164 Bank Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 164 Bank Street by Carter Horsley

This 13-story apartment tower is one of the most unusual not only in the West Village but in Manhattan.

It is distinguished by its very unusual balconies that are supported by a large external column from which the balconies are cantilevered on alternate floors. The effect is a bit awkward and ungainly but startling and definitely interesting. One wrongly conjures a spiral staircase and then fancifully but inaccurately conjures a firehouse sliding pole. On reflection one thinks of exoskeletons and high-tech Pompidou Centers.

One of New York City's most vexing design problems has been fire escapes. Slapped crudely against many fine tenement building façades they are usually graceless stacks of black metal rails that block up architectural niceties and are often taken by some to connotate slums. They are, of course, meant to be a second means of egress to permit escape from fires, a not unimportant consideration and for many developers were much less expensive than carving a second fireproof staircase out of their buildings' interiors. For many residents, on the other hand, they became informal, unofficial balconies, and for crime thriller movies the scenes of scrambling chases.

There have been few attempts to embellish or change fire escapes although some attractive ones can be found. In the late 1970's the city eased some of its requirements to permit experimentation with "fire balconies" in which adjoining apartments could share small balconies with projecting firewall divider, a design that made good sense especially in new construction projects.

Here the balconies are individual and are not shared between apartments. They are merely a design element, albeit a very major one. One senses one is mounting the crow's next of a clipper ship, or a battleship, perhaps, given the proximity of this mid-block building to the Hudson River Bank.

This 13-story building has only 26 apartments and affords fine views from its upper floors in this generally low-rise neighborhood.

The building has a white stucco façade and is close to the modern mid-rise towers designed by Richard Meier facing the Hudson River just to the south at 173 and 176 Perry Street and 165 Charles Street.

This neighborhood is convenient to Greenwich Village, the meatpacking district and Chelsea and many restaurants.