The Clebourne, 924 West End Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 924 West End Avenue by Carter Horsley

This impressive, 13-story cooperative apartment building has frontages on both West End Avenue and Broadway but its entrance is mid-block on 105th Street.

It is also known as 251-9 West 105th Street and 2741-7 Broadway.

It has 66 apartments and was converted to a co-operative in 1974.

It was designed by Schwartz & Gross, the fine architectural firm that designed many of the best buildings on the Upper West Side. The building is most notable for its very fine, mid-block carriage entrance.

The building was developed by Henry Schiff, who also built the Umbria on the northwest corner of 82nd Street and West End Avenue.

It is near Straus Park at West End Avenue and 106th Street that is named after Isidor and Ida Straus who were lost about the Titantic.  Mr. Straus and his brother Nathan created the Abraham & Straus department store in Brooklyn and became the owners of Macy's in 1896,

It is also close to Riverside Park.

Bottom Line

With its handsome, side-street porte-corchere, this very attractive and ornate Arts & Crafts apartment building is one of the most impressive on the Upper West Side.

Description

The brown-brick building has a three-story stone base and a three-story stone top with some curved roofline elements, several pronounced bandcourses and several decorative balconies. 

The building permits window air-conditioners.

Its ornate porte-corchere now has stanchions blocking its drive.

The building has a large and handsome lobby.

Amenities

The building has a full-time doorman and a bicycle room and it permits pets.

Apartments

Apartment 92 is a two-bedroom unit with an angled entry foyer that leads to an angled, corner 16-foot-long living room that opens onto a 17-foot-long dining room that is adjacent to an 18-foot-long enclosed and windowed kitchen and an angled 10-foot-long maid's room.

Apartment 115 is a four-bedroom unit with a 12-foot-wide entry foyer that opens onto a 26-foot-wide living room that leads to a 19-foot-long dining room and is near the 16-foot-wide, windowed and enclosed kitchen.  The unit has two 13-foot-wide staff rooms and a very long service hall.

Apartment 113 is a three-bedroom unit with a 15-foot-long entry gallery that leads past the 17-foot-wide dining room with French doors to a 22-foot-wide living room, an 11-foot-wide pantry and 16-foot-long windowed kitchen and two maid's rooms.

Apartment 81 is a three-bedroom unit with a 21-foot-long, angled entry foyer next to a 14-foot-square, windowed dining room next to a 15-foot-long, windowed, eat-in kitchen and a 15-foot-long staff room.  The entry foyer also leads t a 20-foot-long gallery that opens onto a 25-foot-long living room.

History

The 1997 restoration of Straus Park, at 106th Street and West End Avenue, according to an August 23, 1998 "Streetscapes" column by Christopher Gray in The New York Times, "came just at the start of the hoopla surrounding the Broadway musical and Hollywood movie based on the sinking of the Titanic."

Mr. Gray provides the following interesting commentary about the site's history:

"The park wasn't part of the hoopla, but it could have been. Isidor and Ida Straus, to whom the park was dedicated in 1915, died together on the ship in 1912. The Strauses had a country home at 105th and West End; after they died the park was built, and their home was demolished and replaced by a blockwide apartment house. In the early 1800's, downtown New Yorkers built country houses on the Upper West Side, where the river views and breezes made the area a summer resort. The area had been fairly rural through the 1860's. One of the last rural houses went up in 1866, on what was later the northeast corner of 105th Street and West End Avenue - at the time most of the area's streets were delineated only on maps....The house was built by Matthew Brennan, a volunteer fireman who became a city official and allied himself with William M. (Boss) Tweed. In 1872 The New York Times, which had begun to expose the Tweed Ring in 1871, said that Brennan, then Sheriff, had collected $150,000 in fees for escorting 5,627 prisoners to prison, when in fact there had not been more than 340 prisoners. ''Who Would Not be a Sheriff?'' The Times headlined indignantly.Brennan soon became Tweed's jailer, and when a Tweed associate, Henry Genet, escaped, Brennan was sent to jail himself for a month for dereliction of duty. He returned to his house on 105th Street, and continuing difficulties brought on an attack of apoplexy. Although Brennan was supposed to have become rich, he had mortgaged his house, and his 1879 obituary in The New York Tribune said that 'he died a poor man.' The Brennan house went through several owners until 1884, when Isidor Straus bought it. Straus had been born in Bavaria in 1845 and came with his father, Lazarus, a peddler, to the United States in the 1850's. Around 1870 Isidor took over the china department of R. H. Macy & Company, becoming a partner in 1888. With his brother, Nathan, Isidor also created the Abraham & Straus department store in Brooklyn. When Isidor and Nathan became sole owners of Macy's in 1896 Nathan built a comfortable town house at 27 West 72d Street, then the most fashionable street on the West Side. But Isidor apparently felt comfortable in his 30-year-old building even though it looked odd surrounded by a new wave of brownstones and small apartment houses. Isidor was living in this house when he and Nathan conceived Macy's move from 14th Street and Sixth Avenue to 34th Street and Broadway, accomplished in 1902. In 1910 the census taker recorded Isidor Straus, 65, living in the house with his wife, Ida, 61, and their coachman, George Harris, 30. Isidor and Ida Straus were on the Titanic on April 14, 1912, when the ship hit the iceberg that sank it. Many passengers who survived saw Mrs. Straus, who was urged to take her place in a lifeboat, decline and rejoin her husband....on May 8 the 105th Street house was banked all the way around with floral pieces for Isidor Straus's funeral, followed by a public memorial service at Carnegie Hall. Ten days later the Straus family sold the property to Harry Schiff, a developer. He finished the Clebourne apartment house, at 924 West End Avenue, on the site in September 1913. The Straus house had been one of the last of the country houses to survive. The peculiar trapezoidal shape and great breadth of 924 West End make it well known in the area. At the same time, plans for a memorial to Isidor and Ida Straus were moving ahead."

"On April 15, 1915," the article continued, "Straus Park, the triangle bounded by Broadway, West End and 106th Street, was dedicated with one of the most evocative pieces of sculpture in the city. Designed by the architect Evarts Tracy and the sculptor Augustus Lukeman, the park was centered on ''Memory,'' a reclining female figure in bronze, eyes downcast into a triangular sheet of water. The figure rests on a slightly curved plinth of granite, with another, larger plinth in the rear forming a bench and inscribed with a biblical phrase from II Samuel: ''In their death they were not divided.'' The Times reported that the Straus family wept aloud during the tributes. Most memorial sculptures try to endow their subjects with grandeur; this one is exquisite in its understatement."