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Rivington Street''s ascendance
By Carter Horsley   |   From Archives Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Rivington Street boasts several of the most notable buildings on the Lower East Side and two new condominium apartment projects.

One of the most notable older buildings is the very handsome and impressive Rivington House at No. 25, on the southeast corner of Forsyth Street facing Sara D. Roosevelt Park, a large pink building that was erected in the 1890s as PS 20 and is now a residential AIDS facility, one of the largest in the country.

One block to the east is the equally impressive University Settlement House at 184 Eldridge Street on the southeast corner at Rivington Street. This structure was the nation's first settlement house and was designed by John Mead Howells, who would subsequently become the co-designer of the winner entry in the famous [Chicago Tribune Tower competition, and Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, the author of the city's New Tenement Law and also of the seven-volume "Iconography of Manhattan Island."

At 58-60 Rivington Street is the very interesting Moorish Revival building with a large circular window with angled panes on its front facade. It originally was the Adath Jeshurun of Jassy, a synagogue designed in 1903 by Emery Roth that later became the Erste Warshawer (First Warsaw) Synagogue and in 1973 artist's studios and residences.

Just to the east is a new condominium building at No. 62, an attractive, 8-story beige brick building with very nice curved rail balconies and a polished red granite entrance surround. This 17-unit building is across the street from a flat tire fix shop.

Further west is 15 Rivington Street, an attractive red-brick, mid-block building that has been converted and expanded to 6 condominium apartments by Rivbo LLC and designed by Freyer Architects. It has large curved metal fire escapes and large arched single-pane windows. The 9-story building has a five-story base and no sidewalk landscaping and no garage. It is just to the west of Christie Street and the Sara D. Roosevelt Park and around the corner from Nolita Tower on Bowery. It is across Rivington Street from a two-story building materials store and it is just to the east of the Off SoHo Suites Hotel Alternative building.

While neither of the two new projects, of course, can compare with the new, 195-foot-high The Hotel on Rivington (THOR) a few blocks to the east, they do help solidify the street's renaissance, nay, ascendance.
Architecture Critic Carter Horsley Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.