The Beekman Condominium, 350 East 62nd Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 350 East 62nd Street by Carter Horsley

This industrial-looking 6-story building was erected in 1916 and was converted to a condominium apartment building with 93 units in 1987.

A former laundry facility, this building is clad in stucco painted gray and has large windows and inset balconies on the avenue. The windows on the second through the fourth floors are larger than those on the top two floors. The building has a doorman and its avenue retail space is occupied by Merchants, a popular restaurant. In the 1960's and 1970's, First Avenue in the low 60's was known as one of the city's most popular "singles" strips and such famous restaurants as Maxwell's Plum and Proof of the Pudding were just a couple of blocks to the north.

In the late 1990s, this neighborhood began to witness a considerable upgrading with the long-delayed opening of a very large supermarket and a large, elegant restaurant, Gustavino's, in the vaults beneath the Queensborough Bridge two blocks south of this building. The block just to the north of the bridge on the east side of First Avenue had been the proposed site of a major twin-towered luxury apartment complex by the Glick Organization, but only the western half was subsequently built by a different developer with different designs and opened by Bridgetower Place in 2001.

This building is directly across the avenue from a handsome seven-theater cineplex and there are still many restaurants in the vicinity.

The building has a one-step-up entrance and permits protruding air-conditioners, but has no garage, no health club, and no sidewalk landscaping.

While there is considerable traffic in this area, some of it, the Tram to Roosevelt Island, specifically, is quite attractive.

This area is close to the Rockefeller University complex on York Avenue and there is a nearby uptown entrance to the FDR Drive. This area is not convenient to public transportation.