Master Apartments
The Master Apartments, officially known as the Master Building, is a 27-story Art Deco skyscraper at 310 Riverside Drive, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City. It sits on the northeast corner of Riverside Drive and West 103rd Street. Designed by Harvey Wiley Corbett of the firm Helmle, Corbett & Harrison, in conjunction with Sugarman & Berger, the Master Apartments was completed in 1929 as the tallest building on Riverside Drive. It was the first skyscraper in New York City to feature corner windows and the first to employ brick in varying colors for its entire exterior.
The Master Apartments' name derives from the Master Institute of United Arts, an art institute founded in 1920 by Nicholas and Helena Roerich. Wealthy financier Louis L. Horch began purchasing lots in 1925 to build the apartment building, and in 1928 he secured a bond to fund its construction. As built, the building's lower floors consisted of a museum; a school for the fine and performing arts; and an international art center. The building opened in 1929 to generally positive acclaim, but it went into foreclosure in 1932, and Horch's tax-exempt corporation acted as the Master Building's receiver from 1934 to 1935. Following a disagreement between Horch and the Roeriches, the museum was closed and the Roeriches unsuccessfully sued to regain control of the Master Apartments. Louis Horch's wife Nettie also controlled some aspects of the building and its organizations during this time, but by 1958, the Horches' son Frank became the building's manager.
During the 1950s and 1960s, people moved out of the surrounding Manhattan Valley neighborhood. Consequently, the Master Apartments' museum and cultural center closed by 1971, their holdings dispersed elsewhere, although the building's auditorium was still used for cultural events. After Louis's death in 1979, the building was bought by real estate investor Sol Goldman, who converted it to a housing co-operative over the next decade. Further renovations, which were completed in 2005, resulted in many of the one-bedroom studios being combined into two- and three-bedroom units. These renovations attracted more families and made the building more luxurious by both quality-of-life and purchase-price measures. The Master Apartments was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.
Site
The Master Building is at 310 Riverside Drive on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. The building occupies the northeastern corner of Riverside Drive and 103rd Street, across from Riverside Park. It is situated on a nearly square land lot with an area of. The lot has a frontage of along Riverside Drive and along 103rd Street, with an indentation in the northeast corner. The building is part of the Riverside-West End Historic District, a New York City historic district designated in 2015. The surrounding neighborhood largely contains brick-and-limestone row houses and apartment structures built in the 19th and early 20th centuries.Architecture
The Master Building was designed by Harvey Wiley Corbett of the firm Helmle, Corbett & Harrison, in conjunction with the firm Sugarman & Berger. The building was developed for artist Nicholas Roerich and his financial patron, Louis L. Horch. The skyscraper's first three floors originally held a museum, a school of the fine and performing arts, and an international art center, operated by Roerich and his wife Helena. Horch largely funded all three organizations.Form and facade
The Master Building is 28 stories tall, though contemporary media referred to it as having 24 stories. The building is cited as being tall. According to the Master Building's first manager, only three other residential structures in New York City were taller: the Savoy-Plaza Hotel, the Park Central Hotel, and the Ritz Tower. Upon its completion in 1929, the Master Building was the tallest structure on Riverside Drive. It is still the avenue's tallest residential building, surpassed only by the Riverside Church on 120th Street.The northern section of the building contains a three-story wing. The Master Building has a shallow setback above the second story on its eastern elevation, as well as above the three-story wing on its northern elevation. Above the 14th story, the building sets back further into an irregularly massed "transitional" section with several setbacks, which rises to the 21st story. The octagonal tower rises above the transitional building. The single pinnacle contrasts with the multiple twin-towered buildings on Central Park West, which were all built following a change to the zoning regulations in 1929.
The building has a brick exterior that was deep purple in its lower stories, originally tapering to white at the tower. Over the years, the pinnacle has weathered to a light gray color. Harvey Wiley Corbett said the coloration gave the skyscraper a "feeling of growth". He said: "This colored brick exterior, which rises from a low, dark ground to a gleaming, white pinnacle, gives the building a dynamic quality. The play of sunlight on the many hues will make the building a beautiful spectacle of changing colors." Other ornamentation was limited to brick patterns on the base and spandrel panels, as well as architectural terracotta on the parapets of each setback.
Base
The Master Building's two main entrances, at the centers of the 103rd Street and Riverside Drive elevations, both contain double-height portals. The 103rd Street entrance provides access to the residential lobby, with a pair of metal-and-glass doors directly in front of the sidewalk. The Riverside Drive entrance, which formerly led to the Roerich Museum, is approached by a short flight of steps and contains one metal-and-glass door on either of the portal's reveals. Both entrances have brick portals. which are laid in courses of headers A metal canopy is cantilevered in front of either entrance. Recessed within each portal are three-part transoms with sidelights made of blue leaded glass. Each sidelight consists of several small rectangular panes with metal motifs resembling corn stalks. The central pane of both portals had originally been made of blue glass, but these were replaced with clear glass at some point after they were vandalized.Near the eastern end of the 103rd Street elevation is a third entrance, with three pairs of doors leading to the building's auditorium. Two sets of doors are made of paneled glass, while the remaining pair is a metal service door. Above each of these doors are patterned brick panels, composed of diagonally-oriented courses of headers. The central door is topped by a paneled-glass transom with blue leaded-glass sidelights, though there is no canopy in front of this door. A fourth entrance is at the northern end of the Riverside Drive elevation and formerly led to a restaurant. This doorway also has a tripartite transom, though the sidelights are made of metal. Originally, the transom had been made of blue glass, which also suffered vandalism and was replaced with metal.
The main entrance on Riverside Drive is flanked by three bays of windows; the innermost bay is separated from the two outer bays by projecting piers. The main entrance on 103rd Street is flanked by four bays; the inner three bays are separated from the outer bay by projecting piers. On both elevations, the first-story windows contain metal grilles in front of them. Below the first-story windows, the brickwork is laid in headers. The southwest corner of the first and second stories does not have windows, since the Roerich Museum was formerly housed there.
The cornerstone is at ground level, embedded into the building's southwest corner. It has an all-black irregular shape stepped like the building. On it are inscribed the year 1929 and a symbol designed by Roerich consisting of a circle enclosing three dots together with a monogram. The monogram, showing the letter R within the letter M, stands for the Roerich Museum. The circle and the three dots are the symbol of Roerich's Banner of Peace. He once said the circle represents eternity and unity and the dots the triune nature of existence. On another occasion he said the symbol has two meanings: in one interpretation, the circle represents the totality of culture and the dots are art, science, and religion, while in the other, the circle symbolizes the endlessness of time and the dots are the past, the present, and the future. The cornerstone contains a 400-year-old casket from the Rajput dynasty of northern India. Made of iron with inlays of gold and silver, the casket contains photographs taken during the Roeriches' expedition to Central Asia. It is also said to contain Jacob's Pillow or the Stone of Scone.
Upper stories
On the 3rd to 14th stories, the fenestration is composed of windows separated by wide and narrow piers. The corners of the building were outfitted with windows wrapping around the edge at a 90-degree angle. These were the first such windows in a skyscraper in New York City. The corner windows were originally folding casement windows, though most of these have since been replaced by "Chicago-style windows". The rest of the facade is divided into bays, each with a single one-over-one sash window per floor. These windows were replaced in the 1970s and again in 1990.The bays of the facade are generally grouped into pairs, except for the outermost bays of each elevation, which are grouped as single bays. Each different grouping of bays is separated by a wide pier, and the bays in each grouping are divided by a narrower pier. The spandrel panels between the windows on different stories are composed of dark and light bricks. The contrast between the bricks gives the appearance of four vertical lines in each spandrel panel.
The building's setbacks, which double as terraces for the apartments, begin above the 14th story. Each setback contains terracotta cresting; the color of the cresting varied based on how high up the terrace was. Some sections of terracotta cresting are gray, while other sections are yellow and orange.