The Normandy
The Normandy is a cooperative apartment building at 140 Riverside Drive, between 86th and 87th Streets, adjacent to Riverside Park on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Designed by architect Emery Roth in a mixture of the Art Moderne and Renaissance Revival styles, it was constructed from 1938 to 1939. The building was developed by a syndicate composed of Henry Kaufman, Emery Roth, Samson Rosenblatt, and Herman Wacht. The Normandy is 20 stories tall, with small twin towers rising above the 18th story. The building is a New York City designated landmark.
The lowest 18 stories of the building are H-shaped, flanking courtyards to the west and east. There are numerous setbacks, some of which double as terraces. The first two stories are clad in rusticated blocks of limestone, with horizontal Art Moderne-style horizontal grooves. There are two semicircular entrances at ground level. The remainder of the facade is made of light brick with cast stone ornamentation, as well as movable windows and curved corners. The building has a sunken lobby leading to two elevator banks. On the upper stories, there were originally 250 apartments, each with two to seven rooms. The rooms are generally more compact than in earlier luxury apartment buildings, with many rooms arranged around central galleries. There is a double-level penthouse suite in each tower with seven rooms.
The building, possibly named for the French ocean liner, replaced twelve row houses built in the late 1890s. Plans for the Normandy apartment building were announced in August 1938; the building opened in September 1939 and was the last major apartment house developed on the Upper West Side before World War II. The Normandy was resold in 1944, 1952, and 1960. The building was converted to a housing cooperative in 1979 following a failed conversion attempt in 1971. The building was designated as a city landmark in 1985 amid a controversy over window replacements.
Site
The Normandy is at 140 Riverside Drive on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. The building occupies the eastern sidewalk of Riverside Drive, across from Riverside Park between 86th Street to the south and 87th Street to the north. The Normandy is situated on an L-shaped land lot with an area of. The lot measures along Riverside Drive, along 86th Street, and along 87th Street. The surrounding area contains row houses, as well as apartment buildings such as the Red House on 85th Street.After the completion of Riverside Drive in the late 19th century, row houses were built on and near it. The site of the Normandy was occupied by twelve row houses that were built in 1896 by Henry Cook. These were composed of eight houses at 140–147 Riverside Drive, three at 348–352 West 87th Street, and 351 West 86th Street. Traffic engineer John A. Harriss acquired the house at 140 Riverside Drive in 1910. This house had contained a log cabin, chapel, and ballroom. Harriss's firm Rivercrest Realty acquired six of the adjacent houses in 1918. Rivercrest bought the remaining houses by 1921, and Harriss planned to build an apartment building on the site. The plans never materialized and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company took over the buildings in 1933.
Architecture
The Normandy was designed by Emery Roth in an Art Moderne style. Roth avoided characterizing the Normandy as a modern-style building, in the belief that "every building is modern when erected". Original plans had called for the building to be designed in an Italianate style. Some Italianate details are retained in the final design, such as pilasters with ornate capitals; parapets with balustrades; and a pair of small "towers" above the main building. The facade shares several Art Moderne elements with Roth's earlier 888 Grand Concourse apartment building, including curved "pavilions" and recessed entrance vestibules.Form
The Normandy is 20 stories tall. The main section of the building rises 18 stories. These stories are roughly arranged in an "H" shape, with two pavilions, or wings, which flank courtyards both to the west and the east. The eastern section of each pavilion contains setbacks. The street-facing walls of each pavilion's eastern section have setbacks starting at the 15th story, while the inner faces of each pavilion have setbacks beginning at the ninth story. A two-story tower rises above both the building's northern and southern ends; each tower contains one penthouse apartment. The towers' presence may have been inspired by Roth's previous designs, which contained towers for mechanical equipment and water tanks.The courtyards have a total area of. According to The New York Times, the courtyards were landscaped by a "horticultural expert from Cornell University". The west courtyard is slightly recessed from Riverside Drive and is separated from the street by a wrought-iron and stone railing with urns. The rear or east courtyard is larger, with dimensions of. The presence of the courtyards allowed every apartment to receive natural light from two frontages. Apartments in the center of the "H" received natural light from both courtyards. Roth included these courtyards because he believed residents wanted suburban features such as "a pleasant outlook, not bleak walls and windows".
The massing of the Normandy, and those of similar buildings, was shaped primarily by the Multiple Dwelling Act of 1929. Under this legislation, the "street walls" of apartment buildings could rise one and a half times the width of the adjacent street before they had to contain a setback. On lots of more than, the street walls could rise three times the width of the adjacent street. Apartment buildings could rise up to 19 stories; additional stories were allowed on large plots, but the floor areas of these stories were limited to 20 percent of the lot area. The Normandy was the only apartment building on Riverside Drive to be designed with twin towers. This contrasted with the multiple twin-towered buildings on Central Park West.
Facade
The Normandy's facade contains decorative detail on all of its elevations. The base, towers, and parapets are made of beige-colored cast stone and limestone; the rest of the facade is made of beige brick. The Normandy's fenestration consists of multi-paned sash windows, as well as vertical pilasters and horizontal courses.Roth paid particular attention to the designs of the windows, which were manufactured in pieces and assembled to his precise specifications. Most of the windows originally carried a uniform design, with glass panes separated by metal muntins. The widest windows were triple-casement windows, composed of a central tier with five panes, as well as an upper and lower tier with three stationary transoms. In the central tier, the middle pane was stationary, while the other four panes were movable casements. In addition, there are double-paired casement windows, each with four movable panes, and single-paired casement windows, each with two movable panes. The facade's curved corners contain casement windows. Each of the corner windows is divided vertically into five sections. Though the glass itself is not curved, each vertical window section is set at a slight angle to give the appearance of a curve.
Base
The lowest section of the facade, immediately above the sidewalk, consists of a cast-stone water table with a horizontal ovolo molding at its top. Above the water table is the two-story base, which is made of rusticated blocks of limestone. The rustication consists only of horizontal grooves, unlike in earlier buildings that also had vertical grooves; this was one of several Art Moderne elements in the building. Each horizontal course of blocks is separated by three shallow grooves, and the limestone blocks themselves contain horizontal markings. A torus-shaped molding runs horizontally above the base. The two-story rusticated base extends across the 86th Street and Riverside Drive elevations, as well as the western section of the 87th Street elevation. On the remainder of the 87th Street elevation, the rusticated blocks are only one story high and there is no torus molding. On all elevations, the arrangement of the second-story windows follows that of the stories directly above.The two main entrances on 86th and 87th Streets are connected by a passageway. Near the western end of the 86th Street elevation is a recessed semicircular entryway, with a curved canopy projecting over the sidewalk. The lowest section of the entryway's wall is a cast-stone dado, above which are blue, beige, and gold mosaic tiles in horizontal and vertical patterns. The center of the entryway contains a revolving door. The recessed entryway is flanked by two bronze doors, leading to individual offices on the ground floor. Similarly, the western end of the 87th Street elevation contains a recessed entryway flanked by two bronze doors to individual offices. On the far western end of the 86th and 87th Street frontages, there is a short standalone wall of rusticated blocks, which contains an archway with a metal service gate.
There are no doors on the Riverside Drive elevation, though it does contain multi-pane sash windows, which are recessed directly into the rusticated base. The arrangement of the first- and second-story windows largely follows that of the stories directly above the base. The center of the Riverside Drive elevation is recessed and contains a glass wall, which is surrounded by a cast-stone frame.
Intermediate stories
On Riverside Drive, both the northern and southern pavilions are divided vertically into three bays from the 3rd to the 17th stories. The bays are flanked by brick pilasters. The outermost pilasters rise above stone blocks and are topped by Ionic capitals. Each bay contains one triple casement window per floor. A parapet runs above the 17th story of each pavilion. On either side of each pavilion are curved corners with slightly recessed windows on the 3rd through 15th floors. Each corner contains curving terraces at the 16th and 17th floors; those on the 17th floor are cantilevered. The returns of each pavilion, facing the recessed courtyard, contain three windows per floor. In the midsection, each of the 3rd through 18th stories contains a uniform pattern of casement windows. Above the 19th-story penthouse, the midsection is topped by a parapet with corbels.On the 86th Street elevation, three brick pilasters split the 3rd through 17th stories into two asymmetrical sections, each with five bays of windows. The pilasters flanking the westernmost five bays have Ionic capitals. In the western section, each of the 2nd through 17th stories contains four bays of single-paired casement windows and one bay of smaller windows. On the 16th and 17th stories, the westernmost bay of windows is offset because these stories contain different apartment layouts. In the eastern section, the second and ninth stories contain a slightly different window layout from the 10th to 15th stories. The 16th to 18th stories of the eastern section are set back. The eastern corner of the 86th Street elevation is also curved. The windows are recessed slightly.
The 87th Street elevation contains a recessed midsection flanked by curved corners. The westernmost five bays are flanked by pilasters like those on 86th Street. Each of the 2nd through 17th stories contains four bays of single-paired casements and one bay of smaller windows, while the 18th and 19th stories are set back. The corner windows on this elevation are more sharply curved than those on Riverside Drive; the center pane is angled 45 degrees from the two panes on either side. The midsection contains three casement windows per floor. In the easternmost five bays, the second to ninth stories contain a different window layout from the 10th to 15th stories, and the eastern section of the 16th and 17th stories is set back.
On the rear elevation, facing east, the pavilions at the north and south ends of the building flank a deeply recessed midsection. Each of the pavilions contains five bays of casement windows. The northern pavilion on 87th Street is deeper; the windows on that pavilion only begin above the tenth floor due to the presence of a neighboring townhouse.