Robert Stern is an unapologetic Contextualist whose residential developments around Manhattan, now approaching a baker’s dozen, are an adornment of the borough.
He can work in a Modernist idiom, as he did at the Seville at 300 East 77th Street, in order to accommodate the other post-war buildings of First and Second avenues. He can even manage a hint of sub-Saharan vernacular in his design for the Museum of African Art at 1280 Fifth Avenue and 110th Street, as well as the apartment building that accompanies it.
But mostly Stern is known for elegantly restrained reveries that recall the famed New York structures of the early 20th century, and behind them, the European prototypes that inspired them. The very names of these projects, like the Chatham at 181 East 65th Street, the Brompton at 205 East 86th, and now, the Harrison at 205 West 76th, among others, suggest not only the aspirations of the developers but also the Britannic idiom in which he has conceived the buildings.
But there is a paradox to Stern’s Contextualism, especially in regard to the last three buildings. Surely they are Contextual in the sense that they invoke a rich architectural heritage that precedes the rationalist Modernism of so many New York residential developments. And they would indeed be Contextual if they were on Park or Fifth avenues, or directly across the park, like at his recently completed and highly praised 15 Central Park West at 61st Street.
But all three of these buildings have been set in a different context , to a greater or lesser degree, from that of Park or Fifth, and are uniformly better and more elegant than their neighbors. The strongest case that can be made for their contextualism is that, because they are so big and so bold, their respective neighborhoods somehow seem to rise to the occasion and take on something of their spirit.
Already that appears to be happening at the Harrison, which is slated for completion in June. And even though some cladding remains to be installed on the Amsterdam Avenue façade, an Equinox gym is already up and running on the fourth floor.
You could argue that the Contextualism of the Harrison is borne out in the predominance of red brick on the façade. There is probably no stretch of Manhattan more dominated by large prewar brick buildings than Amsterdam Avenue above 72nd street, and the brand new Harrison fits right in with them. It even gets along well with the Jewish Community Center, just down the street at 334 Amsterdam Avenue. Although that building is a gleaming Modernist study in glass, steel and granite cladding, its height and its setbacks are pleasingly harmonious with those of the Harrison.
Developed by the Related Companies and comprising 132 residences, the Harrison is actually two buildings joined by a four-story public area. The larger of the two fronts Amsterdam Avenue, while the other, slightly taller building looks over 76th Street, facing south. This solution was hit on through the unwelcome need to accommodate a five-story brick structure on the northeast corner of 76th and Amsterdam, which, it would appear, the developer was unwilling or unable to acquire.
But that necessity has produced an interesting interaction between the two structures in the complex, much in the way that the two buildings that make up 15 Central Park West gain in light and interest because zoning laws required the project to be split. A lesser architect, lacking Stern’s sensitivity to context, might simply have wrapped the two buildings around the offending five-story building, raising them up at a uniform height. Instead, Stern has subtly modulated the height of the buildings in such a way that an almost human relationship seems to develop between them, as of an older and a younger sibling.
Like the newly completed Brompton, which has a more massive and boxy appearance, the Harrison’s façade consists of a play between brick on the one hand and pink stone accents and window surrounds on the other. Various details appear along the surface of the façade in a willful and inconsistent alternation that nevertheless feels and looks consistent to the casual observer. It is a fair guess that this inconsistency, this ad hoc quality— which is also to be found at 15 Central Park West and at the Chatham — derives from Stern’s knowledge of many pre-war buildings in New York, especially on the Upper East and West sides, which are, for no very apparent reason, surprisingly inconsistent in their massing and in the application of their ornamentation. Thus a diminutive balcony, with black railing, shows up in isolation on the Brompton’s fourth floor along Amsterdam Avenue near 77th Street and then recurs across the length of the eighth floor. At various points in the setback, the corners are adorned with a linkage of three stone-clad bays that combine to form a sort of oriel.
In comparison with the Brompton, the use of ornament is far more restrained on the façade of the Harrison. Aside from a general air of Britishness and the faintest intimation of a Tudor style in the stonework that surrounds the punched windows, one would be hard put to find anything specifically historical about the Harrison, certainly nothing like the Gothic finials or Classical arches that are evident in the Brompton. At ground level, however, Stern invokes a modestly Classical idiom that isn’t really historical except to the extent that it recalls New York buildings of previous generations. Thus the main entrance to the building’s residential area, on 76th Street, consists of two smaller arches flanking a larger one, with elegant mullions at the top, and a massive, old-fashioned balcony cantilevering out from it.
For the street-level storefronts and the entrance to the Equinox gym along Amsterdam, the renderings suggest — since this part of the building is still concealed behind scaffolding — a grander and more rectilinear style than Stern has chosen for the residential entrance. In fact, the interaction of the two entrances recalls a similar variation at the Chatham, which the architect designed in 2000. There, too, a sequence of giant, two-story windows unfurls along Third Avenue in a maneuver that threw a delightfully unanticipated splash of light and elegance across what had been, until then, one of Manhattan’s least impressive avenues.
There is reason to hope that a similar effect will be achieved on Amsterdam, and that the avenue will be much improved as a result.