650 West End Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 650 West End Avenue by Carter Horsley

This very attractive, 13-story, red-brick apartment building at 650 West End Avenue on the southeast corner at 92^nd Street was erected in 1917. 

It was designed by Schwartz & Gross. 

It was converted to a condominium by Argo Real Estate in 2000 and has 53 apartments.

Bottom Line

A handsome pre-war building on a good stretch of West End Avenue.

Description

The entrance has a double-height stone surround crowned by a semicircular transom and the second story above the entrance has paired windows with transoms flanked by pilasters. 

The first-story windows are topped by brick arches with stone keystones and tympanums filled with brick headers. There is a bandcourse above the second story and stringcourses above the third, ninth, tenth and twelvth stories. 

The 13th story is topped by a brick parapet with terracotta coping and volutes flanking the stepped center. 

Most of the building's windows are original. 

The lobby was restored in 2008.

Amenities

The building has a canopied entrance, a doorman, a live-in superintendent, a gym, a laundry, a bicycle room and a children’s playroom, but no garage, no roof deck and no sidewalk landscaping.

Apartments

Apartment 8F is a two-bedroom unit with a 6-foot-long entry foyer that leads to a 18-foot-long living room and a 20-foot-long kitchen. 

Apartment 9C is a two-bedroom unit with a 14-foot-wide entry foyer that leads to a 21-foot-long living room, an 18-foot-long enclosed, windowed dining room that is adjacent to the 14-foot-long kitchen and a 12-foot-long maid’s room. 

Apartment 10B is a three-bedroom unit that has an 11-foot-long entry foyer that leads to a 21-foot-long living room and a 21-foot-long dining room that connects through a 7-foot-long pantry to a 21-foot-long, windowed kitchen next to a 15-foot-long maid’s room.

History

The building was erected on the site of five brick-faced rowhouses of five stories. 

In a March 21, 1997 article in The New York Times, Rachelle Garbarine wrote that "One of the West Side's largest landlords has begun the process, rare in recent years, of converting a 48-unit prewar rental apartment building on the Upper West Side into condominium apartments." The sponsor of the conversion, according to the article was Henry Moskowitz, the chairman of the family-owned Argo Corporation, which then managed about 6,300 apartments in the city. 

"Under the conversion plan, the per-square-foot asking price for tenants to buy their units, as is, will be $170, but the bargaining that typically goes on between renters and sponsors has not yet started. For outsiders, the asking price will be $360."