88 Morningside Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 88 Morningside Avenue by Carter Horsley

The attractive gray-brick-and-glass, 12-story building at 88 Morningside Avenue on the southeast corner at 122^nd Street opened in 2012.

It has 74 condominium apartments.

It has been designed by David Gross of GP55 Partners, whose other Harlem projects include The Lenox, the Dafina, Susan’s Court, SoHa 118, the Kalahari, Manhattan Court, and Brownstone Lane II. 

Curated was the interior designer.

The developer is BOS Development, Horsford & Poteat Realty and the Bluestone Organization.  The former developer was 86 Morningside LLC of which Geremy White was president.

Bottom Line

Like a dapper Healthcliff in a gray-flannel suit, this modest but handsome building stands relatively tall at the northern end of craggy Morningside Park.

Description

The building has some setbacks and some balconies.

It has a corner entrance marquee and some setbacks.

Amenities

The building has a virtual concierge, an attractive roof deck with an outdoor kitchen that overlooks the northern end of Morningside Park, a gym, a media lounge with wet bar and a pool table, and storage.

Apartments

Apartments have charcoal finished maple flooring, Bosch washers and dryers, Liebherr refrigerators with custom door panels, Delonghi ranges, Blizzard CaesarStone countertops and backsplashes, white lacquer kitchen cabinetry, 63-inch Duravit tubs, 10-inch rain showerheads and Toto toilets.

Apartment 10L is a three-bedroom unit with a large living room that leads to a dining area near an open kitchen.  It also has a small balcony.

Apartment 9B is a two-bedroom unit with a large living/dining room with an open kitchen and a large wrap-around terrace.

Apartment 9A is a three-bedroom unit with a 20-foot-long living/dining room with an open kitchen and a small balcony.

Apartment 10B is a two-bedroom unit with a 15-foot-square living/dining room with an open kitchen and a small corner balcony.

History

The new building is on the former site of the Church of the Master on the south corner at 360 West 122^nd Street.

In 1972 the church build a community center on Morningside Avenue designed by Victor Christ-Janer and Roger Glasgow that it moved into after the main church building was declared unsafe.

In his great book, “From Abyssinian To Zion, A Guide To Manhattan’s Houses of Worship,” David W. Dunlap described the demolished church as “Plump and welcoming as a turn-of-the-century, small-town railroad station,” adding that the orange-brick structure had been “designed by William C. Haskell and built in 1893 for the Morningside Presbyterian church, a white congregation that remained until 1938.

In his December 26, 1994 “Streetscapes” column in The New York Times about the initiation of a campaign to repair the church’s roof, Christopher Gray wrote that “it is difficult to find evidence of white churches accommodating new non-white populations; the typical church in a changing neighborhood simply shut down.”

“Sheared H. Wright, the Church of the Master’s historian, said the old Morningside Presbyterian Church remained closed until May 1938 when Harry Emerson Fosdick, the pastor of Riverside Church, encouraged a young black graduate of the Union Theological Seminary, James H. Robinson, to take it over….The first service had only 10 people, but by 1960, when Mr. Robinson retired, the congregation was over 1,000.”