Gracie Gardens, 515 East 89th Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 515 East 89th Street by Carter Horsley

Gracie Gardens at 515 East 89^th Street is a very attractive, red-brick, mid-block apartment building that is part of a four-building complex with a common garden in Yorkville between 89^th and 90^th streets and York and East End Avenues. 

It was built in 1942 and the complex contains about 272 units. This is the most southwestern of the buildings. The other buildings are located at 525 East 89^th Street and 520 and 530 East 90^th Street. 

The buildings were sold to SSD Properties in 1979 and converted to a cooperative in 1981. 

The complex was designed by Sylvan Bien.

Bottom Line

These very elegant, mid-rise, red-brick apartment buildings are very close to Carl Schurz Park, Gracie Mansion and the parabolic Municipal Asphalt Plant designed by Kahn & Jacobs in 1944 - and all overlook the East River.

Description

The four buildings are very similar with elegant entrance surrounds, lush sidewalk landscaping and many bay windows.

The buildings share a large common garden and originally there were tennis courts at the east end of the site that eventually became the site of 200 East End Avenue, a high-rise apartment building.

The building has consistent fenestration and permits window air-conditioners.

Amenities

The buildings have full-time doormen, a live-in superintendent, canopied entrances, some fireplaces and elevators. However, there is no health club, roof deck or garage and apartments do not have balconies.

Apartments

A one-bedroom unit has a 15-foot-wide dining foyer next to a 16-foot-long, enclosed, eat-in kitchen and a 21-foot-long living room. 

A two-bedroom unit has a foyer that leads to a 18-foot-wide gallery that leads to a enclosed kitchen and a 23-foot-long living room with a large bay window. 

A two-bedroom unit has a 16-foot-long foyer that leads in one direction to a 22-foot-long living room and two bedrooms and in the other direction to a 13-foot-long dining room with a curved west wall and a 10-foot-long kitchen. 

One of the duplex apartments has a 16-foot-long curved foyer that opens onto a 21-foot-long living room and a 12-foot-long dining room next to a 11-foot-long pass-through kitchen on the upper level that also has a 10-foot-long office.  The upper level has three bedrooms and a TV area. 

One of the large units has a 8-foot-long entry foyer that leads to a 16-foot-long gallery that opens in one direction onto a 22-foot-long living room and three bedrooms and in the other direction a 16-foot-long dining room next to a 16-foot-long kitchen, two more bedrooms and a 15-foot long den with a corner fireplace.

History

In “New York 1960, Architecture And Urbanism Between The Second World War and The Bicentennial” authors Robert A. M. Stern, Thomas Mellins and David Fishman, provided the following commentary about the Gracie Gardens complex that was completed in 1942 on East 89^th and 90^th streets between York and East End avenues: 

“Since 1927 the former grounds of the House of the Good Shepherd, which was demolished that year to make way for an ultimately unrealized forty-story apartment hotel designed by Emery Roth, had remained vacant. The Good Shepherd block was bordered by East End and York Avenues, Eighty-Ninth and Ninetieth Streets, at a point where the still ethnic Yorkville section intersected with the upper reaches of fashionable East End Avenue."

“In 1941 Gracie Square Gardens were proposed for the site. As initially conceived, a 575-unit group of six, sixty-story Georgian-style apartment buildings, designed by Sylvan Bien, was to take advantage of river views across Carl Schurz Park and the East River Drive. In keeping with the widespread trend toward suburbanization, the scheme not only called for low buildings but also occupied only 50 percent of the site, with gardens filling up the generously proportioned courtyards."

“The real estate broker William J. Demorest, of the William A. White agency, reemphasized the importance of the open spaces: ‘The undertaking may be considered significant, not only because of its size and because it is being carried out by private capital, but also because it will provide apartments of a type designed to encourage people to remain in Manhattan. The liberal allotment of space for gardens will enable the tenants to enjoy many of the advantages of suburban life.’ "

“As built and completed in 1942, still to the designs of Sylvan Bien, the projected contained only four seventy-unit buildings at 515 and 525 East Eighth-ninth Sreet and 520 and 530 East Ninetieth Street.  Tennis courts were located at the east and west ends of the site, which were in effect reserved for future high rise construction, a decision influenced in part by the impending construction of the Municipal Asphalt Plants, which would compromise the site’s river reviews in midblock.”