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New York
Architecture Images-Upper West Side Belnord Apartments |
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architect |
H. Hobart Weekes |
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location |
225 W86, bet. Amsterdam Ave & Broadway |
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date |
1908 |
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style |
Renaissance Revival |
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construction |
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type |
Apartment Building |
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"All of the buildings share the liability of courtyard
apartment houses, which is poor light in all too many of the units, but
they also share the ability of all good courtyard buildings to create
far more than conventional buildings could a sense of a private, secure
world." Paul Goldberger "The original planting was encircled by attractive
four-globe light-posts and was quite formal and to the modern eye
evocative to a certain extent of the black-and-white photographs of the
gardens in Alain Renais's film, "Last Year at Marienbad." Indeed, this
is almost a de Chiricoesque vista as the tall, textured walls
encompassing the space offer both security and imprisonment, awe and
ire, dream and reality." "The Belnord boasted the largest interior court in
the world 94 feet wide by 231 feet long and an underground delivery
tunnel for trucks and wagons reachable via a ramped driveway from West
87th Street. Architecturally nowhere near as successful as the Astor
buildings, the Belnord, with is vast number of very large apartments,
did not reach full occupancy until World War II. Since then, however, it
has never had a vacancy for long, but has been embroiled for years in an
acrimonious battle between its tenants and the building's elderly and
eccentric owner." "Brilliant, but boring." |
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