 353 meets the street wall at ground plane, rising to a 150-foot cornice level. A series of stepped-back terraces then recedes from both the avenue and the street elevations, resulting in a turret-topped penthouse and watertower," Sirefman wrote.

Susanne Stephens was pleased with 353 Central Park West, comparing the ‘intricacy’ of the crown, with its ‘play of horizontal and vertical elements,’ to the early modern works of Joseph Maria Olbrich, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Henri Sauvage. 

The cascading terraces may be popular for the residents, but are not necessarily popular with architecture critics unless they help create a nice composition. Here they do, but in some other 'contextual' and terraced buildings of the same generation, they do not.