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601 West End Avenue
601 West End Avenue is a luxury apartment building on West End Avenue on the northwest corner of West 89th Street in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. The thirteen-story building was designed by noted architect Emery Roth and built in 1915. In a review by the architectural critic Carter B. Horsley, the building was praised as "one of the city's most elegant and distinguished apartment buildings."[1] ArchitectureIn his book Mansions in the Sky, Steven Ruttenbaum observes that 601 West End Avenue "exhibits an eclectic mixture of neo-classicism and the Vienna Secession" and is "notable for its discipline and sobriety." The building, he wrote, originally had only one apartment per floor.[2] The architecture critic Carter B. Horsley wrote "The building's façade is nicely modeled to accent its verticality, but is punctuated by a very large wrought-iron entrance marquee and large balconies on the fourth, fifth and twelfth floors. The 13th floor has arched windows below the building's simple cornice."[1]
HistoryDevelopment, 1915 to 1940sIn 1915, the developer Alfred Saxe purchased the two row houses on the corner of 89th street.[3] Emery Roth's plans filed in May that year, placed construction costs at $260,000.[2] Originally the building residents were affluent and would have maintained a domestic staff in their large 3,000-square-foot (280 m2) apartments. In a 1930 article detailing a burglary, The New York Times details the staff: "In 1930 Joseph Baumann, who ran a furniture business, and his wife occupied the sixth floor apartment. Living with them were four servants, a butler, maid, nurse (who had charge of an infant), and a cook. On June 12 that year, Mrs. Baumann entered a hospital for a minor operation. When she returned home four days later, she discovered $100,000 in jewels missing from her bedroom."[4] Sometime during or after the Great Depression the building was converted into a Single Room Occupancy hotel with 117 rooms.[5] Nursing home, 1944 to 1975In 1943[5] the building was bought and converted into a nursing home. In 1957, it was remodeled as the Mayflower Nursing Home. The home was operated by Bernard Bergman.[6] However, the nursing home faced closure in 1975 due to reported deficiencies in care and safety violations.[6] Cooperative conversion, 1977 to presentIn 1977, 601 West End Avenue was sold out of foreclosure for $500,000, with a subsequent $1 million construction bond to facilitate its conversion into a cooperative.[6] The Recycling for Housing Partnership of Austin Laber and Jerome Kretchmer was the group behind the conversion.[7] The remodel setup the building with two apartments per floor with a penthouse on the roof. The building continues to be run as a cooperative. Apartments now sell for over $2 million.[8] References
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