Osborne Apartments

The Osborne, is an historic apartment building located at 205 West 57th Street at the corner of Seventh Avenue, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The Osborne began construction in 1883 and was completed in 1885. It was made a New York City landmark in 1991, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.

The Osborne
(2015)
Location within Manhattan Show map of Manhattan Osborne Apartments (New York City) Show map of New York City
General information
Type	Housing cooperative
Architectural style	Italian-Renaissance
Address	205 West 57th Street
Town or city	New York City
Country	United States
Coordinates	40°45′57″N 73°58′48″W
Construction started	1883
Completed	1885
Renovated	1906
Technical details
Structural system	Skyscraper
Floor count	11 (front) 15 (rear)
Design and construction
Architect	James Edward Ware
Osborne Apartments
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
NYC Landmark No. 1770
NRHP reference No.	93000333[1]
NYCL No.	1770
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	April 22, 1993
Designated NYCL	August 13, 1991
Main contractor	Thomas Osborne

The building stands behind its dour and reticent rusticated brownstone cladding,[2][3] on the northwest corner of 57th Street and Seventh Avenue, cater-corner from Carnegie Hall. The Osborne was designed and built by James Edward Ware from 1883 to 1885 and expanded with an annex to the west in 1906, designed by Alfred S. G. Taylor and Julien Clarence Levi. The stone contractor Thomas Osborne, whose ruinous speculative investment it was, gave the building his name.[4]

Three modillioned cornices divide the height into three broad horizontal bandings, with a two-story attic added for servants' quarters in 1891 that is capped with a top cornice. The original building is constructed of masonry bearing walls ranging from 4 1/2 feet thick at its base to 18 inches at the top floor. The 1906 Annex is constructed of steel-framing behind brick and brownstone curtain walls.

Its range of street-level shopfronts is broken at the center of the main, 57th Street front by its entrance. The unusually richly decorated lobby, in American Renaissance taste, has stuccoed and mosaic-tiled walls, floors that mix tile mosaics and slabs of varicolored Italian marble. Complementary marble was used for the wainscoting and carved marble recesses with benches. Mosaics and glazed terracotta "Della Robbia" panels cover the walls and ceilings in rich hues of red, blue and gold leaf.[5] with contributions by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the great sculptor of the American Renaissance, the muralist John La Farge, glass by Tiffany Studios and French designer Jacob Adolphus Holzer.[6]

Design

The Osborne was uniquely designed with 11 stories on the south-facing 57th Street front, containing the parade rooms of the apartments—foyers, parlors, dining rooms, with 14-foot ceilings—and 14 stories on the back, where bedrooms and private baths were either up or down a flight of seven steps, and the ceilings were just over 8 feet high. In 1891, the 11th-floor attic, which occupied the southern section of the building only, was extended to the north edge of the building to provide additional servants quarters, making it now 15 stories in the rear. About half of the spacious Gilded Age apartments, originally just four to a floor, in a variety of spatial configurations with separate servant quarters, have been subdivided since World War I. Floors are of parquet with banded edgings, fireplaces richly carved with tiled surrounds. Insulated walls thirty inches thick insulate apartments from neighbors' noise.

The Osborne Apartments building was designated an official city landmark in 1991.

Notable residents

• Dana Andrews, actor[7]
• Leonard Bernstein, composer/conductor, owned apartment 4B, also rented a studio apartment where he worked[8]
• Peter Beard, artist, photographer[9]
• Shirley Booth, actress[7][10]
• Hortense Calisher, writer[10]
• Jessica Chastain, two-time Academy Award-nominated actress, owns 4B, Bernstein's former apartment[11]
• Dane Clark, actor, learned about apartment 6B through Leonard Bernstein in 1960, and lived there until 1994.
• Van Cliburn, pianist[7]
• Gary Graffman, American classical pianist[12]
• Phil Jackson, New York Knicks basketball team executive[13]
• Leo Lerman, writer and editor[10]
• Ira Levin, novelist[8]
• Elinor Lipman, novelist[14]
• Sylvia Miles, actress[10]
• Alice Nielsen, Broadway performer and opera singer[7]
• Robert Osborne, TCM host[15]
• Charles Osgood, newscaster[16]
• Tom Poston, actor[7][10]
• Lynn Redgrave, actress and her husband John Clark[7][10]
• Bobby Short, singer, moved to apartment 4B in the 1970s, and lived there for 14 years[8]
• Faith Stewart-Gordon, owner of the Russian Tea Room[10]
• Larry Storch, actor, lived in apartment 4B immediately after Leonard Bernstein[8]
• Blanche Thebom, opera singer and director[7][10]
• Maury Yeston, composer, lyricist, educator and musicologist
• André Watts, pianist[10]
• Gig Young, American actor

See also

• National Register of Historic Places listings in Manhattan from 14th to 59th Streets
• List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan from 14th to 59th Streets

References

1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
2. Dolkart, Andrew S. "The Architecture and Development of New York City". Loosely modeled on an Italian-Renaissance palace
3. Gray, Christopher (February 6, 1994). "Streetscapes – The Osborne; Restoring a Stone Dealer's Idiosyncratic Building". The New York Times. this huge clunky mass neatly defeats stylistic description, and it is really the vernacular of the practical building, quite innocent of esthetic pretension
4. The most extensive description of the Osborne is Andrew Alpern's essay in Luxury Apartment Houses of Manhattan, An Illustrated History, (Dover Publications, New York), 1992.
5. Whitaker, Barbara (October 12, 1997) "Habitats/The Osborne, 205 West 57th Street", The New York Times
6. City Realty: The Osborne
7. Kurshan, Virginia (August 13, 1991) "Osborne Apartments Designation Report" New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission
8. Taylor, Candace (May 11, 2009). "Bobby Short and Leonard Bernstein Home on the Market". The Real Deal. Retrieved August 19, 2014.
9. Johnson, Richard (July 25, 2014). "Leggy model suing photographer Peter Beard and wife". New York Post. Retrieved August 19, 2014.
10. Stewart-Gordon, Faith (1999). The Russian Tea Room: A Love Story. New York: Scribner. ISBN 0-684-85981-5.
11. Budion, Jeremiah (March 11, 2015). "Jessica Chastain Buys Leonard Bernstein's Former Co-op". Curbed.
12. Malcolm, Janet (September 5, 2016) "Yuja Wang and the Art of Performance", The New Yorker
13. Clarke, Katherine (August 15, 2014). "Slamdunk: Knicks president Phil Jackson drops $4.85M on Midtown pad". New York Daily News.
14. Alleman, Richard (2005) New York: the Movie Lover's Guide : the Ultimate Insider Tour of Movie New York. New York: Broadway.
15. Sandomir, Richard (March 6, 2017) "Robert Osborne, Turner Classic Movies Host, Dies at 84", The New York Times
16. Woollard, Deidre (April 28, 2009). "Charles Osgood at the Osborne, Estate of the Day". Luxist.com. Archived from the original on April 30, 2009.

External links

• The Osborne at CityRealty
• The Osborne on The New York Songlines