265
Riverside Drive
Southwest
corner at 99th Street
265 Riverside Drive
By Carter B.
Horsley
Construction
began on 265 Riverside Drive on the southwest corner at 99th Street in
1909 and was completed in early 1910. Designed by George F. Pelham and
owned by the West Side Construction Company, this very handsome,
11-story building had 2 apartments on the first floor and 3 apartments
per floor on the 10 floors above.
In
1932 the building was gutted and rebuilt with 7 apartments per floor
around the original 2 elevator banks. It reopened in 1933 with 6
apartments on the main floor and 70 apartments above.
The
building was incorporated as a cooperative in 1992, and today the
building has 75 apartments, almost evenly divided between cooperative
apartments and rental apartments (one cooperative apartment combines 2
former apartments).
Situated
on the a quiet one-lane section of Riverside Drive on the south side of
99th Street, this striking Classical building has a three-story
rusticated limestone base, a curved façade at the corner of Riverside
Drive and 99th Street, and a raised entrance with a portico with two
pairs of fluted columns.
265
Riverside Drive has a part-time doorman, allows for 80% financing, and
features a laundry room and a bicycle room in the basement.
This pre-war, brown-brick building
has an impressive entrance with columns and two attractive groups of
three-courses of white banding above the three-story limestone base and
near the top.
The brown-brick building is
distinguished by its three-story rusticated limestone base with
handsome balconies on the third floor and by the three banks of
light-colored stone around its fourth and tenth stories that give the
building an Italian Renaissance-style appearance.
The building has a
four-step-up entrance flanked by pairs of deeply fluted columns on the
drive, a moat fence, and a curved corner.
The building has fine views of
the Hudson River and Riverside Park,
The building has a part-time
doorman, a live-in superintendent and a bicycle room and an exposed
rooftop watertank, but no health club, no roof deck and no garage.
Apartment 5C is a two-bedroom
unit with an entry foyer that leads to a 15-foot-long gallery with one
curved end next to a 7-foot-long kitchen and a 20-foot-long angled,
living room with a curved corner.
Apartment 8B is a one-bedroom unit with an 8-foot-long entry foyer that
opens into a 28-foot-long living room with a 10-foot-long dining area
adjacent to an enclosed, windowed, 9-foot-long kitchen.
Apartment 8E is a one-bedroom unit which has an 8-foot-square entry
foyer that opens onto a 20-foot-living room with a 10-foot-long,
angled, dining alcove adjacent to a 12-foot-long, pass-through and
windowed kitchen.
The D line of apartments are one-bedroom units with 14-foot-long entry
foyers that leads to 20 foot-long living rooms in one direction and an
angled, 13-foot-long dining room in the other next to a 7-foot-long
kitchen.
According to a
December 27, 2010 article about penthouses in The New York Times by
Christine Haughney, an apartment in the building appeared in
“Manhattan,” a movie by Woody Allen.