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44 West 77th Street

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Studio Apartments
Map
Location44 W. 77th St., New York, New York
Coordinates40°46′48″N 73°58′33″W / 40.7801°N 73.9758°W / 40.7801; -73.9758 (Studio Apartments)
AreaLess than one acre (0.40 ha)
Built1907 (1907)
ArchitectHarde & Short
Architectural styleLate Gothic Revival
NRHP reference No.83001748[1]
NYSRHP No.06101.000177
Significant dates
Added to NRHP1983-05-19
Designated NYSRHP1983-04-01[2]

44 West 77th Street (also known as the Studio Building or Studio Apartments) is a 14-story housing cooperative on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It was designed by Harde & Short in the Neo-Gothic style and was completed in 1909. The apartment building has a brick facade and limestone trim, with elaborate arched doorway. The facade has three protruding bays of large, north-facing windows, intended in part to illuminate artists' studios inside. Above the ground-floor lobby, the building has a mixture of large apartments for general use and smaller artists' apartments with 1+1⁄2-story studio rooms.

The building's developer, the artist Walter Russell, had previously built similar structures in the West 67th Street Artists' Colony. Russell acquired the site in 1907 and completed it two years later. He then sold the building to the Manhattan Square Apartment Association, whose shareholders owned the building, making it a housing cooperative. The building stopped being a cooperative in the 1940s, when the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company acquired 44 West 77th Street and removed the terracotta decorations. After being sold several times, the building was reconverted to cooperative ownership in 1970, and the facade was restored in the 1990s. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a contributing property to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission's Central Park West-76th Street Historic District.

Description

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44 West 77th Street is located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States.[3][4] It is on the south side of the street just east of Columbus Avenue,[3] occupying a nearly square land lot of 100 by 102 feet (30 by 31 m).[3][5] 44 West 77th Street faces the American Museum of Natural History to the north.[6][7][8] The site's location on the south side of 77th Street allowed the building to take advantage of sunlight from the north.[3] The structure is sometimes known as the Studio Building or Studio Apartments.[9][10] However, the historian Christopher Gray characterizes 44 West 77th Street as having no official name, describing it one of several such upscale early-20th-century buildings in Upper Manhattan, in contrast to older, named buildings such as the Dakota.[11]

The building was designed by Harde & Short[12][13] and was built by the Hedden Construction Company.[14] 44 West 77th Street, along with 45 East 66th Street and the Alwyn Court, was one of three elaborately-decorated structures in Manhattan that Harde & Short had designed in the 1900s after completing the Red House in 1903.[15]

Exterior

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Decorations at the entrance of 44 West 77th Street

The facade was inspired by French churches and Belgian government buildings.[4][16] The facade is mostly made of red brick.[17] interspersed with limestone trim and divided vertically by three protruding bays of windows.[8][3] The original decorations include extensive tracery, arches, finials, trefoil or quatrefoil motifs, and crockets.[18] The facade also used white terracotta[17] for decorations above the ground story,[18] though most of the terracotta has since been removed.[19]

On the ground floor is an elaborate arched doorway; the recessed windows on either side have protruding hoods.[8][3] The doorway and windows are flanked by stepped buttresses, which ascend three stories.[3] Within the protruding bays, there are carved spandrel panels between each floor. Some of the windows are double-height units, which illuminate artists' studios. The outer two bays are flanked by ribs, which ascend to the 12th floor.[8][3] The decorations at the roofline included a turret, crockets, and a pediment, all in the Gothic style; these decorations were dismantled in the 1940s.[3] As built, the western (right) bay had a tower topped by tracery, while the eastern (left) bay terminated abruptly.[17] The eastern bay has a dormer at the rooftop, housed within a steep roof.[8][3]

Interior

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Interior floor plan

The interior floor plan remains mostly intact and, uniquely among Harde & Short's buildings, still retains its original entrance vestibule.[13] The first floor has a lobby with gray walls, bronze chandeliers with finials, and gilded stair rails and doors.[17] The lobby has engaged columns on the wall, which support a ceiling with groin vaults,[3] similar to those in a cathedral.[20] The vaults divide the lobby into three bays. The lobby also has elaborate limestone-framed, round-arched openings, some of which lead to other rooms. Above the interior doorways are transom windows, which have tracery.[3]

As built, 44 West 77th Street included a mixture of large apartments for general use, along with smaller artists' apartments with 1+1⁄2-story studio rooms.[12] Most of the large apartments remain and are grouped two to a floor;[3][21] these apartments occupy the western or eastern halves of each floor.[21] Artists' apartments are arranged in pairs, which span groupings of three stories; the 1+1⁄2-story studios of each pair are stacked atop each other. The lower apartment in each grouping is accessed from the lowest story, with the studio at the same level, while the upper apartment is accessed from the highest story, with the studio half a story below. The central portion of each grouping also has a separate apartment without any studio.[14] One of the 13th floor units was built for the sculptor Karl Bitter, measuring 44 feet (13 m) long with a double-height ceiling.[4][12] Another unit, renovated in 1939 for the artist Paul Trebilcock, had a living room 45 feet (14 m) long.[22]

The apartments were generally designed by their original tenants,[3] who were allowed to select decorations "within certain limitation".[14] Excluding the foyers, kitchen, and servant rooms, large apartments typically have seven or eight rooms.[14] Each of the apartments has a foyer, living room, dining room, sunroom, double-height studio, and multiple bedrooms.[3][14] The living room or salon is typically placed at the front, the dining room in the center (facing an interior light court), and the bedrooms at the rear.[14] The layouts of several apartments have been modified; for example, some apartments have received new closets, while rooms in other apartments were combined.[3] A few apartments remain fully intact, including 6E, a nine-room unit with a Caen stone mantel, leaded-glass windows, bronze doorways, and carved wood pilasters.[9]

History

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44 West 77th Street was developed in the 1900s by the artist Walter Russell[4][12] under the 44 West Seventy-seventh Street Company.[23] At the time, numerous developers were constructing housing cooperatives for artists in Manhattan, many of which contained large studio rooms with high ceilings.[24][25] Russell had previously constructed some buildings in the West 67th Street Artists' Colony, another group of artists' studio apartments,[12][19] and several developers of buildings in the 67th Street colony had begun constructing co-ops elsewhere in Manhattan.[25] In January 1907, Russell bought four land lots on the south side of 77th Street east of Columbus Avenue totaling 102 by 100 feet (31 by 30 m) across. The lots, which included the 12-story Manhattan Square Hotel, would be replaced by the new studio apartment building.[26][27] The developer borrowed $500,000 from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company to help pay for the construction.[5][28] Russell commissioned Harde & Short to design the building, and work began early that year.[29]

44 West 77th Street was completed in 1909,[7][18] and Pease & Elliman were hired to sell the apartments.[6] Soon after the building's completion, in November 1909, the 44 West Seventy-seventh Street Company sold the property for slightly under $1,000,000 to the Manhattan Square Apartment Association. The association's shareholders owned the building, thus making it a housing cooperative.[23] Although 44 West 77th Street was intended to be similar to earlier artists' cooperatives, it was home to a variety of professionals, such as doctors and lawyers.[19] Some decorations on the facade had begun to peel off within two years of the building's completion, including terracotta shards that dropped onto the street,[19] requiring the replacement of the mortar in the facade's joints.[18][30] Much of the original terracotta work was replaced at that time with newer terracotta.[19]

The building was taken over by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in 1940, following a foreclosure proceeding, and became a regular apartment building.[19] Later in the decade, the terracotta decorations were dismantled[3] due to concerns that the decorations would fall off.[19][20] The terracotta was replaced with brick.[20] The removal, overseen by Metropolitan Life's in-house architect Samuel R. Bishop, contrasted with the retention of similar details on Harde & Short's other buildings.[19] Metropolitan Life sold the building in 1947 to a group led by David Jacobs, taking back a mortgage of $355,000; at the time, the property was valued at $500,000.[31][32]

Detail of windows

In 1970, the building was reconverted to cooperative ownership.[19] It became a contributing property to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission's Central Park West-76th Street Historic District, designated in 1977.[8] 44 West 77th Street was also added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.[33] The facade was again repaired in the early 1990s;[30] the work, which cost $500,000, involved fixing leaks and repairing loose portions of the facade.[19] The original design details were not restored at the time because it would have cost millions of dollars, a high burden for each resident, since at the time there were just 33 apartments.[19]

Notable residents

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Reception

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When the building was completed, it was likened to a "Brobdingnagian cathedral".[18][17] One source wrote that the design was intended to draw attention, "first from a certain bizarre effect and later from the novelty and interest of the facade".[17] Architects and Builders Magazine wrote that the design made passersby "stare and gasp".[19] By contrast, Architectural Record regarded it as an "apartment house aberration" and preferred that the facade be less elaborately decorated, saying the building's "freakish front" could be seen as a form of self-aggrandizement for the architect.[18] Stone magazine criticized the use of terracotta when the facade was repaired in 1911, predicting that "we are ready to return to safe and sane methods of construction".[19] The New York Times wrote that Harde & Short's designs of 44 West 77th Street, 45 East 66th Street, and the Alwyn Court were unrivaled "in the amount and complexity of facade detail".[40] The historian Andrew Alpern wrote that the facade details seemed to "have been squeezed out of a pastry tube".[19]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. November 2, 2013.
  2. ^ "Cultural Resource Information System (CRIS)". New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. November 7, 2014. Archived from the original on April 4, 2019. Retrieved July 20, 2023.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q National Park Service 1983, p. 2.
  4. ^ a b c d Horsley, Carter B. (December 23, 2011). "Carter's Review". CityRealty. Archived from the original on June 21, 2025. Retrieved May 8, 2026.
  5. ^ a b "The Week". Real estate record and builders' guide. Vol. 81, no. 2096. May 16, 1908. p. 924. Retrieved May 12, 2026 – via Columbia University Libraries.
  6. ^ a b "Wants and Offers". Real estate record and builders' guide. Vol. 84, no. 2163. August 28, 1909. p. 407. Retrieved May 12, 2026 – via Columbia University Libraries.
  7. ^ a b c Cohen, Michelle (May 3, 2016). "Late Portrait Artist Aaron Shikler's UWS Co-op in the Iconic Studio Building Asks $7.8M". 6sqft. Archived from the original on February 13, 2026. Retrieved May 8, 2026.
  8. ^ a b c d e f Landmarks Preservation Commission 1973, p. 7.
  9. ^ a b "Best of Luxury Homes & Estates". The New York Times. October 21, 2007. pp. 109, 112, 114, 120, 122, 124, 126, 128, 130, 132, 134, 136, 138, 140, 142, 144, 146, 149, 151. ISSN 0362-4331. ProQuest 215475859.
  10. ^ National Park Service 1983, p. 1.
  11. ^ Gray, Christopher (September 28, 1986). "What Are Dakota and Montana Doing in New York?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on May 11, 2022. Retrieved May 9, 2026.
  12. ^ a b c d e Alpern 1992, p. 52.
  13. ^ a b National Park Service 1983, p. 3.
  14. ^ a b c d e f Architects' and Builders' Magazine 1909, p. 386.
  15. ^ Gray, Christopher (December 6, 1998). "Streetscapes / Readers' Questions; Two Buildings With Unusual Touches, and Histories". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on August 27, 2015. Retrieved May 13, 2026.
  16. ^ Alpern 1992, pp. 52, 54.
  17. ^ a b c d e f Architects' and Builders' Magazine 1909, p. 379.
  18. ^ a b c d e f Alpern 1992, p. 54.
  19. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Gray, Christopher (February 23, 1992). "Streetscapes: 44 West 77th Street; Restoration of an Altered Facade". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on January 21, 2019. Retrieved May 12, 2026.
  20. ^ a b c Sheftell, Jason (August 24, 2012). "What a Room! A Giant Space in Upper West Side Pre-war Might Be Tops in All of New York City". New York Daily News. p. 1. ISSN 2692-1251. ProQuest 1035043564.
  21. ^ a b Architects' and Builders' Magazine 1909, pp. 379, 386.
  22. ^ "Rentals Feature West Side Suites; Large Units Are Included in Long List of Tenancies Reported by Agents". The New York Times. September 28, 1939. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 12, 2026.
  23. ^ a b "In the Real Estate Field; Transfer of Fourteen Story Co-operative Apartment House on West 77th Street – Heights Plot Sold for Improvement – Big Loan on 27th Street Loft Building". The New York Times. November 19, 1909. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 12, 2026.
  24. ^ "Unite Upon Unique Apartment House Plan: Literary Men, Artists and Architects Are Going to Try Co-operative Construction and Ownership in New York City". The Construction News. Vol. 23, no. 25. June 22, 1907. p. 446. ProQuest 128412079.
  25. ^ a b Gray, Christopher (October 28, 1984). "The 'Revolution' of 1881 is Now in Its 2d Century". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on January 22, 2025. Retrieved May 13, 2026.
  26. ^ "Deal Involving Over $3,000,000". Real estate record and builders' guide. Vol. 79, no. 2028. January 26, 1907. p. 234. Retrieved May 12, 2026 – via Columbia University Libraries.
  27. ^ "In the Real Estate Field; Sale of Upper Fifth Avenue Residence – Details of Big West Side Apartment Project – Broadway Corner Sold at 52d Street – Other Deals". The New York Times. January 19, 1907. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 12, 2026.
  28. ^ "The Auction List". New-York Tribune. November 21, 1909. p. 14. Retrieved May 12, 2026.
  29. ^ Gray, Christopher (April 6, 1997). "The Lavish 'Studio Palace' Called Alwyn Court". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on December 25, 2019. Retrieved May 13, 2026.
  30. ^ a b Gray, Christopher (January 24, 1993). "Streetscapes: Scaffolding; A New Technology Promises Changes". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 9, 2026.
  31. ^ "Insurance Firm Sells 14-Story Uptown House: Metropolitan Life Conveys West 77th St. Building Bearing $355,000 Lien". New York Herald Tribune. March 19, 1947. p. 41. ISSN 1941-0646. ProQuest 1291174103.
  32. ^ Foley, Maurice (March 23, 1947). "Investors Active Over a Wide Area in New City Deals: Ruppert Holding Unit Sells 26-story Office Building on Madison Avenue". The New York Times. p. R1. ISSN 0362-4331. ProQuest 107997279.
  33. ^ Shaver, Peter D.; Preservation League of New York State (1993). The National Register of Historic Places in New York State. Rizzoli. p. 101. ISBN 978-0-8478-1789-4. Retrieved April 29, 2026.
  34. ^ "Karl Bitter Dies of Auto Injuries; Sculptor Won Fame at 21 by Designing Famous Trinity $200,000 Bronze Doors". The New York Times. April 11, 1915. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 12, 2026.
  35. ^ a b Besonen, Julie (July 20, 2017). "A Spy Novel Whose Clues Are Found on New York Landmarks". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on July 3, 2025. Retrieved May 13, 2026.
  36. ^ Montanez, Abby (March 20, 2025). "Late PBS Anchor Robert MacNeil's N.Y.C. Apartment Overlooks the Museum of Natural History". Robb Report. Archived from the original on July 23, 2025. Retrieved May 8, 2026.
  37. ^ "Court Finds Books Reform Children; Panken Declares Good Reading Opens Minds of Delinquents to Social Obligations". The New York Times. December 26, 1935. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 12, 2026.
  38. ^ "Samuel M. Roosevelt Drops Dead in Club: Was Noted Portrait Painter and Second Cousin of the Late President". New-York Tribune. August 20, 1920. p. 1. ISSN 1941-0646. ProQuest 576267543.
  39. ^ Chen, Stefanos (December 28, 2016). "Manhattan Home of Late Artist Aaron Shikler Asks $7 Million". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on October 8, 2022. Retrieved May 8, 2026.
  40. ^ Gray, Christopher (December 4, 2005). "2 Architects' Brief Journey Into Design Pyrotechnics". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on October 29, 2020. Retrieved May 9, 2026.

Sources

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