Randall House, 63 East 9th Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 63 East 9th Street by Carter Horsley

Randall House at 63 East 9th Street on the northeast corner at Broadway is a 230-unit condop that was erected in 1955.

It is also known as 70 East 10th Street and the red-brick building overlooks the very beautiful Grace Church.

The building, which has a handsome watertank enclosure and a stainless steel angled entrance marquee surmounted by the building's name, was designed by Boak & Raad.

A July 15, 2001 article in The New York Times by Christopher Gray was devoted to Boak & Paris. It said that Russell M. Boak worked as a draftsman in the office of Emery Roth and that his partner Hyman F. Paris also did and they founded their own firm in 1927.

"Their early work included the apartment house at the northeast corner of 106th Street and Broadway. In the 1930's, though..., their work became more inventive. They gave 315 Riverside Drive (designed in 1930 at 104th Street) definite Art Deco overtones, including strips of half-round molded brick running up the façade and unusual window grills with stylized floral motifs. In 1932 Boak & Paris designed a pink and black terra cotta movie house on Broadway near 99th Street - now the Metro Theater, formerly the Midtown....In 1933 they did their first building for Samuel Minskoff, an apartment house at 3 East 66th Street. Many elements of their later work appear there: elegant window grills of iron with brass trim; multicolored terrazzo floors of geometric style; varicolored marble lobby fireplaces; dropped living rooms; neo-Classical details reworked in modern style; sophisticated molded plaster ceiling decoration; and elaborate iron and brass entry doors, also in modern style....Boak and Paris split up in 1942. It appears that Paris retired, but in 1944 Boak entered into a partnership with Thomas O. Raad that also produced some inventive buildings....Among them were the angular sawtooth-plan apartment buildings at 430 and 440 East 56th Street, designed for the Doelger family in the 1950s."

Boak & Raad's other buildings include the 17-story 35 Sutton Place that was built in 1949, the 20-story 20 Sutton Place South that was built in 1954, the 38-story Tower 53 Condominiums which was erected in 1967 and the 20-story Hemisphere House on the southeast corner of Sixth Avenue and 57th Street in 1968.

The firm also designed the two-story retail structure on the southeast corner of Madison Avenue and 72nd Street that was acquired in 1993 by Ralph Lauren and which had replaced the former five-story mansion of Alva Vanderbilt that was later home to William Bayard Cutting.

This 13-story building has a doorman and a garage and a bicycle storage room and laundry facilities on each floor

It is also known as 771-785 Broadway and 60-62 East 10th Street.