Park Ten, 10 West 66th Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 10 West 66th Street by Carter Horsley

This 33-story apartment building at 10 West 66th Street was erected in 1969 and its travertine entrance surround of four arches was an attempt to pay homage to the arched design of the Metropolitan Opera House at nearby Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts that had only opened a few years previously.

The rest of the beige-brick building, which is called Park Ten, is typical cookie-cutter, high-rise, post-war, "luxury apartment" design with relatively low ceilings but many balconies, a large driveway and a garage.

It has 274 cooperative apartments and such a tall, non-contextual, mid-block tower is now prohibited in most residential neighborhoods under zoning that was subsequently enacted.

The staccato visual effect of the stacks of balconies is, in fact, quite impressive, even if it is totally out of keeping with the great pre-war apartment and "studio" buildings in this area off Central Park West.

The tower is setback considerably from the building line to provide a driveway and it is nicely landscaped but such a "plaza" is not only redundant but ridiculous given the fact that Central Park West is just a few feet away.

For residents, of course, the dramatic Central Park vistas more than make up for the urbanistic problems of this tower, which is very convenient to shopping, restaurants and public transportation.

The building, which was designed by Ralph E. Leff, was converted to a co-op in 1981. It has a doorman, a concierge, a bicycle room, a health club, a roofdeck and storage facilities and windowed kitchens.

A July 22,1994 article by Joe Sexton in The New York Times described a management problem at the building that became part of an investigation by the District Attorney into fraud and kickbacks at coops and condominiums. Three of the agents who managed the building and others for Brown, Harris, Stevens were among 86 agents indicted the previous month.