365 West End Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 365 West End Avenue by Carter Horsley

This attractive, beige-brick, 14-story, apartment building was erected in 1924 and designed by Sugarman, Hess & Berger, who also designed 595 West End Avenue, 17 East 96th Street and 33 Fifth Avenue.

The building, which also has the address of 301 West 77th Street, is a rental and has about 125 apartments.

The building has an entrance canopy and sidewalk landscaping and a two-story stone base. It has an unusual cornice line with two gentle arched elements on the avenue and three on the sidestreet. The building has a broad bandcourse at the third floor and another above the 12th floor. The building has pilasters between the 13th and 14th floors andpermits protruding air conditioners.

The building overlooks one of the city's most interesting townhouse blocks between 75th and 76th Streets on the west side of West End Avenue.

A September 21, 1988 article by Glenn Collins in The New York Times noted that "it was another typical day at 77th Street and West End Avenue," adding that "Al Pacino was gripping a pistol and screaming 'Don't move! while a crew of 90 film makers toiled amid a circus of equipment trucks and vans and apparatus appropriate to a $16 million movie production."

"'Hey look! That's Al Capuccino,' said 11-year-old Josh Harris disrespectfully. 'Awww. I want to see someone get shot! said an impatient Nicky Stern, also 11, and like Josh, a sixth grader at the Collegiate School, right across the street from the cameras. 'Just another bunch of typical jaded New Yorkers,' commented the boys' art teacher, Annie Nash. 'Woody Allen is always filming on the corner. Kojak used to do car chases here all the time. Your take it for granted.'...'Sea of Love,' the film in progress they were taking for granted, is the quintessential New York movie, thanks to its theme and crew. Mr. Pacino plays a Manhattan detective, a homicide-worn 20-year-veteran who falls in love with one of his murder supsects, played by Ellen Barkin. 'Thestory, it couldn't be more New York,' said Ms. Barkin, who also finds it significant that the film is being made by 'the Bronx bunch.' She, like Mr. Pacino, has Bronx roots - 'I lived on the same black he once did when I was 6, Ms. Barkin said of Mr. Pacino - and Martin Bregman, the producer, was brought up in the Bronx. So was the director, Harold Becker. And the film's writer, Richard Price, was a Bronx boy who began his career writing out the Bronx in novels like 'The Wanderers' and 'Bloodbrothers.'...When he isn't concentrating, Mr. Pacino has been affable enough with both crowds and crew, and on one afternoon last week - during filming in the lobby at 365 West End Avenue - he jocularly played doorman for a while. 'He held the door for them,' the real doorman, Mr. Keegan, said. 'He was pretty good.'"