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The pretty, tree-lined Upper West Side Block on 78th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue has a new, cantilevered apartment building, two very handsome, mid-block, mid-rise apartment buildings, and several attractive, rusticated brownstones, one of which is sporting a new, large and dramatic skylight and another has recently opened a synagogue on its lower floors.

And more change is in store as William Friedland was reported this week to have recently cleared several lots south of the cantilevered apartment building, which is known as Linden 78, for a 20-story rental apartment building on the northeast corner of Broadway and 77th Street. The new planned building, which is called the Larstrand, will block most of the views to the south from the very many lot-line windows at Linden 78.

The Linden 78, whose address is 230 West 78th Street, has a very substantial cantilever over the low-rise buildings just to its west along Broadway. As a result, the beige-brick building, which has a lobby floor with a Linden leaf mosaic design, now has a surprising amount of "light and air" and a sunny rear garden that can be seen from the building's marquee-entrance on 78th Street.

Some of the 35 apartments at the 20-story residential condominium building have fireplaces with bluestone surrounds and hearths and apartments have walk-in linen and entry closets, one of which is large enough for "pram-parking."

The building, which is a development of Urban Residential Properties of which Christopher Martorella is the chief executive officer and sole principal, has 3 full-floor penthouses, ground floor refrigerated storage for groceries, ground floor bicycle storage rooms, a children's playroom, a garden with a water wall feature, and a landscaped roof deck.

Handel & Associates was the architectural firm for the project.

Urban Residential's other New York projects include 255 Hudson Street and 505 Greenwich Street, both designed by Handel & Associates, NoLiTa Place and the Sycamore, both designed by H. Thomas O'Hara, and SoHo 25 on Houston Street, designed by H. Thomas O'Hara and Beyer Blinder Belle.

The Linden 78 opened in 2009.

According to Patrick Sullivan, the doorman at the very handsome and impressive, Tudor-style apartment building at 210 West 78th Street, the block's latest additions are at two of the 1901 brownstones across the street. At 209 West 78th Street, a huge glass roof addition was installed in December by the owner of the brownstone, the Eilian Family Trust, according to Mr. Sullivan, who also noted that a synagogue opened in December on the lower levels of the adjacent brownstone at 207 West 78th Street, which is owned by Chevrat Pinto Inc., of which Seymour Braun is president.

These two brownstones are very similar in basic design to four on the other side of the very handsome and elegant, red-brick apartment building at 215 West 78th Street, which has a one-story marble base and four bays of bay windows with white surrounds and very lush landscaping that includes a garland that runs the width of the building above the first floor windows.

"You should see the lobby," remarked Mr. Sullivan, whose been minding the premises for 16 years at 210 West 78th Street, which was built in 1924 and has 34 co-operative apartments and a projected stone surround at its canopied entrance beneath the Tudor-style projections that begin at the third floor over the peaked windows of the second floor.
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.