Leighton House, 360 East 88th Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 360 East 88th Street by Carter Horsley

This 46-story sliver building was designed by James Stewart Polshek & Associates and was a high-rise pioneer on First Avenue when it rose in 1989. Today it is a full-service, pet-friendly building with a doorman and concierge always on hand. Amenities include a health club, basketball court, sauna, garden with children's playground, and laundry room for oversized loads. It is conveniently located near Carl Schurz Park, Whole Foods, and excellent shopping, dining, and schools.

Polshek has one of the city's most diversified practices. He oversaw the restoration of Carnegie Hall and also designed the marvelous new low-rise housing at Washington Court on the Avenue of the Americas in Greenwich Village and the splendid high-rise residential tower addition at 500 Park [Avenue] Tower and a spectacular new building at the American Museum of Natural History on Central Park West.

Here, Polshek's mix of façade treatments is somewhat similar to 500 Park Tower and to a design Polshek did for the redevelopment of the New York Coliseum site. This design, however, is less successful than those two where the division between the different façade treatments was more even. Here, nevertheless, the result is still a few cuts above the average construction of the period.

The tower's main slab runs from east to west and its east and west ends are very narrow for a building of such height.

From the south, the building presents itself as a large, brown slab, but from the north its avenue corner is indented and highlighted by a bay of metal-covered windows that stop two stories short of the top of the building and two stories above the building's three-story, metal-and-glass base that includes expansion facilities for the adjacent Rhinelander Children's Center of the Children's Aid Society, a non-profit organization.

In their book, "New York 2000, Architecture and Urbanism Between the Bicentennial and the Millennium," Robert A. M. Stern, David Fishman and Jacob Tilove note that critic Suzanne Stephens called the building a "well-syncopated orchestration of advancing and receding planes, cantilevered elements, reveals, and articulated detailing," adding that "In architectural deportment it is miles ahead of its clunky neighbors."

Most of the tower's 163 condominium apartments, some of which have fireplaces, have very open and impressive views in this former tenement area that has been considerably gentrified in recent years and is now very lively.

The tower's purple-brown Norman brick masonry façade is attractive, but the building is a bit vertiginous and just misses being more impressive. The tower is visually divided vertically into five sections each marked by a small balcony. Its relatively small windows make it appear more massive than it is.

The project, which has a garden and a playground, was developed by Philip E. Aarons and Christopher M. Jeffries of the General Atlantic Realty Corporation.