98 Riverside Drive: Review and Ratings

Review of 98 Riverside Drive by Carter Horsley

The 15-story, orange-brick building at 98 Riverside Drive on the southeast corner at 82^nd street was erected in 1929 and designed by George F. Pelham.

 The rental building has 123 apartments.

Bottom Line

This handsome building is one of a few fine pre-war buildings that have slightly curved façades.

Description

This very attractive building, which is also known as 320 West 82^nd Street, has a small chamfer corner and its façade is similar in massing to its neighbor at 90 Riverside Drive.  It has very good motley orange brick masonry with attractive window surrounds on the 6^th and 7^th and 11^th and 12^th floors and a small cornice.

It has an ornate and handsome limestone, 3-story entrance surround with canopy and sconces on the side-street.

Amenities

The building has a doorman, but no garage, no roof deck, no fitness center and no sidewalk landscaping.  It has some protruding air-conditioners.

Apartments

A four-bedroom unit has an 11-foot-wide entry foyer that leads to a 15-foot-long gallery and a 23-foot-long living room and a 20-foot-long dining room next to an eat-in, 13-foot-long kitchen.  The master bedroom at the corner has three windows.

Apartment 11H is a two-bedroom unit with an entry foyer that leads a 14-foot-long enclosed kitchen to a 21-foot-wide living room with an angled window.

Apartment 9E is a one-bedroom unit with a 10-foot-wide entry foyer that leads to a 22-foot-long living room and a 16-foot-long dining room next to ta 10-foot-wide kitchen.

Apartment 5B is a one-bedroom unit with a 10-foot-long entry foyer into a 22-foot-long living room that opens onto an 8-foot-long open kitchen next to a 8-foot-long open kitchen.

Apartment 5C is a three-bedroom unit that has a long entry foyer that leads past a 13-foot-long dining room and an open kitchen to a 22-foot-long living room.

History

A January 17, 2008 article by Bradley Hope in The New York Sun reported that this building and 8 others in Manhattan were acquired for more than $300 million by Northbrook Partners LLC, headed by Maurice Mann, from AVJ Realty, a firm owned by the heirs of the Racolin family that had owned them for about half a century.

Two years earlier, Mr. Mann, who is also the president of Mann Realty Associates, bought the Apthorp on the southeast corner of 79^th Street and Broadway in 2006 for $426 million, or an average of $2.4 million for each apartment, and last year formed a 50-50 partnership in the building with Africa-Israel USA, which is also paying for a $95 million renovation of the historic apartments.

Mendel Racolin was a Russian dentist who entered into the real estate business in about 1930, according to an obituary in The New York Times on March 31, 1950. He died at 69.

The article described him as a patron of the Jewish Scientific Institute and the Jewish Encyclopedia, as well as a co-sponsor of a project to house Jewish children orphaned by the Nazis in Paris called the Vladeck Homes.

At the peak of his real estate career, he owned buildings in the Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens, but the family sold most of the property in the decades after his death.