257 West 86th Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 257 West 86th Street by Carter Horsley

This is a very fine and grand Italian Renaissance-palazzo apartment house with a very imposing and dramatic colonnaded entrance.

It was built in 1910 and converted to a cooperative in 1976. The 14-story structure has only 41 apartments.

The façade has a three-story limestone base, several decorative balconies, rusticated quoins and huge scroll brackets that once supported a now-missing cornice. The canopied entrance has a step that leads to a step-up lobby and is flanked by limestone globular lanterns on limestone stanchions next to a wrought-iron fence. The large entrance surround is unusual in its use of circular elements on the flanking pilasters.

The architectural elements here are bold and powerful, not merely demure and elegant, and provide a strong context for the adjoining Methodist Church of St. Paul and St. Andrews at the northeast corner of West End Avenue. That church is one of the major landmarks of the Upper West Side and was designed by R. H. Robertson and erected in 1897. "A startling work for the West Side - or for anywhere in the city for that matter," observed Elliot Willensky and Norval White in their brilliant book, "The A. I. A. Guide to New York City, Third Edition," (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988). "While other architects (including Robertson himself) were pursuing more or less faithful revival style churches, this work is in the imaginative vein of the French neo-Classicist architects Claude Nicholas Ledoux or Etienne Louis Boull¿e. The octagonal corner tower is reminiscent of the fire tower which was once part of the Jefferson Market," the authors said of the church.

The stretch of 86th Street from here to Riverside Drive is one of the most impressive on the Upper West Side with many handsome buildings.

There is excellent crosstown bus service here and a subway station is at the Broadway corner. This area abounds in many excellent restaurants and stores and a cineplex is a few blocks south on Broadway. Riverside Park is a block and a half away to the west.

Carter B. Horsley