One
of Riverside Drive's great apartment buildings, the Strathmore
is distinguished by its large curved marquee and arched entrance.
Designed
by Schwartz & Gross for the Akron Building Company, the building
was
erected in 1909 and has a four-story, rusticated limestone base, a dark
red-brick shaft and a three story limestone and terra-cotta capital
capped by a
large and handsome cornice.
Marquee entrance
The corner
of the building, which has a doorman, is angled. Tall,
five-globed torcheres flank the imposing entrance whose marquee is now
solid
but originally was glass.
In
his excellent book, "Luxury Apartment Houses of Manhattan, An
Illustrated
Guide," (Dover Publications Inc., 1992), Andrew Alpern noted that the
architects, Simon Schwartz and Arthur Gross planned each floor to have
two
10-apartments with "exceptional high ceilings, complex plasterwork
moldings, walnut paneling, and elaborately bordered parquet
floors." The apartments, he continued, had mahogany
doors, "bathtubs sized for couples and circular stall showers formed by
a
cage of chromed water pipes that can attack a weary body from every
conceivable
position and angle.
Although
some apartments were divided over the years, Alpern noted that some of
the
original ones remain including a duplex on the lower two floors. For
many
years, the building was owned by Newbold Morris, a member of one of New
York's oldest
families who was for a while the city's Parks Commissioner. The
12-story building, which has 49 apartments,
was converted to a cooperative in 1967 and Alpern wrote that its
residents have
included District Attorney Frank Hogan and theological Reinhold
Niebuhr. The site was once owned by William Waldorf
Astor.
The building has no balconies, no health club and no garage.
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