By Carter B. Horsley

This very large, pre-war, rental apartment building occupies most of the eastern half of the block bounded by Madison and Fifth Avenues and 86th and 85th Streets.

The beige-brick building has light wells along the avenue and a setback on 86th Street. It has a very large entrance marquee on 86th Street with a concierge and a very large but bland lobby. The building was originally the Croydon Hotel. (Another former hotel on the same blockfront, the former Adams Hotel at 2 East 86th Street, was converted to a luxury condominium and was able to get a Fifth Avenue address even though it is not on the avenue but just to the east of the new Serge Sabarsky museum of German Expressionist Art at the Fifth Avenue corner.

The building has good retail along the avenue including a Gristede's, a bank and a large stationery store, but no sidewalk landscaping and its many of its discrete air-conditioners have been cut through the building's few decorative spandrels. It has a garage, but no sundeck.

This neighborhood at the south end of the Carnegie Hill District became very attractive in the late 1980's and the 1990s with the opening of many boutiques and several restaurants and the upgrading of a nearby supermarket. There is excellent neighborhood shopping and many excellent schools and religious institutions nearby as well as many of the city's most important cultural institutions. There is excellent west-bound cross-town bus service on the street, and the east-bound service has a stop across the avenue. An express subway station is at Lexington Avenue.

There is considerable traffic along the avenue and especially on 85th Street, which is the approach to a Central Park cross drive.