By now, anyone interested in the architecture of New York City will be familiar with 15 Central Park West, one of the very few developments, and surely the largest, to be built on that illustrious avenue in the past half century. Indeed, as it rises near the southwest corner of the park, this pale, limestone-clad structure, designed by Robert A.M. Stern, is impossible to miss.
For nearly two years, New Yorkers have marveled at the impossibly high prices that each of its units has commanded. And now that the market seems to be facing a serious correction, 15 CPW feels like the last gasp of an age that is already fading into memory, if not mythology, recalling the decade that brought us the San Remo and the Majestic.
And yet, what is architecturally the best part of the building, the courtyards on 61st and 62nd streets between Broadway and the park, has only just been completed. Together, they form one of the most striking places on the Upper West Side. These square-shaped courtyards, which are both just under 6,000 square feet and are privately owned, separate the 19-story building on Central Park West from the 35-story structure that aligns with Broadway.
Yet these two spaces embody a paradox. On the one hand, they are not only stylish; they look as though they belong on the avenue, as though in their formal and decorative vocabulary they are thoroughly typical of the Upper West Side. And yet there is really nothing like them on Central Park West.
True, the use of limestone and the eclectic invocation of classical forms in their punched windows and door surrounds vaguely recalls the San Remo and the Beresford further north, both designed by Emery Roth. And yet, the primary inspiration for the pavilion, a delightfully domed rotunda that stands between these two spaces, is Bramante’s Tempietto in Rome, as well as a number of round or octagonal buildings at the center of such famous paintings as Perugino’s “Christ Giving the Keys to Saint Peter,” in the Sistine Chapel.
This rotunda rises 41 feet in the form of
a drum surmounted by a lantern. It is linked by parallel wings to both buildings that make up the development. Facing south, its three doorways are crowned by an assertive canopy of glass and bronze.
The punctilious symmetry of the structure — so Renaissance in its aesthetic — is beautifully enhanced by a simple, eloquent fountain of black granite that occupies the exact center of the cobblestone courtyard. Accent lines of gold granite radiate from the fountain in a way that recalls Michelangelo’s Capitol in Rome. Along the eastern side of the courtyard, a covered walkway is punctuated by pillars. This part of the design, which one suspects of being more ornamental than functional, is not repeated on the western side, a departure from strict symmetry that underscores the intuitive, ad hoc approach to classical contextualism that has long characterized Stern’s practice. Somewhat anachronistically, the entire space is known as the Motor Court, because it is here that vans arrive with deliveries. It is, conceptually, the main entrance to the development, and it is separated from 61st Street by an imposing gate formed by burnished bronze bars.
To the north lies the second limestone courtyard, called the Resident’s Garden, which, unlike the Motor Court, is accessible only to residents. But it shares with its southern counterpart a covered walkway, and it, too, has a fountain — in the form of a rectangular pool, from which jets of water emerge. Despite two modest bronze doors, it effectively has no entrance or exit to the north. It is separated from the street by a striking classical folly in the form of a looping limestone parabola that links the two buildings in the development.
Like the development as a whole, these two ambitious courtyards represent a considerable enhancement of this part of the Upper West Side. Along Broadway especially, several of the neighboring developments, dating from the 1970s, are extremely graceless. The sudden arrival of such stately spaces brings a touch of class to the whole area, an elegance that spreads for several blocks in all directions.
James Gardner, formerly the architecture critic of the New York Sun, writes on the
visual arts for several publications.