The Beresford

Residential skyscraper in Manhattan, New York

The Beresford is a cooperative apartment building at 211 Central Park West, between 81st and 82nd Streets, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was constructed in 1929 and was designed by architect Emery Roth. The Beresford is 22 stories tall and is topped by octagonal towers on its northeast, southwest, and southeast corners. The building is a contributing property to the Central Park West Historic District, a National Register of Historic Places–listed district, and is a New York City designated landmark. The building surrounds an internal courtyard to the west. The facade has two primary elevations, facing east toward Central Park and south toward the American Museum of Natural History. There are numerous setbacks on each elevation, which double as terraces. The first three stories are clad in rusticated blocks of limestone, with three main entrances at ground level. The remainder of the facade is made of light brick with terracotta ornamentation. Each of the towers is decorated with arches and finials and contains one penthouse apartment. The building has three terrazzo and marble lobbies with molded plaster ceilings. On the upper stories, many apartments are split across two levels and contain large rooms. There were originally 178 apartments, each with four to sixteen rooms, but several apartments have been split or combined over the years. The Beresford replaced an 11 story apartment building with the same name, built in 1889 and 1892. The current apartment complex was built after a previous attempt to redevelop the site in the 1920s had failed. The building opened in September 1929 but soon went into receivership following the collapse of the Bank of United States, which held the mortgage. The Beresford was acquired in 1940 by an investment syndicate, which owned the building for the next two decades. The building was then converted to a housing cooperative in 1962. Over the years, its residents have included directors, actors, journalists, and executives.

The Beresford is at 211 Central Park West in the Upper West Side neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The building occupies the western sidewalk of Central Park West (formerly Eighth Avenue) between 81st Street to the south and 82nd Street to the north. The Diana Ross Playground and the Great Lawn and Turtle Pond are directly to the east, inside Central Park. The Beresford is one of several apartment buildings on Central Park West that are primarily identified by an official name. Even though a street address was sufficient to identify these apartment buildings, this trend followed a British practice of giving names to buildings without addresses. By contrast, buildings on Fifth Avenue, along the eastern side of Central Park, are mainly known by their addresses. Major developments on the West Side were erected after the Ninth Avenue elevated line opened in 1879, providing direct access to Lower Manhattan. The first large apartment building in the area was the Dakota, which opened in 1884. The city installed power lines on Central Park West at the end of the 19th century, thus allowing the construction of multi story apartment hotels with elevators. Among the early apartment hotels was the original Hotel Beresford at 81st Street and Eighth Avenue. The structure was built by Alva Walker in two phases. Theodore E. Thomson designed the first section in 1889, a six story building with 34 apartments. The initial structure also had a dining room on the top floor; wide hallways to each suite; and elevators. This addition had 64 apartments.

The present Beresford was designed by Emery Roth. The Beresford was built by HRH Construction. Unlike other large buildings on Central Park West, which were typically attributed to a single developer, no one took credit for developing the Beresford specifically. The syndicate that developed the Beresford had also erected the San Remo, seven blocks south, shortly after the Beresford was completed. which surround an interior courtyard to the west, creating a U shaped plan. There are setbacks at the 14th, 16th, 18th, and 20th stories, which were included to comply with the 1916 Zoning Resolution. These setbacks are enclosed by iron railings and stone balustrades, creating private terraces for each tenant. Above the 20th story are small octagonal towers. so the westernmost section contains setbacks beginning at the 9th story. The lowest three stories of the facade are made of rusticated blocks of limestone, while the rest of the building is clad with beige brick. The facade's primary elevations face south toward 81st Street and east toward Central Park West. The corners of each elevation are articulated by vertical bands of brick quoins. The east elevation contains 29 bays from south to north, arranged in a 3 3 5 3 3 5 3 4 pattern. Bays 1–6 and 23–29 are "pavilions" with 16th story setbacks, while the center bays set back at the 14th, 18th, and 20th stories.

There are four entrances at the base: two on 81st Street and one each on Central Park West and 82nd Street. Each of the doorways is surrounded by a limestone frame with pilasters on either side, which contain panels with reliefs of acanthus leaves. On the far western end of the 81st and 82nd Street frontages, there is a short standalone wall of rusticated blocks, which contains a round archway topped by a keystone with a winged cherub's head. There is a metal service gate below each archway. The 81st Street gate contains a panel with the word "Service", and the panel above the gate is decorated with guttae. Above the fourth story, there are four cartouches on the eastern elevation, four on the southern elevation, and two on the northern elevation. Above the 17th story, there are chimneys at the centers of the northern, southern, and eastern elevations. including five residential elevators. In some cases, an elevator served only one apartment on a floor, so the elevator doors opened directly into that tenant's foyer. leading one publication to describe the lobbies as "marble halls of your dizziest dreams". The floors of each lobby are composed of gray and beige terrazzo tiles. The terrazzo tiles are surrounded by a multicolored band of mosaic tiles laid in a chevron pattern, as well as a dark marble border. The lower sections of the lobbies' walls contain baseboards of oxblood and green marble; the baseboards are molded at the top. The remainders of the lobbies' walls are beige and contain projecting marble pilasters. The capitals of each pilaster are decorated with varying motifs, including garlands interspersed with classical volutes, as well as cherubs' heads. There are "art glass" windows on the walls, overlooking the courtyard. The walls contain doorways leading from the lobbies to various rooms. The lintels of these doorways contain gilded plaster cartouches, which depict the actions of arrival and departure. The specifications of each apartment were modified to accommodate individual tenants, but each story generally had ten apartments. Units ranged from four to sixteen rooms, but most units had eight to ten rooms. These duplexes were as large as many row houses and were arranged similarly to traditional row houses. In the duplexes, "public" rooms such as the living room and kitchen were on the lower level, while "private" rooms were on the upper level. When the building was sold in 1959, the Beresford was reported as having 182 apartments of three and a half to twelve rooms each. In each apartment, the elevator foyers lead to a central gallery. Duplex units contain curved iron and brass staircases, leading to bedrooms on the upper level. In single story units, the gallery leads directly to the living and dining rooms. Butlers' pantries and maids' rooms also lead off each kitchen. Some units also contained dedicated "breakfast rooms", which were distinct from the dining rooms. The units behind each setback also contained "sun rooms", which open out onto the terraces. There were multiple large closets in each apartment, as well as large walk in closets paneled in cedar. All three towers were designed with observation rooms. The author Steven Ruttenbaum described the southeast corner apartment as "one of the most desirable apartments in the Beresford", even more so than the other two towers. There are wood burning fireplaces in the living rooms;

By the late 1920s, high rise apartment buildings were being developed on Central Park West in anticipation of the completion of the New York City Subway's Eighth Avenue Line, which opened in 1932. Central Park West was concurrently widened from Under the Multiple Dwelling Act of 1929,Efn|Under this legislation, the "street walls" of apartment buildings could rise one and a half times the width of the adjacent street before they had to set back. On lots of more than , the street walls could rise three times the width of the adjacent street. Apartment buildings could rise up to 19 stories; additional stories were allowed on large plots, but the floor areas of these stories were limited to 20 percent of the lot area. These upper stories were allowed on plots of at least and were required to be set back 70 feet (21 m) on all sides. It contrasted with the multi story twin towers of the Century, the Majestic, the San Remo, and the El Dorado, which were all built one to two years after the Beresford was completed. Sugarman and Berger filed plans the next year for a high rise apartment building to replace the hotel. These plans did not proceed, and Gordon resold the hotel to Max Verschleiser in 1927. Active Properties Inc. a syndicate led by banker and politician Henry Pollock, acquired the site in March 1928. Emery Roth filed plans that August for a 15 story building on Central Park West, between 81st and 82nd Streets, on behalf of the site's owner Manhattan Square Beresford Inc. The structure was to cost $3 million. Demolition of the old Beresford began the same month. By November 1928, the building's leasing agent L. J. Phillips & Co. was renting out apartments at rates averaging $1,000 per room. Seventy percent of the suites had already been leased by May 1929. The construction of the new Beresford had prompted another developer to buy an adjacent group of row houses and develop an apartment building there. The Beresford's owners obtained a $5 million first mortgage loan for the building that July. HRH Construction was paid $150,000 for its role as general contractor for the Beresford. HRH also agreed to manage the Beresford (as well as the San Remo, which it also built) in exchange for two percent of the buildings' gross profits.

The building officially opened on September 13, 1929, a little more than a month before the Wall Street Crash of 1929. This optimistic projection was based on the fact that an apartment with 13 rooms had been rented for $15,000 a year, while several five room apartments were rented at rates of $7,500 a year. The New York Times reported in February 1931 that the Bank of United States, which had collapsed not long beforehand, was the actual owner of the Beresford. The bank's relationship to the Beresford became publicly known after a bank official testified that he had been ordered to burn the bank's documents in the Beresford's incinerator. After the Bank of United States had collapsed, the New York State Banking Department took over the bank's holdings. At that point, the luxury residential market in Manhattan had declined significantly. The Beresford had still not been sold by the next year, prompting the department to adjust the building's mortgage loan to facilitate its sale. The Banking Department had planned to subdivide some of the large suites in the mid 1930s, but these plans were canceled after the luxury market began to improve. The journalist Peter Osnos wrote that the Beresford and other Central Park West apartment houses contained many Jewish residents during the 1930s and 1940s, since these buildings were not "restricted", unlike others on the East Side. In July 1940, a group of anonymous investors acquired the San Remo and Beresford, assuming a combined $7.4 million in mortgages on the two structures. The buildings themselves cost only $25,000, although they had cost a combined $10 million to build. The investment group was known as the Sanbere Corporation, a portmanteau of the two buildings' names. The New York Times subsequently reported that Max N. and Norbert Natanson owned the building for two decades. In 1961, the Koreins sold the leasehold under the Beresford to an investment syndicate represented by Walter J. Fried. At the time, it had 193 apartments and was still characterized as a luxury apartment house.

By April 1962, the Beresford's owner Riker & Co. was planning to turn the building into a housing cooperative. The apartments were to be offered at prices between $16,500 and $55,650, with yearly maintenance fees ranging from $3,200 to $10,600. The Beresford officially became a co op in June 1962 after existing tenants and newcomers bought shares in the co op for half of the apartments. Riker & Co. then obtained a $4 million mortgage. The Beresford was one of twelve apartment buildings on Central Park West to be converted into housing cooperatives in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Pease & Elliman (later Douglas Elliman) was appointed as the managing agent for the Beresford in 1964. Town & Country magazine described the Beresford in the 1970s as having two doormen at each entrance and one operator at each elevator. The co op board initially did not seek official city landmark status for the Beresford, as that would have raised the cost of maintenance. Nonetheless, the board members wanted to preserve as much of the original design as possible, The Beresford's co op board also periodically renovated the tenants' private elevator foyers, along with other shared interior spaces. The Beresford was protected as an official city landmark in 1987, During the 1990s, Crain's New York described the Majestic, Beresford, and El Dorado as having "become brand names that grow in strength as noted personalities move in". The Beresford's superintendent had even created a "Beresford Wall of Fame" with photographs of celebrities who lived there. Conversely, since there was a large number of celebrity residents, their presence did not affect property values, as in other neighborhoods with relatively few celebrity residents. The rule was enacted after comedian Jerry Seinfeld spent more than two years renovating his apartment, prompting complaints from his neighbors. The northern tower was restored in 2005.

Paul Goldberger of The New York Times wrote in 1976 that the Beresford was "a glorious building whose three castle‐like towers and fine siting have made it a long beloved West Side landmark". Though Goldberger did not consider the Beresford to be among New York City's ten best apartment buildings, he called it a "cousin" of the San Remo, which did rank among Goldberger's top ten. In 1996, a writer for Interior Design magazine said the Beresford was "among the Upper West Side's top drawer co ops, the buildings that evoke the basic emotions of lust and envy when one thinks or dreams of the apartments within". Carter B. Horsley, a former writer for the Times, ranked the Beresford in 1998 as one of the "top 10 views of Central Park". Critical commentary of the Beresford continued in the 21st century. During the 2000s, The New York Times said the presence of Central Park West's "architectural gems", such as the Beresford, contributed to increased housing prices on the eastern side of Central Park, along Fifth Avenue. John Freeman Gill of the Times wrote in 2005 that the Beresford was one of several buildings on Central Park West whose bases exhibited "the comfortable old solidity of limestone". The Wall Street Journal referred to the Beresford, Dakota, and San Remo as the "three grand dames of the West Side". The building is a contributing property to the Central Park West Historic District, which was recognized by the U. S. National Register of Historic Places when its nomination was accepted on November 9, 1982. Manhattan Community Board 7 supported all five designations, but the Beresford's co op board was concerned about whether a landmark designation would hinder maintenance of the building. The LPC designated the Beresford as a city landmark on September 19, 1987.