353 Riverside Drive: Review and Ratings

Review of 353 Riverside Drive by Carter Horsley

This very handsome, Beaux Arts-style, 5-story building at 353 Riverside Drive between 107^th and 108^th streets was designed by Robert D. Kohn, who also designed its sister building at 352 Riverside Drive.

It was built in 1899 and converted to a co-operative in 1977.  It has 10 apartments.

Bottom Line

A very elegant Beaux Arts-style townhouse with 10 co-op apartments that is just to the north of  a sister, single-owner townhouse with a very nice south garden.

Description

The northern part of a pair of very elegant, Beaux Arts-style townhouses designed by Robert D. Kohn.

The southern building has a very attractive, large garden.

Amenities

The building has a roof deck with Hudson River views, basement storage space, a bicycle room, a washer and dryer for the building, and four wood-burning fireplaces.

Apartments

Apartment 1B is a two-bedroom duplex with a 19-foot-long living room with an open kitchen and a breakfast bar and a wood-burning fireplace and opens up to a 6-sided solarium on the upper level and a 22-foot-wide den and a second bedroom on the lower level with a six-sided staircase to an 800-square-foot garden.

Apartment 5B is a one-bedroom unit with an entry foyer across from the enclosed and windowed, 8-foot-long kitchen and the 19-foot-long living room with a 15-foot-long terrace.

Apartment 3B is a one-bedroom unit with an 18-foot-wide living room with a wood-burning fireplace and an open, 6-foot-long kitchen and a 7-sided terrace.

History

According to an October 14, 1977 article by Alan S. Oser in The New York Times, this building was erected as two single-family, side-by-side houses and converted to a multifamily building with 10 apartments in 1935.  In 1943, the Jesuits made renovations to use the property as Woodstock College with one building with living facilities on one side and the chapel and study rooms on the other.  After the school closed, one building was purchased for a private home and the other was acquired by Donald Porter and Diane Taxson for renovation.

The superb website, Daytonianinmanhattan.com devoted an article to 352 Riverside Drive July 7, 2011 entitled “The 1901 Adolphe Openhym House named after “a wealthy silk merchant and member of the family firm William Openhym & Sons whose business was located at Grand and Mercer Streets.”

“In 1899 architect Robert D. Kohn was commissioned to design a pair of connected townhouses at Nos. 352 and 353 Riverside Drive, between 107th and 108th Streets. Openhym would move into No. 352 with his wife and two sons upon its completion two years later.

“The finished house was a five-story brick-and-limestone beauty. Its restrained Beaux Arts design featured a limestone base supporting a two-story bowed front. Above the double entrance doors, an ornate carved cartouche announced the address.  At the second floor, French doors opened to an elegant wrought iron balcony. A century later the AIA Guide to New York City would note ‘A grand entry portal bears a balcony for savoring Olmsted’s park.’

“The gently bowed façade created a second balcony at the fourth floor protected by a handsome stone balustrade. A limestone dormer with an arched pediment broke the mansard roof of the top level. The luxurious side yard between the mansion to the south afforded unusual sunlight.

“The matching residences were a slice of Paris facing the Hudson River.

“Inside was a wide, majestic wooden staircase the hugged the wall below a Tiffany glass skylight, a baronial dining room with beamed ceilings, heavily carved fireplaces, intricate plasterwork and sweeping views of the river. But none of this was enough to remedy Adolphe Openhym’s inner turmoil.

“Although his business was reportedly ‘highly prosperous,’ he was an active member of at least six clubs, his health was good and his family life seemed happy; something was wrong.

“Every morning the 49-year old Openhym would leave No. 352 and take a horseback ride in the park before heading downtown to his office. On the morning of March 30, 1903 his routine changed.

“At 9:30, after his ride, rather than going downtown, he boarded an Amsterdam Avenue car going north. An hour and a half later a man was noticed by Frank McConville, a bridge tender at the High Bridge – the great stone span that connected Manhattan with The Bronx, rising 140 feet over the Harlem River. The gentleman walked quickly to the middle of the bridge, laid his hat and umbrella carefully on the pavement, and jumped over the side.

“Inside the hat was Adolphe Openhym’s business card….

“Mrs. Openhym and her sons remained in the house. Her husband’s estate, at just under $850,000, afforded her to continue her lifestyle, including her several philanthropies….

“Mrs. Openhym died in 1933 and shortly afterwards Amos Canfield and his wife were living in No. 352. Rosa Murphy Canfield had been private secretary to John D. Rockefeller. The Canfields cautiously updated the house, including installing elevators in 1939. After Amos Canfield’s death in 1939, the house became the residence of young Jesuit priests.

“Little was changed with this new use of the structure….Almost three decades later, the order sold the house to Alabama native Jim Rogers – the former hedge fund broker who co-founded Quantum Fund and retired at the age of 37. Rogers paid $107,300 for the nearly-untouched vintage property. Rogers’ investment sense paid off. After moving his family overseas, he sold No. 352 to Helen LaKelly Hunt, daughter of oil magnate H. L. Hunt in October of 2006 for $15.5 million.”

This building is just to the north of 351 Riverside Drive, a stunning French Renaissance-style marble mansion that was built I 1909 by William Tuthill, the architect of Carnegie Hall who was commissioned by Morris Schinasi, a Turkish tobacco bacon.