565 West End Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 565 West End Avenue by Carter Horsley

This colorful Art Deco apartment house was built in 1937 and converted to a cooperative in 1966. The 19-story structure has 100 apartments and was designed by H. L. Feldman.The light orange-brick façade is accented by a center section with dark red brickwork and the first story is faced also with dark red brick with darker bands of brick to create the visual effect of dimensionality and rustication.In their always amusing and valuable book, "The A. I. A. Guide to New York City, Third Edition," (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), Elliot Wilensky and Norval White comment that in this building "the vocabulary of the neo-Renaissance [is] expressed in Art Deco terms" and that corner windows "substitute for quoins." "As for the pediment at the entrance, its 1930's stand-in is a small, streamlined, stainless steel cornice. The canvas and pipe canopy in this apartment [house], as in too many others, is a practical but unrelated afterthought," they observed. Although some Art Deco buildings are more flamboyant in their use of vivid color, this building's warm palette is a pleasant interlude on West End Avenue's otherwise rather monochromatic brown brick façades. Its location is quite choice. It is a block from Riverside Park, a block from the 86th Street cross-town bus and two blocks from a subway station at 86th Street and Broadway. This neighborhood has many restaurants and a cineplex, major bookstore and Zabar's are not too far away as are some of the city's best schools. It is across the sidestreet from St. Agnes Boys' High School and two handsome churches are across the avenue on the block from 86th to 87th Streets - St. Ignatius Episcopal church and the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew Methodist Church, which shares its fine structure with Congregation B'nai Jeshurun.