The Landmark, 300 East 59th Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 300 East 59th Street by Carter Horsley

What's in a name, you might ask. Here the name is a very ambitious, glorified exaggeration as the building is definitely not an official, nor an unofficial, landmark. Still, in the parlance of New York City real estate developers chutzpah has always been a virtue and the hope here probably was that this apartment tower would become an instant landmark. The handsome, cleancut, 220-unit apartment tower, which was converted to a cooperative in 1983, is a cut above most of those of its generation, to its credit, but it is not an architectural gem. Its real claim to historical importance is that it was the first major new tower to be erected at the Manhattan entrance to the Queensborough Bridge, which it overlooks. Hollywood has always thought, not necessarily wrongly, that this bridge is New York's most romantic. It has been joined, since this building was erected in 1971, by the Roosevelt Island Tram station on the west side of Second Avenue. With its large, brightly colored gears and large cable cars, the tram station is much more highly visible for residents of the 36-story Landmark than the great towers of the bridge that are fairly far away in the East River. This area is one of the city's most congested as bridge traffic is formidable, but the area is also highly convenient to midtown and Bloomingdale's is just a long block away. The neighborhood is very well served by subways and buses and after decades of controversy a large food market and restaurant is anticipated to open in the Piranesian vaults beneath the Queensborough Bridge before the Millennium, provided an important and long missing ingredient in the retail lineup of the nearby Sutton Place district. The Landmark has very large and broad windows that afford spectacular views and a pleasant and stylish lobby.