155 Riverside Drive: Review and Ratings

Review of 155 Riverside Drive by Carter Horsley

The 12-story apartment building at 155 Riverside Drive on the southeast corner at 88^th Street across from the Soldier’s and Sailor’s Monument in Riverside Park was built in 1910 and has 60 co-operative apartments.

It was designed by Schwartz & Gross.

The building was modernized by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in 1941 and then sold to Simon Brothers, which sold in four years late to the 155 Riverside Drive Corporation of which Charles Stein is vice president for cash over a mortgage of $391,000.

Bottom Line

This impressive building is one of the more attractive pre-war apartment buildings on Riverside Drive.

Description

The building originally had only two apartments per floor.

It has an impressive two-step-up, two-story-high entrance surround with a canopy with a moat and a half-story limestone base. 

The two-story base is rusticated and the red-brick building has a bandcourse above the second and tenth floors, decorative elements between windows on the 10^th floor and elaborate window surrounds and spandrels on the top two floors beneath ad large and impressive cornice.

The building permits protruding air-conditioners and has sidewalk landscaping.

Amenities

The building has a part-time doorman.

Apartments

Apartment 3A is a two-bedroom unit with a 10-foot-long dining foyer next to a 12-foot-ong kitchen and a 22-foot-long living room.

History

J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist, was a former resident.

The building was also the home for the gay lawyer Will Truman and the interior designer Grace Adler in the 1998-2006 television series, “Will and Grace.”