44 Gramercy Park North: Review and Ratings

Review of 44 Gramercy Park North by Carter Horsley

This quixotic 16-story building, English Tudor-style apartment building was designed in 1930 by Schwartz & Gross for Clement E. Merowit and is one of the more elegant around Gramercy Park.

It has 79 co-operative apartments.  It originally had 83 apartments.

Bottom line

Bottom Line

This attractive building has “log-burning fireplaces,” nice English Tudor-style detailing, a doorman/elevator operator, one of the city’s most exotic façades, and keys to Gramercy Park.

Description

The brown-brick building has a very unusual south façade of window surrounds, lintels, some balconies, inconsistent sized but multi-panel fenestration and two large three-story-high sections of criss-crossed brickwork, one on the west side near the top and the other on the east side in the middle. 

The composition is further complicated by the seemingly random distribution on the façade of discrete and protruding air-conditioners and more importantly an irregular vertical quoining on the eastern part of the upper tower that culminates in a large triangular stone decorative element.  The irregularity of the brickwork in this “sub” section suggests mischief if not erosion and certainly whimsy, an element too often missing in the city.  The lower wing of the south façade has a battlement treatment that is repeated in the building’s tall, setback, chimney-like superstructure.

All-in-all, a glorious wreck even if not a ruins and a building that any baron or even plain New Yorker should be proud to live in.

A nice June 27, 2016 article at 6sqft.com by Michelle Cohen on the building had 8 color photographs of splendid apartment 12A.

Amenities

The building has a full-time doorman who doubles as an elevator person, residents have keys to Gramercy Park, storage, a laundry, a resident manager, and the building permits pets.

Apartments

Apartment 12A is a two-bedroom unit with a large entry foyer that leads to the 30-foot-long living room with a double-height fireplace “chamber” with a three-step-down “terrace” foyer to the 28-foot-long roof terrace, and an 18-foot-long dining room off the large enclosed kitchen.  In 2016, it was being offered for sale along with Apartment 12D with a total of 14 large stained-glass windows.  Apartment 12A has been owned by Janos Aranyi and his wife Theresa who lived in it for more than four decades.  Mr. Aranyi is a frame-maker and the apartment is decorated with many of his large and ornate, but empty frames, provided a somewhat surreal appearance.

Apartment 10C is a two-bedroom unit with a 22-foot-long living room with a wood-burning fireplace and a dining gallery.

Apartment 15A is a one-bedroom unit with a 22-foot-long living room with a wood-burning fireplace and a 9-foot-long dining gallery off the enclosed kitchen.

Apartment 6F is a one-bedroom unit with a 21-foot-long living room with a wood-burning fireplace and a 12-foot-long dining gallery offer the enclosed kitchen.