The Grinnell, 800 Riverside Drive: Review and Ratings

Review of 800 Riverside Drive by Carter Horsley

This very impressive, 9-story building at 800 Riverside Drive between 157^th and 158^th streets in the Audubon Park Historic District in Washington Heights was erected in 1911 by the Centre Realty Corporation and is known as The Grinnell, named after George Blake Grinnell. The district was created in 2009.

It has 80 cooperative apartments and was designed by Schwartz & Gross in the Renaissance Revival style with Mission Style elements in a triangular shape.

In a June 24, 2011 article entitled “Naturalist Perched Here” in The New York Times, John Freeman Gill provided the following commentary about the building:

“Just north of the serene, green grounds of the Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum, a tributary of Riverside Drive breaks off from the main drive’s north-south straightaway at 155^th Street and makes a sinuous, almost furtive turn inland.  As it curves uphill and uptown past residents combing their dogs or playing guitar on park benches, tall apartment houses with eclectic limestone and terra-cotta detailing rising up on either side, giving the area the feel of a secret enclave.  On high ground at 157^th Street looms the great prow of the triangular, nine-story Grinnell co-op, the Renaissance-style grand dame looking as if she might at any moment sail down the drive’s curve and into the Hudson.”

The Grinnell and the Riviera at 790 Riverside Drive are widely considered the best buildings in the historic district.

The district’s website provides the following commentary:

“The Riviera enjoyed her position as queen of Audubon Park for only a few months before the completion of the Grinnell, in July 1911. Although it is four stories shorter, and its cost was only $600,000, less than half the Riviera’s pricetag, the Grinnell possesses ample majesty of her own. Sitting on higher ground than the Riviera, her nine stories rise from a triangular block like an imposing fortress, towers on each corner extending her height another two stories. Instead of a moat, three streets set her off from the rest of the neighborhood, both physically and psychologically. This triangular lot, by the way, was once the Grinnell’s cow pasture. 

“Do you remember the leaf-and-berry motif from Rhinecleff Court? Here it is again, around the two story arched entrance of the Grinnell. A popular tale suggests that when the Grinnell was new, the entrance on Edward M. Morgan Place was the pedestrian entrance and this was the vehicular entrance, though the heavy granite sill and limited space for turning a vehicle in the courtyard would have made that impossible. A long passageway at this entrance, which leads into a central courtyard, cuts through apartment lines on both the first and second floors. To accommodate the grand entrance, Schwartz and Gross combined the interrupted lines into duplexes, one on either side of the archway. A few paces further up Riverside Drive is the entry to a third duplex apartment; this one with an exterior entrance.

“When it was new, the Grinnell featured many of the standard amenities, with layouts ‘designed to meet the requirements of those accustomed to private houses’ and ‘rentals 30% less that the Middle West Side.’ Until World War II, the Grinnell had uniformed staff, twenty-four hour elevator service, and mail delivery to apartment doors – twice a day. Every apartment had a dumbwaiter so that deliveries could be made through the rear entrance and basement. The dumbwaiters also served to transport rubbish and soiled clothes to the basement, which contained a building-operated laundry. Until recently, large drying racks remained as a reminder of those days. Stories passed on by early residents report that the Grinnell’s management gave dances for the residents every spring – on the roof, with a full orchestra.

“An interesting foot-note to the Grinnell’s history: In the late 1940s, Daddy Grace, an evangelist noted for his flamboyant appearance – he painted his fingernails red, white, and blue and favored cut-away coats and flowing hair – purchased the Grinnell in the name of the Church of the House of Prayer for All People, which he had founded. Daddy Grace took great pride in his new acquisition, featuring it on the cover of his magazine ‘The Grace,’ and, according to local residents, came monthly in his limousine to collect rents and check on the building.  Some also remember that he rechristened 800 Riverside Drive, "The Grace," though no records confirm that name change.”

Bottom Line

The imposing Grinnell is one of most desirable addresses in Washington Heights with spectacular Hudson River views that is convenient to the institutional compound at Audubon Terrace, Broadway and Riverside Drive.

Description

The triangular rusticated brown brick building with a two-story rusticated limestone base and it has chamfered corners topped with two-story high turrets with their own wide cornices.

The building has a large angled courtyard.

It has an arched, two-story, canopied entrance with very handsome front doors.  The buiding has sidewalk landscaping and attractive light sconces flanking the entrance.

Amenities

The building has a full-time doorman, live-in superintendent, a laundry and a bicycle room.  It permits cats and dogs.  Until World War II, the building has 24-hour elevator service  and mail delivery to apartment doors twice a day and each apartment has a dumbwaiter.

Apartments

Apartment GRE is a three-bedroom duplex with a 17-foot-wide living room adjoining a 20-foot-long library and the bedrooms on the upper floor and a 12-foot-long entry foyer that adjoins a 28-foot-long dining room, a 14-foot-long study, a 10-foot-long utility room and a 19-foot-long kitchen on the lower floor.

Another three-bedroom unit has a 12-foot-long entry foyer that leads to a 24-foot-long gallery that opens onto a 24-foot-living room and an 18-foot-long dining room that opens onto a 12-foot-long butler’s pantry that leads past a 10-foot-maid’s room, a 10-foot-wide office and the 13-foot-wide, windowed and angled kitchen.

A three-bedroom unit has a 14-foot-long, six-sided entry foyer that leads to a 22-foot-long living room with a fireplace and to a long, angled fall and a 17-foot-llong dining room across from a  17-foot-long enclosed and windowed kitchen.

A corner three-bedroom has an entry foyer and gallery that is more than 50-feet-long and leads past an angled and windowed, 14-foot-long kitchen, two 10-foot-long maid’s rooms and a 18-foot-long dining room across from an 18-foot-long parlor and an 18-foot-long library.

A two-bedroom unit has a long, angled entry foyer that leads to a 15-foot-long gallery that opens onto a 19-foot-long living room with a fireplace and an 18-foot-long dining room that leads to a 13-foot-long eat-in kitchen as a 12-foot-long maid’s room.

History

The Audubon Park Historic District consists of 19 apartment buildings and one free-standing duplex house.  It includes all or part of five blocks extending from 155^th to 158^th Streets and from Broadway and Edward M. Morgan Place to Riverside Drive West and the district adjoins the
Audubon Terrace Historic District to the southeast.

It is named for John James Audubon (1785-1851), the famous naturalist and illustrator of birds, who purchased the estate overlooking the Hudson River in 1841 soon after he published his most famous work, “The Birds of America.”  The estate had about 20 acres and came to be known as Audubon Park in the 1860s when his widow began selling off parcels for single-family homes. 

“Following the arrival of the IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue subway line in 1904,” according to the district’s designation report for the Landmarks Preservation Commission, “Washington Heights rapidly developed with apartment buildings and accompanying commercial structures.  The apartment building within the historic district were constructed between 1905 and 1932 and were marketed as modern and elegant addresses in the tradition of the grand apartment houses in the neighborhoods of the Upper West Side and Morningside Heights to the south….The vast majority of the buildings within the historic district are highly intact, retaining the vibrant architectural details and character that attracted residents to the area a century ago.  The curving streets and dramatic vistas that result from the hilly topography continued to define the neighborhood as a distinctive enclave of apartment buildings with a powerful sense of place.”

In an article on the centennial of the building, Matthew Spady wrote that “George Blake Grinnell brought his father to Audubon Park on New Year’s Day 1857, expecting to stay for three years – the length of his lease on Wellington Clapp’s house.  Instead, his family remained six decades.”

Mr. Grinnell and his wife each had ancestors on the Mayflower, according to Mr. Spady.  Her father, Dirck C. Lansing, a Presbyterian minister known for his dynamic preaching, had founded Auburn Theological Seminary and was hits first president.  Grinnell’s father had served a decade in the United State House of Representatives and although he had not attended college like his father and grandfather before him, by 1857, after apprenticeships in banking and merchandising, he was proving successful in business.  He and Levi P. Morton (future governor of New York and vice president of the United States) had formed the mercantile firm of Morton Grinnell & Co., a company that prospered in the cotton trade until the Civil War.

When Grinnell’s lease expired in 1859, he leased the adjacent house, called “The Hemlocks” from John Woodhouse Audubon.  Originally built in 1851 for businessman Edward Downer, standing on ground that was once the Audubon’s chicken years, the Hemlocks occupied the spot where the Riviera (790 Riverside Drive) now sits.  In 1866 Grinnell partnered with Wellington Clapp in a brokerage firm specializing in railroad securities. With Cornelius Vanderbilt’s son-in-law Horace Clark as a silent partner, Grinnell & Clapp had access to Vanderbilt’s considerable railroad transactions.