By Elizabeth Hawes, The New York Times, September 12, 1976
At the turn of the century, affluent New Yorkers dreamed of Renaissance palaces, and when means allowed, built lavish, scaled‐down examples along Fifth Avenue and Riverside Drive. Andrew Carnegie built one for himself on 91st Street. S. P. Morgan had Charles McKim execute his neoItalian Renaissance library. In the same classic tradition, with the same high‐minded and rather dreamy commitment to excellence, a handful of apartment houses—a new breed of building—were erected like palaces too. The most imperial were literal translations of the Italian Renaissance palazzos, gracious dwellings distinguished by the fact that they were built around spacious, landscaped open courtyards.
The Dakota Apartments was the first and most famous example of a courtyard building. But there are numerous other enduring examples of this form, the Apthorp, the Belnord, Astor Court, Heathcote Hall, Knickerbocker Village, the Buchanan, and 1185 Park Avenue, among those in Manhattan, plus scores of examples in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. They are handsome stone and brick monuments with grand arched entrances allowing glimpses of greenery, sculptured fountains, and, in early examples, circular carriage drives.
The courtyard building as an archetypical New York form tells a saga of the city’s past. Its architectural value, however, has not been outdated. When the City Planning Commission issued a set of quality housing proposals in 1973, which became law this year, they set up a rating system in the categories of neighborhood impact, recreation, security and interior apartments under which the courtyard building scores very high. They in effect stated that the values revered early in the century are still relevant. Now for the first time since zoning regulations discoutaged the construction of courtyard buildings in 1961, new examples of the form may stand with the old.
“The richly expressive and rich colored frescoes in the barrel‐vaulted arches of entry, however, transmit the undeniable opulence of the building. The interior courtyard is wider than 86th Street and 231 feet long, and holds an extremely generous formal garden and several spouting fountains.”
